[pp.int.general] Invitation to the PPI General Assembly 2011

Thu Jan 20 19:57:51 CET 2011

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On 1/19/2011 9:19 PM, Gregory Engels wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 20.01.2011, at 00:24, Andrew Norton wrote:
>>
>> ... some ill-hearted misunderstood things.
> 
> Andrew,
> 
> I will not answer to your trolling, cause i don't see it lead anywhere.
> 
> however, i feel obliged to make out some facts, that you put wrong.
> (and i am not calling you a lier, i rather believe that you were unable
> to make the right judgments - i put it to google translate issues or
> something)
> 
> 1. I am not an elected Officer to Pirate Party of Germany or any other
> Party.
> I am have been appointed as an International Coordinator (one out of three)
> by the board of Pirate Party of Germany in November 2009. The new elected
> board has confirmed my appointment in may 2010.
> 
> 2. As a Member of the Board of PPI I only represent the PPI, and should not
> be considered representing anything else (like any particular Pirate Party
> or my home city, or being white skinned or  being a man, etc)

Ok, To anyone with any sort of brain, it would appear that 1 and 2 are
incompatible.
In 1) you are representing PP-DE to the international community, and the
PPI (role 1)
In 2) you are representing PPI to the international community. (role 2)

You therefore have, within the same sphere of action, two masters. In
fact, my understanding (although my German, as you have pointed out, is
not perfect) part of your job as International coordinator for PPDE, is
liaising with PPI. Or, to put another way, your job at PPDE is to
represent your party to a body you head up.

am I the only one that doesn't see a conflict of interests here, a
disregard of 'ethics'? If there is an action which benefits PPDE, but
hurts PPI, which would you take? Role 1 dictates the first (and is, by
your own admission, your original priority), while role 2 dictates the
latter.

Even the most honest man in the world would be torn by it, and be
ineffective. Worse, it has the very APPEARANCE of impropriety, which
harms the image of PPI.

> 
> 3. Even IF I where an Officer for any Pirate Party, this would be nothing
> that would collide with an PPI Board Office. Infact Jerry, Jakub,
> Aleksander
> and Bogo are on Board of their respective national Pirate Parties. (Well,
> Bogo has apparently quit the Bulgarian Pirate Party, but not because of
> his PPI involvement)

Again, this is wrong. There is already a place for national party
officers to participate in the running of PPI. It's the General Assembly.

The statutes say:

XII. Board
(1) Pirate Parties International is managed by the Board, the executive
organ. Its Members shall consider the interests of the Pirate
Movement as a whole and shall neither consider themselves, nor be
considered, as representing any particular Member or non-member
Organization or Region.

And yet, by having the board made up of active officers of certain
parties, they can't help but violate this. By holding the post stated in
1) you therefore consider yourself as representing a member
organisation. Likewise Jerry, Jakub, Aleksander and, until recently,
Bogo must consider themselves as representing a particular member
organisation, because they are officers of those organisations, which by
it's very definition means they are representing them.

This argument of yours should also be familiar to anyone here who, like
me, has kids (especially teenagers). If not, you (collectively) probably
used it when you were a teenager yourself. it goes something like
"awww, but dad, EVERYone else is doing it".

It's an argument that has never worked, because it tries to deflect the
actual wrongness of it, with the assertion that no-one else cares that
it's wrong. It's used when you know you're wrong, and want to excuse it,
rather than defend it on the merits.

> 
> 4. As you have noted, I am also running for the office at the local city
> council
> in my city - it is a volunteer office, that is done by part-time
> politicians. (It
> is a council - not the government) - I really fail to see, how there
> possible be a collision of interests with my PPI Co-Chairmanship. (there
> could be however conflicts with my role being a business owner, but
> I do not intend to quit my business in favor of volunteer work)

How you run your business is, indeed, your business. If it prospers, or
fails, it's you and your employees (if any) that are affected.

The PPI is not 'your' business, however. And you are admitting that as
well as representing the PPI, and PPDE, you would also be representing
and working for the city council (role 3), AND running a business. You
are spreading yourself far too thin.

Let me put it another way. You run a business (I'll assume that came
first). You then took on, to fill in your spare time, role 1.
Six months later, you took on role 2, which I assume is again, in your
spare time. Now, from a point of view of time usage, it's not SO bad
because it's the same topic, but you're now doing effectively TWO jobs,
in the same time you were doing one. Role 1 might be degraded from the
time you now have to put into role 2, but at the same time the
effectiveness of 1 is now increased because of the position of role 2.
Meanwhile, role 2 still has to compete with role 1 for time.

Then, along comes role 3. Campaigning for office is time consuming, and
hard work - all of us who have worked on campaigns know it. So, For a
time, Role 3 takes ALL your time, leaving you none for roles 1 and 2.
Should you get it, because it's separate from your other roles, it will
also take time away from 1 and/or 2.

Now, the PPDE might have appointed you to do a job, and that's up to them.

You were, however, elected to do the job as head of PPI. To do a job. I
don't think anyone voted for you with the provision 'well ,it doesn't
matter, do anything else you feel is more important as well'

If one of your employees went and got another job, one that impacted
their abilities to do the job you are employing them to do, would you
fire them, or pat them on the head and go 'you're doing great! Don't
worry about this business is performing' ?

The impact of running for one election while holding another elected
position is also well known in the Us. The best examples would be the
2008 presidential campaign. For an entire year (2008) Illinois and
Arizona both had half the senate representation they were supposed to
have (because of Obama and McCain campaigning, instead of doing the job
they were paid to do). likewise, the later half of that year, Delaware
(Biden) lost half of it's senate represenation, while Alaska lost the
head of it's state executive branch (Palin). These people were so busy
trying to get the next office, that their oath to serve the people that
had elected them for the job they were supposed to be doing was ignored.
It happens to a lesser extent in Europe, with MEPs running for national
government seats, and national representatives trying to get MEP seats

It boils down to people wanting to be career politicians, moving up the
ladder, and only paying lip-service to the jobs they have at the moment,
hoping to move up a rung before people realise that in trying to move
up, they're not doing their current job very well.

> 
> sincerely yours,
> 
> Gregory Engels
> Co-Chairman
> Pirate Parties International
> 
> international Coordinator
> Pirate Party of Germany
> 
> Front-Runner in the Pirate-List
> Offenbach city council elections

Each of those three positions is a full time 'side job'. It is
impossible for anyone to do any one effectively, while trying to do all
three. Were they menial 'task-limited' jobs (such as working a factory
line) you could get away with it, because it's a fixed amount of effort
for a fixed amount of time. Those three however are jobs where the
quality of the work done, depends on the amount of time+effort put in.
And you just don't have the time.

If you did, there wouldn't be a website down for a month, bank accounts
not sorted, and any of the other problems.

Andrew

> 
> Father of two children
> 
> House owner
> 
> car driver
> 
> swimmer
> 
> mobile: +49 172 853 44 91
> skype:gregory.engels
> jabber:dichter at jabber.piratenpartei.de
> 
> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general

- -- 
Andrew Norton
http://ktetch.blogspot.com
Tel: (352)6-KTETCH [352-658-3824]
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