Belgium soon to be World Record Holder as Country Operating without a Governement

[:1]Linky to English source:

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-...16-712860.html



Having already shattered the European record set by the Netherlands in 1977 (in your face Dutchies!), tomorrow we will be breaking the record held by Iraq as the country that took the longest to form a governement. Without shooting or blowing up anyone (so far).

From the looks of things, we'll also be setting the bar quite a bit higher for countries trying to take it away again.

For now, let's disregard the facts that the current elections could technically be classsified as illegal and we haven't actually had a decent governement since 2007, with Interim Governements, Governements falling over secretaries influencing judges (and in fact where the Flemish, as the majority of the country, had a minority representation in), so basically a Political Crisis for the past 4 years as a result of ~20 years of ignoring the problem.|||I guess congratulations are in order!

Your neighbour, Luxembourg.



Seriously though, I hope you will get it sorted out as soon as possible. Surely it must be rather frustrating living like that, no?|||Now I understand that statement that was in our newspaper the other day. It was about the quality of the roads in Belgium. And the person interviewed said he wished their roads were in the same condition as ours... And we always complain about the bad state of our roads!|||Quote:








Now I understand that statement that was in our newspaper the other day. It was about the quality of the roads in Belgium. And the person interviewed said he wished their roads were in the same condition as ours... And we always complain about the bad state of our roads!




I know exactly what you mean. Whenever we drive across the border to belgium (and france, too), we notice the difference in roads immediatly. :P|||While I'd like to congratulate Belgium on this momentous occasion, I'll also point out that I hope that the land of fries do not fall apart into its constituent halves just yet. Imagine if you can keep this rolling for another couple of years, no one would be able to steal the world record from you then! |||Quote:








Seriously though, I hope you will get it sorted out as soon as possible. Surely it must be rather frustrating living like that, no?




Today in Ghent (and various other cities), we'll be having a big party, with parades, stand-up comedians and street theater. They also tried contacting the Iraqi embassy to see if they could get a delegation to receive a "World Cup" from.

I'd say we're still taking it pretty well. Or we're in Bizarro World. It's also aptly named the Fries Revolution.

The absurd thing is, despite not having a new governement, our economy is doing pretty good and our country's expenses are dropping, since the current acting governement isn't allowed to spend large amounts of money.

The most frustrating (or rather absurd) part is that either they follow the plans of the Flemish nationalist party in terms of cutting costs or we don't and follow the plans of the Walloon Socialists and go the way of Greece and Spain, in which case we get directions from the IMF which are worse than the first scenario. The whole deadlock is basically caused by the obvious reasons, money and power, and the reluctancy of some to either let go of it.|||Quote:








The absurd thing is, despite not having a new governement, our economy is doing pretty good and our country's expenses are dropping, since the current acting governement isn't allowed to spend large amounts of money.




Think long and hard about your use of the word, "despite"...|||That's funny, J, because it's true.|||Quote:








That's funny, J, because it's true.




I live to serve...|||Anyone can give me the Cole's notes tl;dr version of recent Belgium politics?

(yeah, too lazy to follow links)