Today (July, 4th), the Bavarians have their plebiscite (Volksentscheid) on a smoke-free environment for the protection of non-smokers.
Yesterday, I spent the day at the “Kirchsee” lake near Holzkirchen. It looks like a small emerald, directly beneath the Reutberg monastery. Near the pedestrian bridges, a slight layer of sun-oil covered the surface of the water. In this layer, I saw many cigarette butts.
For me, that was an additional motivation to go and vote for the plebiscite today. I went to the elections early in the morning. At first sight, it looked like an election like all others.
But then I discovered some specialties.
First and foremost, the ballot paper is very simple and straightforward. You only have the options to either mark “yes” or “no”. It is a “Boolean” logic I, as a computer scientist, am very familiar with. Of course, I marked “yes” (TRUE, ON).
Standing in front of the polling station, it dawned on me that this is not a secret election at all. The smokers with wrinkles and furrows all over their faces and their haggard skin were easy to make out. The same was true for the families of non-smokers.
🙂 This was the sort of election where a “compulsory mummery” should have been installed in order to guarantee secrecy.
But here is my very sincere plea: please go and vote! I believe this election in Bavaria will be trend-setting for Germany as a whole and the entire not-yet smoke-free Europe. We are talking modern structures, not so-called freedom. Precedence for smokers no longer fits into the modern society, neither do “free rides for free citizens”. Those were the slogans of yesterday!
The world looks towards Bavaria. And it is up to the Bavarians to decide that they want to live in a modern and competitive state by installing smoke-free areas in the future. In this way, they can see to it that they will continue to be the frontrunners, instead of remaining on the backbenches as the stick-in-the-muds in the economic competition, as well.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
I took the two beautiful pictures from the central media archive Wikimedia Commons. They were taken by Rufus46 in 2007. The pictures show the “Kirchsee” lake near Sachsenkam in Upper Bavaria. First with the Reutberg monastery, then with a view of the “Brauneck” and the Benediktenwand
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