A weakness of the smartvote service is that often established politicians ignore it and don't provide their profile. However I will still use it as a tool to help me create my list for the next elections.

In 2006 there was a report http://www.infoshop.org/inews/articl...60411164519744 to say that Swiss prisons were overcrowded. If the situation is not improved the politicnians might bring up this old idea of building Swiss prisons abroad. http://www.iht.com/articles/1994/01/20/topics_7.php

None of us are immune to false imprisonment, unless perhaps we have the money for a very good lawyer. The legal system is not infallible. I think that if Switzerland alienates foreigners in its midst, it does so to its own detriment.

Did anyone notice that on the SVP infomercial everyone was white? No gays, no token blacks even? Was there a more representative picture of Swiss life as a whole in the infomercial-where I blinked and missed seeing it? Certainly looks like Cuckoo land to me, not the local neighborhoods I lived in.

The article from the Herald Tribune is 13 years old. There is now an international agreement in place between many countries whereby long term prisoners can be returned to their home country to server their sentence.

Anarhizam- deportation prison in Basel/Swiss

I typed in deportation prison switzerland and came up with this above. It is a peice written by a man awating deportation in a Swiss prison. It is from an anarchist site and of course it's validity can not be conformed. If true it points to a distinct difference in prison conditions for illegal immigrants. Another report from the Swiss National Science Foundation http://www.nfp51.ch/e_module.cfm?Pro...details&get=32 highlights the need for more research into these 'closed prisons'.

Shortly before we left Switzerland my husband turned up at our local office to pay our taxes before we left. The taxman (no longer there thank goodness) said that he was going to call the alien police and have him arrested. He didn't 'get' that he was a Swiss trying to pay his taxes before I popped my white face round the door. When others in the village heard what happened they laughed at the taxman.

Aside from this, if there is an international agreement on repatriation of long term prisoners how does Abu Ghraib it into this? Are political prisoners a different case?

I don't know what countries are part of this agreement but in 2 years all prisoners within the EU will automatically be deported to their home country to serve their term. In the case of Poland it will be 5 years as they have to prepare for a large transfer of prisoners.

There are plent of people in Switzerland who can effectively manage the problems of integration or security measures. I think that the main whistle-blower on US secret prisons abroad was a Swiss guy. The SVP should take their security creation inititive advice from the likes of those working at the Swiss Embassy in Tehran which provides a bastion of hope in maintaining diplomatic realtions with the ME.

Interestingly enough, I was discussing all of this with a journalist I know from The Bund newspaper over a coffee yesterday.
The take at The Bund is that this campaign is going to backfire big time against the SVP, especially within the sub-25 group of Swiss nationals, as the older more die hard stammtiche types are slowly dying (literally) out.

heres hoping ....

this might interest foreign engineers and scientists scroll to page 29 of the 2007 report from the Swiss-American chamber of
http://www.amcham.ch/news/m_foreign_..._study2007.htm

commerce.http://www.amcham.ch/news/content/amchambook07_e.pdf

It's on advice from the gods at the Boston Consulting Group. It recommends a fast tracking of Top foreign scientists. Hopefully this will not creata two-tier system of high road for specialists and low road for huminatarian cases. However the reprt also recommends that there be impoved liason with foreign universities and better standards of education in Switzerland.

How did you come to this conclusion ? was no one wearing a pink shirt and prancing around with a handbag ?

Prejudiced much ?

Thanks GVA offline you're right, the image that sticks in my mind are of white Swiss couples, sitting on the sofa together at home. I didn't see any gay couples and no-one who seemed to be of another culture. However I will rewatch and see if I missed something. Unless of course they are gay and married- and yes that's always a possibility. Actually I'm not sure where the SVP stands on gays and that being a presumption on my part is a prejudice. So thanks once again for pointing it out. I'm off to find out what the SVP standpoint is on homosexuals. I'm sorry if I offended anyone. I think that the Swiss Embassy website actually has guidelines for registering couples.

I reviewed the video. No couples of the same sex presented together suggesting that they are a couple, except perhaps the guys doing the traditional wrestling.


I saw several references on the web concerning SVP and homosexuals, basically one read Oskar Freysinger and Heiner Studer fight against homosexuality. Their views were echoed in other stuff that I came up with. I didn't read it too much- found it distasteful. As far as I can gather the SVP were against the initiative for tax relief for same sex couples, so I think that it may have been a deliberate effort that they would avoid portraying any such couples in their campaign ads. None sitting together on a sofa at home. If anyone knows of any SVP ads advocating the rights of homosexuals I would like to know. Of course I am not saying that they may have inadvertently have filmed a homosexual, they had film of lots of people getting on trains, they probably didn't vet each one to ensure heterosexual tendencies. (That's not to say that I don't think that they deliberately vetted the film for exclusions of darker complexions during the heaven scenes).

However I concede that I have incorrectly assumed before that a straight man was gay and vice versa, sometimes it's impossible for me to tell unless it is divulged. I suppose that's your point, we can't make assumptions on appearances, but given what I know of the SVP I don't think that the couple on the sofa are meant to portray homosexuals. Of course they could be unwitting actors just like the youths who unaware of what the video was to be used for- but that's getting way too complicated!

Mate, it's twats like you that are part of the problem. So your gramps told you stuff and it must thus be true.

Your facts are waaayyy off, here are some FACTS..... Nigeria gained independence 1960 (British colony), Kenya 1964, Morroco 1956 etc. De-colonisation did not happen, countries fought for and won independence from colonists that should never have been there in the first place.

What you miss is how a society would have evolved in the absence of colonial rulers who left a power vacuum when they left.

I sort of agree with the point made, but there's no need to chuck in personal insults is there... if anything it just detracts from what was otherwise a reasonably valid (if one-sided) comment.

My family got out around 1960, I was the first in my family born back in England. Has Africa really decolonized?

Doesn't really matter what the SVP's stance on homosexuality is. Switzerland is the only European country that the right to gay marriage was approved by the people, not a decision made by the government as in say, Belgium.

Yep like I said before there is even info on the embassy websites informing couples of their rights.

I have photos of the massive houses that my family lived in with bars on the windows, I was told that they were to prevent Mau Mau attacks.
I think that Mau Maus got rid of the British in E. Africa, my mother was petrified of them, so she was ready to go home.

http://www.africaspeaks.com/kenya/20082006.html

Thanks VS. Yes, Swiss Review is very good.
Smartvote is good, but I agree with Nathu, it's a shame that many current MPs exclude themselves.
Surprisingly enough, all the SVP candidates came last when I tried it so I would say it works .

Back to the sheep posters. Defacement has certainly taken off, best I saw was at Zurich HBf with "Wolf" written on the white kicking sheep. Wolf in sheeps clothing, nice.

Oerlikon Bhf has simply had parts of the sheep and Blocher posters torn off. An SVP supporter has responded by sticking homemade A4 printouts on the defaced posters, basically saying "Thank you, (cliche African first name) & (cliche African first name) for defacing the poster......". Target market of the sheep posters has been reached well and truly

The sheep posters seem to be disappearing now, the ones in Baden all seem to have been replaced by posters saying "strengthen Blocher, vote SVP".

Personally I think a stronger Blocher is the stuff of nightmares.