That’s poles apart from:

.
Which, frankly, sounds so pretentious and trite my toes are curling.


I thought it was ‘most locals’ rather than ‘most of my friends’. Devil’s in the detail.

Actually it's a right. According to Wiki, EU citizenship grants (among other things) the right to vote and be elected on the municipal level, without waiting time, in whichever EU municipality you may have decided to settle.
Actually MC said "most locals I know". Indeed the devil's in the detail.
Are you sure it's not you who got triggered?

Studies in political science, which look at participation in democratic decisions over a certain time period (usually one legislation period) showed that ca. 20% of voters from St. Gallen (which is fairly average in terms of voter turnout in CH) never use their voting rights, while 25% participate in all votes and around 55% only in selected votes. Hence, I would say that it is not as easy as to look at the turnout for one single election and to conclude that a majority of people are not interested in politics.

Also, several factors will increase the likelihood to be an "always voter"/frequent voter (aged between 61-75, male, living for 10+ years in the same area, born in CH and married). So, depending on the demographics of the people one looks at voting participation will vary and influence the perception of political participation/interest.

Yes, and this will push lots of people to get the Swiss citizenship for the wrong reasons. Voting for things that are not always in the locals' interest can also happen when you're a citizen, in fact I would argue it can happen even more.

Anyway, I personally don't agree with the "guests" thing. "Grateful" - in the larger sense, yes - hopefully. We might be grateful for lots of things, including that one that made it possible to be here in the first place (maybe the education system from back home? how fast we forget ...) but "guests" after all these years? No, I personally don't feel like one. Btw, I'm not interested in voting for the moment, this discussion is purely philosophical. I don't know what to believe about SVP but their tone and the assumptions they start from are definitely tiresome.

Yes I know. The point I was attempting to make was that many of those countries allow ALL foreigners to vote. Not just EU. Nobody had appeared to looked at the link, though, at that stage.

(Sigh) Yes, perhaps she did but, again, the point was amogles was assuming she had said ’her friends’ and was using that as some kind of reasoning to argue about the company that marton keeps (weird, I know).

I’m not a ‘triggered’ kind of person more ‘mildly amused’

I read it, only about 5 countries (mainly nordic) allow non-EU to vote at all, the rest are EU only.

That is a few, not 'many'.

Tom

Whether those amazing places let new people vote or not (they will soon curb this "right" anyways, give them 10 years) or not isn't really that important after all, honestly. Whether we are moving to live there right at this point is important. And we are not, are we, nor likely to be any time soon.

To be allowed to vote while not going through the process of showing that this place matters is indeed a privilege. It a priori integrates newcomers. Hence a gesture of good will that we'd not see many other places.

To be granted privileges without earning them, does imho call for appreciation. And yet you still have new settlers who insist on entitlement and prefer to call themselves "not guests" yet not doing the legwork. Not up to them what they are going to be perceived like by the local community, is it. Guests.

The question I get asked here isn't "have you tied your recycling correctly" but "are you going to vote...because we are offering this opportunity". And they are absolutely right. Plus they take care of an inventory of political choices for us that is now unseen elsewhere, due to the PC bs. You can't even have a decent debate in other countries these days since people will shame you or bully you for your political views. It happens here on EF too. Trying to preserve this inventory, a choice of political views here is an uphill battle and an unpleasant one, too. SVP might be popular because it reminds people that in CH you can have a party that rubs in all the taboos that others tiptoe around and pretend that they don't exist. Despite not knowing anyone who'd really support them, so it is a wild guess on my part.

Being able to exist here in CH comes with homework and I am not really talking about vaccuming the sidewalk in front of our building. Nor do I see this homework because I am a teacher, lol. Learning a language is only a start of personal responsibility, etc.

__________________
"L'homme ne peut pas remplacer son coeur avec sa tete, ni sa tete avec ses mains." J.H. Pestalozzi

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is a matter of depth.” S.P. Cadman

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." A. Einstein

Is this the reason why you keep aggressively neg repping me behind the scene?

How presumptuous of you to think people didn't earn their privileges. Or is just you that earned them?

Whatever you do here, please, stop.

"Keep" neg repping you suggests it happens regularly. It's happened once and it was deserved. Are you somehow immune to positive and negative rep?

Anyway, I think the question in this thread "Why is the SVP popular?" has answered itself. There is a significant wodge of people who prefer to invent scenarios and present them as fact as a sort of confirmation bias to their own views. "The local people in my village think xyz..." or "The other European countries don't allow non-EU residents to vote". Facts don't matter, feelings and comforting anecdotes seem to trump all sense and reason.

That is the reason the SVP is popular. They cash in on it.

Don't worry. Another friendly mod will be along shortly to "rectify" her rep like last time.

It is definitely less popular among my Swiss acquaintances where people don't label other people the way MC assumes they do.

In fact, people seem to appreciate our (foreigners') contribution - in taxes and otherwise, yes, they exercise gratitude too. Funny how some think it should be only unilateral, I guess they have a reason for that.

Since we’re being pedantic in this thread

“Most locals I know” is not the same thing as friends.
You can know somebody without being friends with them.


As you say the devil’s in the detail.


Whinging about rep comments ? Isn’t that a bit childish?

I'm sorry, are you intimating that some of us are more equal than others? Colour me shocked. My gaster flabbered.

What are you trying to say here? All I got was vacuuming.

Deep breath.

Well, once upon a time, there was a moderator called Jrspet.

Jrspet was very concerned about the possibility of all the wealth of information stored on EF disappearing into the void should there be a meteorite strike or Soviet missile attack or something, so he saved it all. All of it. Even stuff we mortals can't see.

Jrspet also looked out for his chums, and once decided that MC had a couple of hundred fewer rep points than she clearly deserved, so he fixed that too.

He was a fine moderator, was Jrspet. Not as fine as Ace1, but who could be?

Fine, fine people.

Ah, I remember those days. Are we back to those days again..?

Jrspet was a creep. He got up to all sorts, spying on everyone. I guess he must've read private rep comments and banned folks too.

Maybe a slap upside the head would have helped?

Oh I remember that, it caused quite a commotion at the time.

I didn’t know about the rep points, though. That really is an abuse of power.