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Pirate Party Leader to Be Prague mayor

praguemonitor.com

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Re: Pirate Party Leader to Be Prague mayor

#91

Post by sannee »

yazr wrote: post #88
brentjanderson wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prague and Brno would be the two options I'd consider seriously. Prague definitely has a larger English-speaking population, but Brno is not far behind and is generally cheaper. Prague is exceptionally beautiful, however, and so if you are only going for a few months it might be worth the cost (although travel from Brno to Prague is not terrible on the freeway). It's worth learning as much Czech as you are able to, b…

Thanks everyone for the feedback here. Staying close to the airport is probably the top priority ;) Is Prague safe for a quiet+european+foreign+laptop-carrying male? Or should i stick to the tourist areas?

Czechia is in general one of the safest european countries [1]. I am quiet european laptop carrying male (-foreign) and have ocassionally walked through deserted industrial areas/streets of Prague well after midnight and never felt significantly threatened.

Rowdy and drunk groups of tourists are the most unsettling thing that I occasionally encounter, so maybe it's better to avoid tourists areas instead?

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index#Global_Peac...

Re: Pirate Party Leader to Be Prague mayor

#92

Post by TomMarius »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #81
deusex_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a joke going on that the Pirate Party is the IT department of the communist party. In general the trouble with Pirates is unpredictability. They are very socially liberal, but economically and geopolitically they attract a wide mix of opinions. The have a higher incidence of conspiration theorist, they have a strong anti-US base, and in general they avoid to address these topics since it cannot pass the inter…

> There's a joke going on that the Pirate Party is the IT department of the communist party. Yes, because in Eastern Europe, if you're even slightly left, or don't agree with U.S. on everything, you must be a communist. Apparently from one block to the other. As someone from that part of the world, I generally find it annoying that people automatically assume left == communist because of the Soviet past. As a result,…

Social security is one thing, but the Czech Pirate Party doesn't want just that. Actually social security is not even on their current program, they have different leftist ideas they try to implement like governmental control of shared economy, housing, ...

So to answer your point, how do you start a business while being mortified whether you're breaking some law and whether what you're doing is even allowed at all, and whether you'll become unable to pay all the taxes and afford all the compliance required, and whether your business will become illegal next year (happened to many people here already, it's absolutely not an irrelevant fear - actually Airbnb is the livelihood of many people in Prague and the Pirate party essentially wants to destroy or at least very significantly impact their businesses)?

That's why we have the joke. Not because everything left is automatically bad - ČSSD was the leading party for many years as well as KDU-ČSL. There is no party that stands for the Nordic model.

And people don't like the USA here, btw.

However...

> (Failing to realize that what you really dislike is authoritarianism, which these all share.)

... completely agreed on that.

Re: Pirate Party Leader to Be Prague mayor

#93

Post by AsyncAwait »

TomMarius wrote: post #92
AsyncAwait wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a joke going on that the Pirate Party is the IT department of the communist party. Yes, because in Eastern Europe, if you're even slightly left, or don't agree with U.S. on everything, you must be a communist. Apparently from one block to the other. As someone from that part of the world, I generally find it annoying that people automatically assume left == communist because of the Soviet past. As a result,…

Social security is one thing, but the Czech Pirate Party doesn't want just that. Actually social security is not even on their current program, they have different leftist ideas they try to implement like governmental control of shared economy, housing, ... So to answer your point, how do you start a business while being mortified whether you're breaking some law and whether what you're doing is even allowed at all,…

ČSSD as well as KDU-ČSL are very much centre/-right parties, which is what I meant by neoliberal. They're not left, they're part of the problem. This is like the Democrats in the U.S. They don't actually represent the left, they got co-opted by the same interests as the Rebuplicans + they don't hate gays, (great, but a low bar).

So in essence these sorts of parties are no different than the right ones, they stand for incrementalism+cronyism and because incrementalism doesn't work for many people they turn to the right as a result.

If you think to Bernie Sanders vs Hillary Clinton, parties like ČSSD and KDU-ČSL represent the Hillary type, but what you really need on the left is the Bernie, or even better, Jeremy Corbyn type of person/party.

I agree that corrupt bureaucracy is a problem, but breaking barriers to entry for small/medium businesses is on top of the left-wing agenda in parts of the world where real left actually is, that's why when you think of European startups, you think Scandinavia.

> There is no party that stands for the Nordic model.

That's because the Nordic model is a nuanced one and from my experience you get shouted at as if you're a communist if you ever mention it in Eastern Europe, mostly because people don't understand it, but it's hard to even make your case without getting attacked.

Re: Pirate Party Leader to Be Prague mayor

#94

Post by Scea91 »

drb91 wrote: post #46
Scea91 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greens do not hold any political function AFAIK (edit: they still have a few senators). In the past few elections they usually gained only around 3 % of votes. Our 'proper' left parties that have some power are those old-school leftist parties that are pro-Russian. The irony is that they are usually quite fond of Trump.

Discourse is a political function. And I sincerely wish our Green Party had ever gotten 3%. I’m not sure what you consider left but I’d hazard a guess we disagree based on your comment.

You do not consider Communist party to be left?

