Alexander Chalkidis

Category: Society

  • Greek on a soapbox

    Will try and keep this short and unGreek in drama.  I am a Germanotsolias according to many people here.  The term refers to the police collaborators with the Nazis and is very fashionable again.  Ι write in full knowledge that I am probably going to be pinpointed by this, already the Press is facing ridiculous inquisitions on political grounds.

    Europe I am sorry.   We just kept taking your money, lying through our teeth and spending it.  Even just before the referendum, our government was busy hiring more civil servants under various guises.  Even after the referendum, our ministers are lying to your face.  They are not going to make any proposals.  Even if you give away all our debt and accept all our terms, they won’t sign any agreement.  They don’t need to.   61% of half the voting age Greeks, voted No to the referendum.  Some of them were fooled.  Many of them truly believe that now is the time to start a global revolution against banks, the European Union and the shortcomings of the global economy from our country.

    I am sorry.  I know it sounds ludicrous.  It is preposterous.  Imagine what we feel like.  That 39% that managed to vote “YES”, despite all the pressure.  Despite seeing close friends suddenly lose touch with reality with a religious fervour that is truly frightening.  People that should have known better.  They studied abroad, they do business with other countries, they work with the European Union yet….somehow they manage to disregard reality.  For some it is a knee jerk reaction to being accused by others.  For some it is an indirect admission of guilt.  They feel we should be reduced to rumbles in order to work our way back up.  They imagine it as a quick musical interlude in a corny American movie, a dramatic song, our hero working overtime and then…everything is fine ten minutes later and the movie ends.

    On top of it all, our latest government has played the “Europe needs fixing” card in a way which is criminal.  Just as the Scottish referendum showed the UK how to move towards a more Federal model and things are moving in the right direction, comes the Greek bulldozer.  So let this be a warning to you all.  For too long, European politicians have blamed Europe.  It was the easy choice.  Be careful what sows you seed and by all means, don’t allow your current politicians to lead you to fanatical choices.

    Maybe Europe doesn’t “work” for you.  If you have a strong economy, reliable politicians and social cohesion maybe you can do something better on your own.  Just don’t rush into it.

  • There can only be one global language

    It has been decided.  Unless some other country takes the technological lead in the next ten years in a major way, English will not only remain the de facto global language but will also greatly expand its reach.    We can debate the finer points about lost nuances, great cultures of the past and all that will be lost if you want.  But the issue is all but closed.

    There are two major factors making this a certainty:  culture and artificial intelligence.

    The effects of global (internet) culture have been well documented even before the web.  Young people all over the world learn English via YouTube videos or apps on their phones.   A teacher, as in a physical person helping you learn English, is optional.  The kids learn the words, learn what is cool and how the concepts are connected much like Google learns how to spell;  through trial and error and connecting the dots.  Local television is dying as the new generation downloads series (in English, they bother less now even with subtitles) or watches videos online.  In English.

    However artificial intelligence is what will kill off the remaining pockets of local languages.  I talk to Google Now all the time.  In English.  Sure, it supports other languages, but it doesn’t figure out all the cool things that make the difference in other languages.  The semantic special juice only works in Californese, you have to be near enough the Silicon Valley minds that thought it all up for it to work well.  Same goes for in-car navigation systems or any other tech helper.  It isn’t just about voice recognition.  Companies like Google are taking artificial intelligence and putting it in our phones, on our browsers.  All the connections between our search history, our requests, our locations and everything else they take into account…yep…it’s all figured out in English terms.  The frames of reference, the logical constructs, all in English.

    Being Greek this is quite a pill to swallow.  Most of my compatriots still think that Ancient Greece is the foundation of Western though, the cradle of civilization and all that.  It was.  For a while.  But now it is English, or more accurately, American English which is carrying the planet to the next major step of discoveries.  This isn’t about science fiction.  This is day to day life.  From social media to ordering pizza, most of our life is going to be in English no matter where on the planet we live.  And because all these developments are patented, it is near impossible for any other language to catch up with the Googles and Facebooks with all their big data and big patent portfolios for the AI they have seen working.

