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Hungarian Politics

Started by Tamas, March 09, 2011, 01:25:14 PM

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Syt

Courtesy my sister:

https://www.worldtribune.com/they-dont-even-try-hungarys-new-border-fence-called-spectacular-success/?fbclid=IwAR1yfQlatDzWM-3_UWmw-p9vdLs70DKNM6JFCS4nQZdtyodwLHUYPZszwto

QuoteFlashback — 'They don't even try': Hungary's new border fence called 'spectacular success'

Skeptics who believe a border wall will not stop illegals from entering the United States may want to look at what's happening in Hungary.

On the day its border fence was completed, the influx of illegals entering Hungary went down from 6,353 one day to 870 the next. For the remainder of that month, illegal border crossings were steadily below 40 per day, officials said.

"They don't even try," a local border guard told The Daily Caller News Foundation. "We haven't had a Syrian in six months."

Prime Minister Viktor Orban's pledge to stop illegals from flowing into the country appears to be a spectacular success.

Hungary's 96-mile long, 14-foot tall double-line fence includes several layers of razor-wire capable of delivering electric shocks. The barrier features cameras, heat sensors and loudspeakers ready to tell migrants they're about to break Hungarian law if they as much as touch the fence, the April 30 Daily Caller report said.

Nearly every police officer in Hungary is part of a rotation to monitor the border fence at all times. Temporary military bases house the police while they do their rotation.

Additionally, Hungary will train and pay more than 1,000 volunteers to deploy as "border hunters".

Illegals who are caught are arrested and dropped off on the Serbian side of the fence. They don't get a chance to apply for asylum unless they do so at a "transit zone" where they are held in housing containers while their cases get processed, the Daily Caller report said.

In September 2015, thousands of migrants streamed across the border every day as they made their way north to Austria, Germany and Scandinavia.

"It was an invasion," Laszlo Toroczkai, the mayor of Asotthalom, told the Daily Caller. "Illegal immigration is a crime in a normal country. It's not a normal thing to break into a country."

"By the mid-year it was well beyond 100,000 people who came across," said Zoltan Kovacs, a spokesman for the Hungarian government. "You should at least have the ability to handle what's going on."

Kovacs added: "You might not like it, it's not a nice thing, but ... the only way to stop illegal border crossings is [to] first build a fence, man it, equip it, and also, in parallel, build up your capabilities in terms of legal confines, legal circumstances to be able to handle what is coming."
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

Valmy

Of course Hungary is a terrible shithole and there are many other ways to enter Europe than to go to Hungary....
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

Duque de Bragança

http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2019/02/01/97001-20190201FILWWW00153-hongrie-une-proche-de-viktor-orban-recoit-la-legion-d-honneur.php

So Hungarian minister for Youth and Family Katalin Novak got the Légion d'Honneur medal in the French embassy in Budapest.
Macron patching up with Orban?  :hmm:

Tamas

One of the many towns outside Budapest which have seen a couple of (small) protests was Baja, a town of 37000 in southern Hungary.

The more prominent/well known persons of the town participating in those protests have been under a smear campaign since, locally.

A few teachers, and a 40 years old guy who runs a Langos place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1ngos). As I understand he is well known in the general area as he sells good food. He  also has been active in the community, and regularly opens up his stand for homeless people when its cold.  He has 5 kids and is a foster parent of 2 others.

Today he found a letter in his home's mailbox warning him to stop campaigning against Fidesz or the town will learn of his homosexuality. So he came out of the closet on a live Facebook stream on their local community page.

In small town Hungary for a person running a business and living a public life that still cannot be very easy. Definitely harder than it should be in a modern society.

The viciousness of how local supporters and functionaries try to nip in the bud any kind of unrest or open opposition to The Party is quite worrying. Either they will succeed in killing off resistance, or we are not very far from violence.


Syt

I hear the government is now offering new incentives for having babies to stop the demographic decline?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-47192612

QuoteHungary tries for baby boom with tax breaks and loan forgiveness

Hungarian women with four children or more will be exempted for life from paying income tax, the prime minister has said, unveiling plans designed to boost the number of babies being born.

It was a way of defending Hungary's future without depending on immigration, Viktor Orban said.

The right-wing nationalist particularly opposes immigration by Muslims.

Hungary's population is falling by 32,000 a year. Women there have fewer children than the EU average.

As part of the measures, young couples will be offered interest-free loans of 10m forint (£27,400; $36,000), to be cancelled once they have three children.

Mr Orban said that "for the West", the answer to falling birth rates in Europe was immigration: "For every missing child, there should be one coming in and then the numbers will be fine.

