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Unconventional methods... yes, that might fix it!
Once, on a particularly uncomfortable bus ride, I remember hearing a driver say it would be very easy to get ride of traffic jams and traffic snarl-ups: all that was needed was a rule to say that at certain times of day only vehicles that were fully loaded (all seats paid for) could circulate.
Bruno Filipe Pires, Edition 695 (15 Sep 2011), 
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Who knows, perhaps that driver would have made an excellent politician? I say this because of a recent proposition put by the European Energy Commissioner, a German gentleman by the name of Guenther Oettinger.
In an interview with his country’s newspaper «Bild», Oettinger offered a solution to “rapidly resolve” the Eurozone crisis.
“The suggestion to the fly flags of all sinning countries at half-mast outside community buildings has been circulating…”
According to this 57-year-old commissioner – a member of Angela Merkel’s party - such a ploy “would only be symbolic, but could be a very dissuasive force”.
Oettinger’s opinion is that the EU needs to start using “unconventional methods” so that the Greeks, for instance, would start to make more efforts to sort out their problems.
But will humiliating the Euro’s “sinning” nations by shaming their own national flags resolve anything? Will it honestly be “a dissuasive force”?
The answer could lie in the past – which, after all say academics, is the key to understanding the present, and sometimes, predicting the future.
Mind you, “unconventional methods” were used in Europe to resolve certain difficult issues before – with fairly disastrous results.
That’s not to say we haven’t had a few original suggestions this end of the Euro landmass: the president of the Order of Physicians has proposed a junk food tax to health minister Paulo Macedo.
The venerable doctor José Manuel Silva wants to tax “foods that aren’t healthy, like salt, hamburgers, poisonous packets of crisps and dozens of varieties of toxic garbage”.
No-one in their right mind would defend fast food – but deciding to creating new taxes to discourage its consumption is going beyond the pale. First they allow the country to be invaded by shopping malls, and then they try to clobber the changes in people’s eating habits with high-handedness?! Another “dissuasive force”?
So why don’t they go the whole hog and tax traditional things like chouriço sausage and all the other kinds, smoked ham, and our national cheeses swimming in animal fat – or the confectionary we have that could put anyone into a diabetic coma if they eat too much of it?
Then maybe we wouldn’t have to fly the national flag at half-mast...
