Government Matters

A Nature Reserve
All round the outskirts of Mollans can be seen notices proclaiming « Non Au Parc ». The proposal is to have a nature reserve (parc naturel) whose boundaries would include Mollans and, as I've commented previously, many Mollanais are against it on the grounds that it would interfere with their hunting and right to sell plots of land for building. I think that is understandable but a shame. Anyway, voting in the areas of the Drôme affected is now complete and Mollans has formally rejected the idea.

The whole process is complex and takes time. Each commune in the proposed area has to vote, by region. Communes in two more regions still have to vote but are expected, on the whole, to vote in favour. When voting is completed, the regional authorities then have to try to assemble a congruent area from the communes that have voted in favour and put a proposal to the government based on the number of communes and percentage of population in favour. Mollans is on the edge of the area proposed for the nature reserve and so can quite easily be excluded without producing an embarrassing “hole”. Other communes that are against the idea may present a more signifiacnt challenge to the planners. The percentage of the population that has voted in favour so far is around 80% and, if that holds true of the regions yet to vote, any government going against the wishes of 80% of the population is surely asking for trouble. However, Sarkozy and his acolytes are against nature reserves, Hollande in favour of them, and so this is an issue that could have a bearing on the imminent elections.

The process so far has taken eight years and is likely to take another two before completion. If the reserve is established, funds become available from the EU to encourage conservation and tourism. Exactly how these are used is down to a governing committee authorised to run the reserve, drawn from representatives of the area included. This committee also makes the rules for the reserve; nothing is prescribed. So the Mollanais could have voted in favour of the reserve and then joined the governing committee to ensure that their rights were protected. I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't choose this route.

Brilliant Government Thinking
Like most of the people I know, I generally regard government intelligence as something of an oxymoron. Certainly, the examples of government stupidity that come to light far outnumber anything governments do that could be classed as intelligent. However, there are occasional flashes of brilliance that stand out like beacons in this murky record and a recent Guardian article pointed me at one of them.

Estonia, when it gained independence, was a poor country with a small ill-educated population and a distinct lack of physical infrastructure. It didn't try to repair its deficiencies piece-meal but rather decided on a genuine great leap forward. It saw the Internet as its future and made WIFI broadband access universal and, initially, free; that was 12 years ago. The result? A current population that is highy IT-literate with very saleable skills, 98% of bank transfers done electronically and a similar number of tax returns done the same way (UK, France, Gernany, etc, dream on.......).

It is a similar scale of transformation to that which occurred in Ireland in the 1980s. There, too, an essentially agrarian peasant economy that looked destined for gradual modernisation was transformed in one imaginative bound.

The other stroke of brilliance that occurred to me is rather different: national anthems. Leave aside the music; the words of every national anthem I know are bombastic, inane or even downright warlike and, in every case, an embarrassment. I suppose there is a case for retaining national anthems but they certainly need improvement. The improvement I discovered was while watching an international football match. The sight of footballers united in mouthing inanities is not uncommon but one team was silent: Spain. The Spanish national anthem apparently doesn't have words; sheer genius!