What Do You Know!!!!

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Age of Phobia":


If you are going to categorize a country please do so in full, not merely a passing and inaccurate comment.

The Swiss Confederation dates from 1291. That makes it five times as old as Canada. The Federal Constitution dates from 1848 making it one of the oldest in the world.

One neat aspect of Swiss voting, at all three levels, the commune, the canton and the federal level, is that by calling a referendum, a group of citizens may challenge a law enacted at any of these levels. There is also the right, the federal constitutional initiative that allows citizens to put a constitutional amendment to a national vote. There are varying numbers of signatures required for the three different government levels where a referendum is desired.

This sounds like a great improvement over our system of creating legislation, where any majority government at any of our three levels can pass just about any law and only be subject to judicial review, ultimately by the Supreme Court.

Banking is not Switzerland's national industry and your concept of wealthy people stashing their money for security or tax purposes has changed, if only recently. One never had to surrender the citizenship of one's national country in order to live in Switzerland. Shania Twain has lived there for years.

The Swiss economy, including banking, consists of pharmaceuticals, watch making, engineering, high tech manufacturing, its most important economic sector. This includes specialist chemicals, health and pharmaceutical goods, scientific and precision measuring instrument and musical instruments. Major contributors are insurance, tourism and international organizations, i.e. the Red Cross and WTO.

There is also compulsory military service and after having served two years people get called back for refresher training every so often. There is usually a military rifle to be found in every household where a member has completed the compulsory service. And these are not ancient Lee-Enfield rifles like that used by our arctic adventurer Prime Minister during his recent target practice from all three positions.

So do a bit of research before you comment on a country, one of the best in the world.

And you can't beat the scenery.



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Posted by Anonymous to Our Town and Its Business at 28 August 2013 11:20