    Get used to it, stop kicking and shouting in protest and enjoy the benefits.

  • At long last…a new image for Greeks!

    The antics of the Greek government these past 100 days have achieved what nobody for decades had managed to shift:  the image of Greeks.   As correctly identified by various spin doctors, the image of a Zorba type lazy Greek at the cafe was holding us back.    No matter how many advertising campaigns we tried, millions spent with consultants and the dedication of previous tourism ministers…all to no avail.

    Enter Yani Varoufakis.

    The man started by taking one “n” out of his first name.  Because he is a blogger, not a politician.  We forget it, but his title for a long time had been “blogger economist” or “economist blogger”.  He had toured the media and the world on the borders of pseudoscientific economic revolution.  If he stayed in the US a bit longer he would probably end up with a YouTube channel, selling doomsday catastrophe theories like so many other conspiracy theorists.

    But he became finance minister.

    Probably because hardly anyone else in the cabinet speaks English.   Maybe because his crazy theories are popular with lazy Greeks.   Zorba, sipping his eight coffee of the day, likes to hear that it is someone else’s fault.  Why face your own shortcomings when you can point a finger to global economic discrepancies?  “The eurozone is broke”.  Oh really?  The eurozone has been broke since the day it started and thousands of people have been trying to fix it ever since.  How are you helping?

    Well Mr Varoufakis decided to take an unusual communication route.  Namely complete insanity and inconsistence.  If everyone is wearing ties, he goes without one.  If everyone submits proposals in writing, he just glosses over some points with a mini lecture.  If everyone is polite, he will act like a spoilt brat.  The worse kind of spoilt brat as his parents (the rest of the cabinet and the prime minister) all support it, no matter how ridiculous his actions.  One day he says A, the next B.  The next he refuses he said either A or B and denies the existence of the alphabet for good measure.  A week down the line he insinuates that use of the alphabet is in fact a Western though trap and the minister of Defence (from the far right nationalist party which shares power now) claims that the alphabet is a Jewish invention to be avoided by true Greeks.  A month down the line he repeats A and says “this is what I have been saying all along”.

    He can go on forever like this apparently.

    The rest of the world however cannot.  Greeks are no longer considered lazy Zorba types.  We are now considered crazy, rude, irreverent, unorganized, spoilt brats.   You no longer pity us for shortcomings of our economy, you hate us.  We look like we know what we are doing and like we are purposely trying to get you to pay the bill for us being lazy.  This is no Zorba, this is the grandson of Zorba, playing Candy Crush on the beach and wanting everyone else to serve him the coffee.

    Of course many Greeks are not like this.  However at least 30 percent voted for this government and more than 30 percent support this crazy approach.  Mr Varoufakis and his crazy gang have pulled back the blinds and uncovered what 40 years of corruption has done to my country.  We are nowhere near the end of our troubles.  This generation will live through poverty like the country hasn’t seen since the time before Zorba.

    In a way, I am grateful.  Rock bottom is a tough place to start but at least it is stable.

  • Yanis Varoufakis is a liar – Greeks are not poor by any measure

    “We know by looking into the eyes of the hungry in the streets of our cities…”  The man is a writer.  A blogger.  A tweeter.  But surely not the material of a finance minister.  Maybe this whole thing is just a scheme on his part so he can sell more books.  Maybe he wants to charge as much as Bill Clinton for speeches as soon as resigns.  (It shouldn’t be too long the way he is behaving so far!)

    No, Greeks are not poor.  By any measure.  This is a complete and blatant lie.   Greeks are fat, lazy and spoilt by politicians like Mr Varoufakis.   It is pretty amazing that an educated economist is not afraid to lie like this.  Does he not know how to measure poverty?  No, Mr Yanis (with one “n” because you are a brand, not a normal person), poverty is not measured by the unemployment rate.  Lazy people might well be unemployed, in a country like Greece where many jobs are “not good enough” for many Greeks anymore.   People working the black economy state themselves as unemployed.  Even businessmen lately I have been talking to, after seeing the tax situation, are declaring themselves unemployed in the hope of a better treatment from the erratic State.  Unemployment is the result of incompetent governments afraid to make much needed changes, not austerity per se.