Re: Pirate Party Leader to Be Prague mayor

#95

Post by slim »

jaxtellerSoA wrote: post #87
emteycz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm Czech living in Prague. Last 4 years the Prague local government was led by ANO, the party led by StB (communist secret police) member billionaire Andrej Babis. Their campaign was extremely strong then and they won - today Prague is in horrendous state, bridges are literally falling down (2 more just this week), traffic is worse (extremely worse!) than ever due to idiotically planned long roadworks that have…

> If you don't want to vote ANO then you vote ODS if you're more on the right (as in free market) and the Pirate party if you're more on the left. Can you explain more what the platform of the "Pirate" party is? As an American I would have thought the the "Pirate" party would be far right libertarian (free market, downsize government, reduce or eliminate taxes).

Pirates are different un each country. Because pirates are free

Re: Pirate Party Leader to Be Prague mayor

#96

Post by slim »

analog31 wrote: post #34
rebolek wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Czech here. We will see. He's totally unknown, without any experience in politics. But after the previous disastrous mayor, it's pretty hard to be worse.

Is there any relationship to the Pirate party in Iceland?

Yes all pirate parties are connected. There's even a gouvernance body https://pp-international.net

Re: Pirate Party Leader to Be Prague mayor

#97

Post by lozaning »

slim wrote: post #95
jaxtellerSoA wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't want to vote ANO then you vote ODS if you're more on the right (as in free market) and the Pirate party if you're more on the left. Can you explain more what the platform of the "Pirate" party is? As an American I would have thought the the "Pirate" party would be far right libertarian (free market, downsize government, reduce or eliminate taxes).

Pirates are different un each country. Because pirates are free

The code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.

Re: Pirate Party Leader to Be Prague mayor

#98

Post by _Tev »

jaxtellerSoA wrote: post #87
emteycz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm Czech living in Prague. Last 4 years the Prague local government was led by ANO, the party led by StB (communist secret police) member billionaire Andrej Babis. Their campaign was extremely strong then and they won - today Prague is in horrendous state, bridges are literally falling down (2 more just this week), traffic is worse (extremely worse!) than ever due to idiotically planned long roadworks that have…

> If you don't want to vote ANO then you vote ODS if you're more on the right (as in free market) and the Pirate party if you're more on the left. Can you explain more what the platform of the "Pirate" party is? As an American I would have thought the the "Pirate" party would be far right libertarian (free market, downsize government, reduce or eliminate taxes).

They're right in the center of the Cz political scene.

The context is that we have very big gov't with lot of benefits, and (kind of, it's complicated) high taxes.

In such situation left has nowhere else to go (defending status quo is not very popular), so it's full of (often stupid) populists.

"Intellectual" elite is heavily leaning right, to the point of being anti-populist (they are regularly sacrificing votes just to virtue signal).

Pirates seem like a non-bullshit party that tries to stray from both extremes. They had some PR fails (they sometimes seem amateurish), but mostly seem to be really good alternative for people wanting to limit the gov't but not cut it to little pieces.

Re: Pirate Party Leader to Be Prague mayor

#99

Post by petre »

foobarian wrote: post #45
saiya-jin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically the problem of whole east europe (although we like to call ourselves central europe) - too much crap left over communist rule and twisted mentality (ie everybody for themselves, screw the rest). Extremely rich individuals openly influencing politics, laughing at the cameras and enjoying being in spotlight. Prague is a beautiful city to visit, be it for a weekend or a week. But living there long term sucks -…

> Czech love to constantly complain and moan about almost everything Funny, so do all ex-Yugoslavs, and I understand Russians do too. Could be some kind of Slav thing. Or communist :-)

Post-communist rather. Romanians also complain a lot, the grass is always greener in the neighbour's lot, if they do associate they'll most likely screw it up as every person pulls in a different direction (for themselves).

It's quite saddening to read CZ has similar issues. We've been in CZ in 2007 and Prague in 2017. I liked Prague a lot in 2007, not so much after ten years.

Re: Pirate Party Leader to Be Prague mayor

#100

Post by snidane »

emteycz wrote: post #4
jxub wrote: post #2

Any Czech person around to chim in and shed some light on the implications?

Yes, I'm Czech living in Prague. Last 4 years the Prague local government was led by ANO, the party led by StB (communist secret police) member billionaire Andrej Babis. Their campaign was extremely strong then and they won - today Prague is in horrendous state, bridges are literally falling down (2 more just this week), traffic is worse (extremely worse!) than ever due to idiotically planned long roadworks that have…

Your disdain for Krnacova [ANO] is palpable. Typical for Praguer, similar to disdain for Trump in major liberal US cities.

You make them look like they actively go around destroying bridges. One footwalk collapsed by accident and people rushed to investigate other bridges to prevent another collapse. Of course they found them in state of crumbling down so obviously tehy had to be shut down/prepared for reconstruction. You attribute the blame to ANO while it was more due to chance.

You listen too much to house development lobby if you attribute the housing bubble to them. It'm more likely caused by global historically low interest rates.

The taxi mafia question is hardly going to be solved unless the next government has economic understanding of the problem. By appeasing to all parties involved they can hardly move it forward.

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