Switzerland

Happy Swiss National Day…

Robert Campbell on August 1, 2020, 7:30 am | Readers 1529

A long established Slugger tradition is the annual posting on Bastille Day of the clip from Casablanca showing the emotional singing of La Marseillaise (here). Perhaps I can start another similar tradition. Today, 1 August, is Swiss National Day and a public holiday, but only if the date falls during the working week. It commemorates the events around the foundation of the country, and the struggle for freedom from the domination of the Holy Roman Empire. There is documentary evidence …

What lessons can we learn from the making of modern Switzerland?

Robert Campbell on March 2, 2019, 8:10 am | Readers 1974

Andrew Gallagher recently wrote an op-ed for Slugger (here) on the mechanics of Irish re-unification. This has become very topical following the UK’s Brexit referendum, with a feeling that ‘the harder the Brexit, the more likely is a border poll and reunification’. While readers of Slugger will have been only too aware of the potential problems that Brexit would bring, there was a very considerable lack of understanding in Britain, and particularly in England; there it was a ‘remote’ issue. …