    And Mr Varoufakis is just making it worse.  His month of antics has cost us dearly.  Not only in capital flight, not only in missed opportunities, not only has he made us the laughing stock of Europe but – worse of all – he has instigated the worse kind of nationalism possible in this situation.  He has made Greeks proud to be the laughing stock of Europe.  With a logic similar to our childish prime minister, cheap tricks and no ties, he has blatantly disregarded all protocol, lazily refused to do the work necessary and cheaply accused the media or other European leaders for his own lack of skills.  This government has known for a long time they would be in Brussels for this negotiation yet it didn’t prepare anything at all.   It got the whole world looking at us ….and deciding that Greeks are indeed lazy and cantankerous, unstable immature children; all about pomp and words, not deeds.

    Germans know very well that Greeks are not poor.  They know that Greeks own their own houses, most also own a country home in those wonderful places others come on to holiday.  Many also own a third or fourth plot of land or house at a village or an apartment they rent out in the center of town.  They know that while they cycle to work or take public transport, Greeks lavishly drive themselves around everywhere.  Greeks don’t buy used things.    Any way you look at our lifestyles they are richer than most other Europeans.   Greeks still spend big time on many retail luxuries which other Europeans have outruled a long time ago.   In fact, Mr Varoufakis would have a pretty hard time as an economist, finding an indicator of “Greek poverty”.  Which is probably why he uses vague statements about “too much austerity”.  Too much for who?  With what end result in mind?   In a country with a disproportionate number of pensioners, does he have the balls to deal with real problems like that or will we sit around wrangling about minimum wage and other publicity stunts?

    We all know what needs to be done. The problem is not the size of the debt.  Even if you wrote it all off tomorrow, Greece is in trouble.  Those “structural changes” everyone goes on about are very far away.  Not because Mr Varoufakis doesn’t know what needs to be done.  Everyone knows what needs to be done.  Everyone outside of Greece that is.  Because most Greeks are still waiting for handouts.  Our huge civil service voted for SYRIZA hoping they would repeat the old PASOK trick of lending money and giving it away.  Like little children, most Greeks think austerity is just a bad dream.  SYRIZA gave them a campaign of “hope” but they might as well called it a campaign of “wild dreams”.

    Well only 1/4 of Greeks voted for SYRIZA.   They claim “democratic mandate” but they don’t have anything of the sort.   There are a lot of us who know that our country needs probably 20-30 years of slow and painful change before the next generation emerges truly globalised and ready for the way the world really works, not expecting handouts from anyone.  It is change which has to happen inside us first and foremost.  No IMF, or Troika, or whatever word for it Mr Varoufaki chooses for foreign help, can change that.

    You are no messiah Mr Varoufaki.  You are a liar.  Enjoy the limelight while you have it.

     

  • A conversation with your average Greek about debt

    -This debt is unsustainable.

    What do you mean?

    -We have to get more loans just to pay the interest!  We will never manage to pay it off!

    So what do you propose?

    -Write all the debt off so we can recover.

    But that would mean other Europeans having to pay for it.

    -Yes, but you are all richer than us.  We have very very high unemployment.

    You do, eh?  Are those unemployed looking for work?

    -Of course they are!

    So why are the cafeterias full of young people paying three times the price of a coffee in other European cities?

    -That’s not typical. There are really poor people in Greece in other areas.

    Oh really?  Can you show me one indicator that supports the idea that Greeks are poor?

    -We don’t need indicators.  People are dying on the streets.

    More than they are dying in other European cities?  This is inaccurate.  You have the least deaths of homeless people or elderly people.  They are living better than others.

    -Because we care!  We have extended families.

