What do you think about Belgium's new "world record"?

Well, hey. If it works for them then I’m all for it.
I don’t think we could last half of that time.

It just goes to show how much politics affects day-to-day life: not at all.

@troubleinharlem sadly these days I don’t think we could last half of that time…

Cool!

I like it.

And to think that people still believe that the Belgian waffle doesn’t actually come from Belgium.

The USA might well benefit from such an experience!

If you all know about Belgian history, you’ll know that there has always been ‘two Belgiums’, the North and the South. Roughly divided into the French speaking and the Flemish and dialects there-of. (oh.. that’s kind of explained in the article…)

They still have a ‘caretaker’ government and they are a part of the EU, so they are defended in that way. I think it reflects this small country’s quirkiness, not only their ‘lack of government’ currently, but also their population’s response to it. It’s almost charming.

Another example for politicians ignoring the root causes for economic crises such as the current one caused by the financial crisis in 2007/2008. Is so much easier to say, oh, it’s the fault of the euro, or, oh, we the great Flemish people have to pay too much to the French-speaking Walloons. Sometimes, it’s the immigrants, sometimes it’s jobs going to Asia, sometimes it’s whatever people can easily understand.

To me what’s going on in Belgium is rather ridiculous with too many narrow-minded local world views floating around. Perhaps it has also to do with the fear of globalization.

In Germany there’s also a very small movement demanding independence for Bavaria. The same seems to be the case in the US.

@mattbrowne

No, I don’t think there is any kind of advocacy for Bavarian independence in the USA, or if there is they are pretty quiet about it…

But seriously, you’re right that there is far too much nit-picking on “local” and “understandable” issues – even if they are totally irrelevant to people’s lives (and only peripherally related to the issues that people care about) – and far too much provincialism everywhere. In the US, one of the problems that we have is local congressional representatives who seem to satisfy an immediate constituency, yet drive us deeper and deeper into debt – and denial – over trivialities. Nearly everywhere you go in the US you’ll find either grudging acceptance or positive enthusiasm for “our guy in Congress”, yet the institution itself is rated lower on a “trust” scale than used car salesmen. So much of their focus is on “bringing federal money to Connecticut” (or Texas, California, or wherever) that they seem to forget or ignore that the “federal money” is just “money from other taxpayers”.

Too many zero-sum games (and players).

I have no idea what a Jellie is, but it looks like a record we should all strive to break! I could sure go for 256+ days without some politician trying to force me to do what he thinks is better for me. This is actually another good reason to privatize what is able to be privatized, like the school system, road maintenance, park systems, package delivery, and a zillion (give or take) other things that the government really shouldn’t be in.

“I have no idea what a Jellie is” we are all jellies here in the mighty fluther :)