Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Not thinking things through

According to the survey data reported here, among the depressing findings that 91% of Romanians would like to reintroduce the death penalty and 88% think it should be a crime to criticise the Orthodox Church, is the statistic that 89% of Romanians think that anyone in favour of autonomy for Székelyföld should have their citizenship revoked. I suspect people didn't really think this through, since, you know, if you revoked everyone's citizenship round here, they'd effectively be autonomous. No taxes, no need to obey the law, etc etc. You couldn't deport them because they'd have no state to be deported to, so they'd have to stay here. In a stroke you'd effectively have created Székely autonomy. Brilliant thinking, Iosif Public.

Either 89% of people in this country are a bit thick, or the questions were skewed in such a way as to make the findings seem really newsworthy. I suspect the latter.

9 comments:

Bucharest Life said...

What always makes me laugh is how Romanians who break hundreds of laws every day (mainly on the roads) will start quoting the constitution - word perfectly - at the very mention of the word 'autonomy.'

Katharine said...

I'd be on the side of 'a bit thick', if what my friend in Drumul Taberei tells me is any indication.

Adrian said...

Actually the article was not very clearly written, leading to the surprising conclusions. It says that 44% of people surveyed would be in favour of holding a referendum on the issue, and of those, 89% would vote for stripping citizenship. So, overall, thats 0.89 x 44% = 39% of Romanians being in favour of that very stupid idea, not 89%. Great blog btw!

lvl100 said...

Andy no offense ,but you should improve your Romanian or get a better translator.

The article that you linked says something totally different.

Its NOT "91% of Romanians would like to reintroduce the death penalty"

Its 50% of Romanians would agree for a referendum regarding death penalty, from which 91% would vote for it
That means around 40% of all Romanians would agree with death penalty.

Not really something to brag about, but its on par with France, and less than in UK (49%)


And the same thing for the other parts ( ie 89% out of 44%)

lvl100 said...

Damn , Adrian was faster than me and wrote the same thing in the sametime.
What are the odds at 7 am ? :)

Andy said...

No offence taken at all. (I am only too aware that my Romanian is very weak). However in my defence that article has changed since I posted the link. It may have mentioned a long way down in the text that this was the basis of the stat (I have to confess I didn't translate all the way down to the end), but it certainly wasn't in the initial paragraphs as it now is.

Anonymous said...

Andy,
no offense, but never ever trust Romanian media. It sucks. It's sensationalist, ohh too many times just badly informed, and tabloid like. Not to mention a lot of the journalists do not speak proper Romanian...
Erkkk...If you would only know how many times I got really angry at the way they present some facts...
Btw, who made the "study", what was the number of people questioned and ...for what reason ? :-))
All the best
C.

Vlad said...

this. so called "sekelyfold" of yours DOESN`T EXIST! this is 2010 Romania not the middle ages. you`re indoctrinated,buddy.are you by any chance married to a hungarian? stop eating hungarian extremist propaganda and show some dignity .Miercurea Ciuc is full of hungarian agents who spread LIES.(some of them are terrorists like those SekelyGarda criminals). well that`s why I`m in favour for the death penalty.

Andy said...

Brilliant Vlad. You've just confirmed all my feelings about Romanian nationalists. Thanks for that.

Just aas a matter of interest and because I think your answer will amuse me, if I'm married to a Romanian citizen who happens to be ethnically Hungarian, what does that make her? If any of this stuff doesn't exist, then presumably she's Romanian. So help me out here. Would you like to give her your death penalty or regard her as a pure Romanian?