    No, because half the population lives with handouts from the Public Sector.  Either pensions you receive much earlier than other Europeans, or civil servant positions which are ridiculous…

    -We work more than other Europeans!

    Well, it must be pretty unproductive work, because your country keeps needing more money.

    -Not our fault.  All our governments are sold out to the Americans and to Europe.  They suck our blood and get richer as we get poor.

    Well, why are you allowing your government to make fools of you in Brussels now, demanding ridiculous things in the most rude way possible?

    -They are heroes!  Someone had to stand up to the bloody Germans!

    Germans have less than 50% home ownership.  Greeks are above 90%.

    -That is simply a different culture.

    Germans share car rides, prefer buying used clothes, have price differentiation in their product lines because they shop around for price.

    -Well that’s just miserable!  We Greeks don’t bother with rubbish like that.

    My point is, Germans and other Europeans try to save their money.  If they don’t have enough money, they go to the movies on a Monday afternoon when it is cheaper, they split their restaurant bills based on what they ate.

    -What an awful idea!  In Greece we don’t scimp like that!  We order plenty food and then fight over who will pay the bill.

    Oh really?

     

     

  • Playing the Eurovillage idiot

    This is not a political statement.  A lot of friends and business associates are calling me these days and I thought I should put together the kind of reassuring statement our government is not.  From a communications point of view the country is in chaos.  Nobody is controlling the agenda and -though improved – Greeks are still passionate political beings.  Social media doesn’t help.

    There are two, equally ridiculous, conflicting conspiracy theories.  One is that SYRIZA is a pawn of Putin.  They are expecting the Russians or the Chinese to bail us out.  The far right is also on their payroll.  It is a plan to ruin Europe.  Funnily enough that is the target of the Americans too!  In the other conspiracy theory, the previous government was ordered to step down by the US and the new one is secretly working with the Americans now….in order to ruin Europe!

    All this would simply be foder for the Facebook village idiot to rant about were it not for the fact that the new government is indeed the perfect tool for anyone wanting to control the Euro.  The unflappable Merkel has overseen six bail outs so far quite successfully.  She is treating us like a patient wise old aunt, waiting until we run out of money before she gets involved.   Greece however is the country in her EuroFamily that produces such extreme stock market reactions.   Greece is the “heart”of Europe, it is a symbol.   It seems to swing out of the spotlight and then back in again.   One crazy statement from Greece (with the appropriate amount of international media attention) and currencies around the world bounce up or down.

    Our politicians don’t help.  The current government is naive, disorganised and bold.   That is a dangerous combination.   Our finance minister, much like our prime minister, seems to show a blatant disregard for most institutions.   This isn’t just about bright shirts or the lack of ties.  The new government is walking an equally erratic line within its borders when attacking the church or taking back promises it made to civil servants.   Alexis Tsipras could say “we will dig a trench and float off into the Mediterranean until we get to Cuba”and nobody would bat an eyelid.  We all know he will change his mind the next day.

    So don’t worry about Greece.  It is best to treat us like the village idiot.  With patience, humour and the persistence we need.   All hopes of a miracle solution, whether inside the country or internationally, are simply confusing matters.  This country needs to work hard for many years to become competitive in the global economy.  There are many of us who understand this, unfortunately none of them make it to government.  In the meantime, Greeks will do what Greeks do best since ancient times:  from Persians to Philip of Macedonia, the first world war or Byzantium, we are always making conspiracy theories about how “foreign powers”are trying to destroy us…

  • Why Google will never post profits like Apple just did

    The Imitation Game was not as good a film as it was made out to be.  Maybe if you know nothing about Turing or the history around it all, or if you enjoy watching whodunnit TV shows.  Some people summarized it as “the story of how a closet gay shortened the war by two years”.  Well that is a terrible summary.  Probably because the film isn’t sure where to focus.  What is much more interesting is that thanks to his invention, the computer, we can quite accurately guess how many gay men in the U.S. are in the closet looking at Google searches.

