The Swiss Pirate Party Has Its First Mayor

bs0d3 writes "Alex Arnold from the Pirate Party Switzerland has been elected mayor of Eichberg. This is the first mayoral win for the pirates in Switzerland, and hopefully just the begining of things to come. Thomas Bruderer, president of the Pirate Party Switzerland, is delighted: 'This result is for our young party is an important milestone. To win a majority vote shows that our members are not just a marginal phenomenon; but are in the midst of society.'"

FPV FTW :)

[tibit]

Switzerland: the country where doing this [youtube.com] is legal, now gets a pirate party major. When kids go to college, I'm moving there ;)

Re:remind me never to buy any music from the swiss

[Anonymous Coward]

> remind me never to buy any music from the swiss... or respect any other intellectual property from Switzerland.

All of a sudden, all Swiss products became a lot more interesting to me.

Re:Time for a navy

[TheP4st]

They actually do have a navy which patrols 4-5 of their lakes.

A bit premature.

[DerekLyons]

"To win a majority vote shows that our members are not just a marginal phenomenon; but are in the midst of society.'"

Without knowing the politics of the town, that's a bit of a premature boast. Dark horse and odd ball candidates routinely win against major candidates in local elections when the major candidates have pissed off the electorate or run a seriously lackluster campaigns. The real test of entering the mainstream is either the candidate or party getting re-elected or gaining additional offices or municipalities.

After all, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Another key question, what is the demographics of the town? If they skew young and lower income (not poor, but cube monkeys) or have a major geek influence (like say, Silicon Valley), that's another potential indicator that the boast is hollow and premature.

Re:Things to come...

[Mashiki]

It's not. Well it is to people who hate ordered society, or dislike people being involved. A lot of people simply hate politics because they don't understand how it works, personally I blame that on the fact that they don't actually teach people about it. Rather, they simply "tell people" what they think they should know.

Re:FPV FTW :)

[JaredOfEuropa]

It is not allowed in quite a few non-idiotic countries as well. Not because of fears of spies or terrorists, but for safety reasons. Here in the Netherlands, you can mount all the cameras you want to your RC plane, but you have to maintain line-of-sight when flying it. Mostly because in msot places here you can't fly 1km without ending up over residential areas or in controlled airspace.