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> Dunno why you picked an old example when we have a current one Sorry, I used to live in the UK but now live in Belgium, so my knowledge of UK politics is som

• toyg 13y ago
  > In Belgium we had a new minister of finance appointed in March, who as far as I know has never even been up for election Amateurs :) Italy has had a wholly-unelected Prime Minister for two years: he was nominated Life Senator by the President and sworn in as PM a day later. In every other parliamentary democracy, this would have been called a coup d'état, but Italy works more like South-American banana republics. And the best thing is, he was drafted exactly on the basis of domain knowledge (he was a banker and euro-bureaucrat) for a country still in the grip of wide-scale economic crisis, and all his ministers were appointed on the same basis: lots of academics, high-profile intellectuals, bankers and industrialists. Results were underwhelming to say the least, and last Spring voters basically disposed of this group in a general election. But the President all but re-elected himself (to another 7-year term, which is unprecedented) and again hand-picked a PM who's basically forced to follow the same political platform of his "golpist" predecessor. So yeah, domain knowledge won't save your ass. Political problems are always political, not technical, and require political solutions, i.e. people shouting that this will not do, do that instead.