    In the film, the only part I found interesting (but the film just glossed over in a video clip like quick series of shots with music) was after they broke the Enigma code.  They had to use some of the intelligence, but not so much that the Nazis figured out they were eavesdropping.  If they saved every ship from Uboat attacks, the Germans would know they knew how Enigma worked and change the whole coding system thus rendering it uncrackable again.    They had to calculate the impact of every Nazi move on the war effort and decide where they could pass on vital information to the Allies to make a difference.  Only just enough of a difference though…

    In that sense, Google is much much worse than Hitler and the entire Nazi empire.  They own the global search market.  They know what we want better than us because not only do they have our individual searches, but the technology to evaluate it too.   And how much do they tell us?  They statistically jiggle, hide, mix up, muddle and do everything they can so we can’t reverse engineer what they know.  Which is a lot.   Google knows what we are looking for.  Google knows what we are thinking.  It is the closest to an omniscient being we have ever had.  Even without their impressive number crunching technology, just looking at the raw data of searches in a country or particular region would spark a million new business ideas in the head of even the most ignorant person.

    I am pretty serious when I say that I would willingly cut off a finger in exchange for access to Google big data.  It really would be the closest to playing God I can imagine.  Surely way beyond any previous homo sapiens could even imagine.

    So when Apple posts “record profits” I just smile.    Google could easily make ten times as much.  But then everyone would start asking questions.  When Google chooses certain cities for ultra fast access, how are they choosing?  Should we all be focusing on those cities?  When Google buys a company, what do they know that we don’t?  Exactly like Turing’s team in World War II, Google is carefully giving away only just so much so we can’t reverse engineer what they are up to.

    Unfortunately my finger is still on my hand and I am none the wiser though…

  • Send in the Olympics…and then the IMF!

    (Note: By popular local demand this article has been translated to Greek with various extra links to older articles about the Olympics here.)

    This is not some conspiracy theory.  My question is simple:  What is the effect of turning a huge global spotlight on a country via the Olympics?

    Of course I am thinking of Greece and a recent conversation – for the umpteenth time – about the economic impact.  That isn’t really the point.   Multiple fine economists have studied micro, macro and …malaka economics concerning impact and it is always a pretty grim picture.  But forget all that and please don’t get caught up in whether or not we needed a stadium for baseball.   Or whether they killed all the stray dogs inhumanely or not.

    What did the world see of Greece because of the Olympics?  For a couple of years in the run up all you heard of us was pretty grim horror stories.  How bad our economy is, how terrible the workers unions are, how difficult it is to get anything done, how the prime minister had to do it himself… it just went on and on.  A British newspaper would make fun of us, we spiked our backs in indignation but the story stuck.   Greeks are lazy, just like we thought they were, and completely incapable of getting anything done in time.   British, American and German companies have to fly in at the last minute to get it done.

    The fact that the Athens Olympics “went well” is beside the point from a communication point of view.   Everyone just assumed (quite rightly) that it is a party that always goes well in the end.   Same crowd, same stars, same music.  There haven’t been any “failed” Olympics because it always comes together in the end.  Nothing to do with the Greeks, it is the organizers that get it done.  One way or another.   We just pay the bill.

    So many years of bad news about Greece, then a few weeks of pleasantries.   Then some of you went on holiday here and then the whole circus headed for the next host country.  What was left as an impression?   That Greece is hopeless.   A lost case.   An easy target for any sort of economic speculation…hey, wait a minute, that’s exactly what happened isn’t it?   Greeks think the whole world is against them.   Ancient obsession.   Jews, Germans,Persians, Americans, even aliens have supposedly targeted Greeks as the “chosen” enemy because we are so good!  They are all jealous or something like that.

    Well this is the first time it feels like they are right!   Greece was indeed singled out in a pretty unique way.  Both in terms of policies, in the way other countries ganged up against it (or for it, depends on your conspiracy hat) and the media had a field day.   We complain about German media, but what did we expect?  We have been selling the image of lazy Greeks, on lazy islands, with lazy donkeys, sipping ouzo and taking siestas for so long that it would be rather hard to change now!  

