A friend said: we should start taking into account the new ideas that are being generated around us – about how we think, behave and what we should aim for as a society.

I mentioned how the government and other organizations have repeatedly commissioned studies regarding where, how and what we could create new initiatives – innovate, that’s the rather vague verb used to denote this type of activity.

Yes, he said, but very often the result of reports that are filed on this basis do sound like rehashes, and carry over under one form or another, ideas that have been mooted since whenever.

So I asked him what he would suggest. His reply: we need to listen to what the younger generations are focusing on in the sectors that they’re interested in; not all they say is going to be splendid, indeed expect that many of their initiatives will be plain ridiculous. However then you’ll also get other proposals that could open up new horizons. Similarly we need to track from close up what the new generations are coming up with in the rest of Europe. The social media make such an approach possible.

I am reporting what was said without commenting in any way.

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National security

I always considered with scepticism the establishment of a secret service corps. In a small country like ours, the multiplication of organizations charged with this or that aspect of national security, seems to me a complication that we can do without. Beefing up with human and material resources a special security branch within the police corps would have served our purposes better.

Today you get told that after fifteen years during which the stature of the police corps has continued to decline, such a solution would have been a mistake. This fails to convince me.

To the contrary, the political polarisation that still grips our society, and indeed grows among us, has become one of the greatest destabilizers of our national security. It keeps this delicate and important sector dangling in the middle of partisan storms, so that as a small and distinct organization it can only become less and less reliable.

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Referendum

The report published this month by the UK’s Electoral Reform Society about the Brexit referendum makes worthwhile reading. Entitled “It’s Good to Talk – Doing Referendums differently after the EU vote”, the report analyses what was well and badly done during the referendum from the perspective of whether and how citizens could arrive at an informed decision about Brexit.

The conclusion is that on offer by both sides, there was little information, clearly and correctly stated regarding the consequences of a decision, one way or the other. Moreover, too few people really understood what they were being asked to decide about – such as for instance, regarding the exact functions of the EU – and in what way, membership of the Union restricted the UK government’s freedom of action.

The report presents a number of well taken recommendations to improve the organization of future referenda. Admirable as they are, they confirm the reservations one could have about the holding of referenda. In a parliamentary democracy, these either serve to lay down decisions that have been set beforehand in an authoritarian manner by the powers that be, or they give rise to wide ranging incoherences.