It has been a year today since Yves Leterme, Belgium’s caretaker prime minister abandoned his attempt to form a government but the country does not appear any closer to an end nor does it appear necessary.
“Local government carries on; the refuse is collected and public transport works. The financial markets, far from taking fright at this rudderless ship, continue to lend to Belgium at more favourable rates than most of the rest of the EU. Taxes have not gone up because no agreement can be made on debt restructuring. As a result, business and consumer confidence is high.”
The “rudderless ship” and local control is far more preferable as the Leviathan on the Potomac swamp will hopefully soon find out.
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I’m sorry; but this is a pretty bad way of representing Belgium.
First of all: we have 6 governments – not including town and provinces – and all can’t really be called ‘local’. (The state level in the USA is more local in comparison.) Secondly; we have, in fact, a government. We just don’t have a *new* one ever since the last election. (Because we work with a proportionality system, there is always a ‘need’ to form a coalition.) This government makes decisions like going to war (Libya) and arranging the wage price controls and stuff like that. Forthly; the entire administration and welfare state works on basically ‘cruise control’; entitlements still are handed out and the debt still raises. Public transportation is a government operated system – both the trains and the busses – and neither are working good. (More strikes, more delays, etc. But this has other reasons.) But more importantly: public transportation is _not_ a function of the federal government, but of the local government. (Like education and a bunch of other stuff.)
I’m also not sure why the article you link too describes it as Leterme’s job. He is pretty much made irrelevant since last election. (Which was exactly a year ago.)
And our credit rating is going down. So I’m not sure why this euphoria. We don’t have a new federal government. We still have 5 other governments, the previous federal government and the state.
All of your issues were discussed in the post, Adrian. We would love no federal government and no increase in taxation. It would be a very great start to the cessation of the enlargement of the state.
“No State, No Problem” – the title implies Belgium has been a stateless society for the past year, but nothing could be farther from the trouth. Every single state agency and state-provided service continue to function as before. State employees continue to be paid, and so on.
This article is absurd. The civil service is still there, growing government as they always do. The only difference is there is no political administration, which anyone familiar with “Yes, Minister” will know is much like a dog with no tail to wag.
BFD
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