    The Olympics aren’t to blame for the Greek financial crisis.   And conspiracy theorists are wrong:  these things aren’t preplanned by some evil Genius or ten ultra rich people.  But the way the Olympics shone a light on all of our weaknesses helped Greece take the scapegoat position a lot more easily than it would have otherwise.    Selling unusually harsh measures needs a strong story to work on.   And a corrupt and lazy country, incapable of organising the Games is a pretty good start in building a global negative myth to get that sort of story off the ground…

  • Why I think the “Elgin” marbles should stay in London

    I am often accused of taking “extreme” positions just for the heck of it.  Well, sorry, this isn’t one of those cases.  I truly believe that Greece is better off if the parts of the Parthenon frieze stay where they are.  Here are my arguments, numbered for reference.  If you have a counter argument, give me the number and some logic, fact or new information.

    1. The frieze was never “stolen” from Greece.  It was taken from Turkish lands.   Get a grip on international law please.  They had been Turkish for 400 years and before that a rather insignificant corner of the Roman empire for one and a half thousand years.  The Byzantines had already destroyed thousands of ancient Greek monuments for political reasons and through religious hatred, the Turks had let them fall to ruin through laziness or for profit of the local overlord.  That famous rock in Athens they were taken from had not been “Greek” for thousands of years when Elgin took them; it had been Athenian almost 2000 years earlier.   You have to have a pretty twisted view of history to find a direct legal line of “Greekiness” from the time the Romans conquered to 1800 when the marbles were taken.   In fact you can easily claim that the three empires after ancient Athens were in charge of the area for longer than the ancient Athenians!  (Which kind of “ancient Athenians” would you pick?)

    2. Elgin saved the marbles.  Imagine where they would be if he had sold them to Napoleon?  (Napoleon offered more money that then British museum for starters!)  The Turks were in no way kind to antiquities and neither was the bunch of shepherds that lived around Athens in 1800.   We have no way of knowing whether they would have survived the war for Freedom from the Turks in the 1820s or even the German occupation in WWII.  London was one of the few places in the world to remain Nazi free at the same time as the Swastika ruled the Acropolis and many works of art completely disappeared forever from the world via Nazis which we never found somewhere in South America.

    3. The new museum under the Acropolis is indeed a wonder and worthy of housing the frieze if it was to be returned.  Does anyone remember how many decades of bickering it took to build?  And the people demanding the return of the Elgin marbles were equally vociferous even before the museum!  In a city which is often completely disfunctional and horrible for tourists, where the center of town is closed for demonstrations, where you can smell the roses less often than tear gas, where the wonderful metro station near the new museum is often closed due to protests or strikes… now we think we can suddenly demand the marbles back?   Let’s just remember that for the past 200 years they have been permanently accessible to the world thanks to Elgin.  If they were returned they would simply go from one museum to another.  There is no scientific or practical way they would be reattached to the famous monument anyway.  (Nobody would be able to see them up there, they wouldn’t really fit and would probably look odd to us nowadays after all these years we have been seeing the Parthenon without them anyway.)

    4. What tourists?  Millions of people visit the British museum annually.  1 in 4 tourists to London, that international hub, the place where Americans, Japanese and Chinese go first and foremost when they “do” Europe.   If the Greek government were to choose the absolute best place to advertise Greek tourism, a place to plant the idea “hey, make your next trip to Europe include Greece please” it would probably be the Ground Floor of the British museum!  Or, to put it another way, if the frieze left London, visitor numbers would be unaffected there but people visiting Greece would decrease.  The Parthenon’s status as an important cultural site would be diminished.   The copies in the new museum work fine to tell the story, what would Greece gain if the originals took their place?   It is not as if thousands of people would think “great!  Let’s visit Athens this year to see the marbles where they belong at last!”

    5. Leave the “Elgin” marbles as a lost cause.  It is good promotion for all involved.   It wouldn’t even be a big deal without the fuss.  Hey, let’s start a “get Venus of Milos back from the Louvre” motion while we are at it too!  Get some of the French tourists thinking more about coming to Greece next time, why not?

    6. Most of all I am ashamed of the way my compatriots whine and complain about this issue.  How they consider it their God given (which God?  Is that Zeus or the other one?) right to selectively claim anything “Greek” as and when they wish.   How they put Greece in a political corner of “spoilt brats” who act like there is no such thing as international law.  They make up excuses, imagine “facts” and twist everything at will and whim.  At a time when internationally museums are more proactively seeking exchanges and new ways to become financially viable and pertinent to society, Greek museums are as dead, inactive and bureaucratic as ever.  Greek Universities more useless than ever, especially in things related to antiquity, at the same time as British museums remain a hub of activity, innovation and collaboration.   Denying all this takes audacity and selective perception at a scale which clearly emphasizes the immaturity of this country and its citizens.  We are digging ourselves into a hole much like on the “Macedonia” issue, simply proving that in the few years since we became a unified “Greek” country for the first time (two centuries ago, just after Elgin left really) we have little understanding of what it takes to make a functional country-state.

    Well we are not all like that.  So comment away about how I am not patriotic enough, how I am working against our “national interests” or whatever else you want.  But if you can’t find a decent counter argument, you have just proven my case.  Greece needs to work much much harder for much longer to prove itself internationally.  Just like two years of austerity doesn’t suddenly make us a paradigm of economic health, a few years of a fancy new museum doesn’t prove we deserve the world to suddenly give us whatever pieces of ancient art we selectively take fancy to.

  • I wish the Economist ran the world

    It dawned on me some time ago that I know exactly what sort of political system I agree with.  It doesn’t have a name, it doesn’t end in “ism” and as far as I know there is no perfect example.   Other than a magazine.   A very old magazine, with a very British sense of humour.

    I love the Economist.  Can’t get enough of it.  It is inspiration, explanation and exploration all rolled into one weekly fix for me.  But more than that it is pretty close to who I would love to have as government.  Here are a few of the reasons:

    1. They always remind us of their mistakes.  “As this newspaper falsely wrote then…” features in almost every issue.  Clearly and openly.   They are not perfect but they try.

    2. They take a clear position.  No sitting on the fence.  It is partly why they need to own up to mistakes.  Even in thorny, complex issues, the ones other publications (and politicians!) end with a vague “this is a tricky one….” the Economist will come up with whatever is possible as a practical proposal to move ahead.

    3. They have the know – how.  Or they find it, borrow it, steal it.  End result is that they will be able to come up with that practical proposal no matter what.  And it is so practical it makes you want to get up and do the business yourself.

    4. Stakeholders out in the open.  “This newspaper is partly owned by” someone we are writing about now.  Or “this topic is related to part of our business”.  Sure, I have caught them out doing a publimercial without it being clear, but it is rare and so finely done that only a pro in the field of sneaky beaky marketing like me would even get a whiff of it.

    5. They have a heart.   It is way too easy a generalisation to call them “liberals” or “big money ideology”.  Because (point No2 above) they always take a practical and public position in writing, they are very far away from any sort of unethical Scrooge position most of the time.  Being harsh to people is not good for anyone in the long term and the Economist…

    6. …is as long term as you get!  They have been around longer than most political parties and because (point No1 above) they are always checking themselves for mistakes, they improve all the time.  The adapt to the changes in the world, adding sections, removing others, asking for our help.

    7.  First and foremost you have to admire the persistence in seeking new communication paradigms.  I am not talking about technology, I am talking content.  From obituaries to special reports they boldly go where other publications (and politicians) don’t dare.

     

    So take any measure you want for good government:  accountability, transparency, responsiveness, effectiveness, strategic vision… the Economist scores tops on all of them as far as I am concerned.  Now, how to get them to form a government…