"Hungarian people think differently," he said. "We do not need numbers. We need Hungarian children."

While Mr Orban was delivering his state of the nation address, the latest demonstrations were being held in Budapest against his government's policies.

About 2,000 people gathered in front of his office, while others blocked one of the main bridges across the Danube river.

Correspondents say the biggest applause during Mr Orban's speech was for his announcement of a seven-point plan to increase the birth rate.

Other points in the government's plan include:

- A pledge to create 21,000 nursery places over the next three years
- An extra $2.5bn to be spent on the country's healthcare system
- Housing subsidies
- State support for those buying seven-seat vehicles

Mr Orban finished his speech with: "Long live Hungary and long live the Hungarians!"

The average number of children a Hungarian woman will have in her lifetime (fertility rate) is 1.45. This puts the country below the EU average of 1.58.

In 2016, France had the highest fertility rate in the EU - 1.92 children per woman - and Spain and Italy had the lowest at 1.34, the EU statistics agency Eurostat reports.

Niger, in West Africa, has the highest fertility rate in the world, with 7.24 children per woman.

Increasing birth rate 'very difficult'

The BBC's Nick Thorpe in Budapest writes:

Critics of the government say its package and pro-family policy so far target well-off families and ignore the Hungarian poor, including an estimated 750,000 Roma (Gypsies). Tax relief does little to help families who pay little tax anyway.

Housing subsidies of €35,000 (£30,666) were offered to families able to invest a similar sum of their own - but few Roma have such savings
.

The nationalist Fidesz government has cut welfare payments and reduced the number of months those made unemployed can claim for.

The population has been falling steadily, from a peak of 10.7 million in 1980, to below 9.7 million today.

About 600,000 Hungarians have moved to western Europe in the past decade - it is impossible to calculate how many will return.

"Increasing the number of births is very difficult, because we have less and less women of child-bearing age," State Secretary for Families Katalin Novak told the BBC. That number is set to fall by 20% in the next decade. "So less and less women need to have more and more babies."

The government's new package, she emphasised, is based on the number of babies couples would actually like to have, and then to encourage them with financial help. The aim is to increase the fertility rate to 2.1 by 2030.

How do other countries help mothers?

Many other countries with relatively low birth rates have introduced extra payments and other benefits for mothers.

Russia's birth rate has been declining for decades: the population fell from 149m in 1991 to 140m in 2018, and the median age has risen from 33 to 39.

So, to help the poorest families, in March 2018 the government announced monthly payments of 10-11,000 roubles (£118-£130; $152-$167) until their first child reached 18 months old. A poor family also gets a one-off payment of 300,000 roubles for each additional child born.

Serbia, one of Hungary's neighbours, has one of the world's fastest-shrinking populations. It has seven million people and a median age of 43.

Last March it announced that new mothers would get a one-off payment worth £740 ($956) for their first child, monthly payments of £74 ($96) for the second child for two years, and further payments for three or more children.

The birth rate in Italy is among Europe's lowest, along with Cyprus and Spain. Italy gives mothers an allowance of €80 per month (£70; $90) for each child born. The poorest families get a monthly allowance of €160 per child.

In Germany more babies were born in 2016 than in any year since 1996. But Germany has also put more incentives in place for couples to have children. Parents have a legal right to a nursery place once their child is one year old.

Germany has a new law, the "Good KiTa Act", granting lower childcare fees for parents who cannot afford the full price, and a fee exemption for parents who receive a child allowance and housing benefits.

Low birth rates are also worrying governments in East Asia.

The marriage rate in South Korea is at its lowest since records began - 5.5 per 1,000 people, compared with 9.2 in 1970 - and very few children are born outside marriage.

According to World Bank data for 2016, just a few countries, including Singapore and Moldova, have a fertility rate as low as South Korea's - 1.2 per woman. The replacement rate - the number needed for a population to remain level - is 2.1.

Fertility rates are also low in China (1.6) and Japan (1.4).


Well, maybe making sure that people of child bearing age and high qualifications don't leave the country in droves would have been a good start ... 10 years ago. :P
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

Solmyr

Because being forced to stay at home to take care of 4+ children is totally worth having no income tax. :rolleyes: :P

Tamas

Quote from: Solmyr on February 12, 2019, 05:39:24 AM
Because being forced to stay at home to take care of 4+ children is totally worth having no income tax. :rolleyes: :P

Yeah.


Listen people, no such shit should be taken seriously. They are either just thought of something to look like they have an actual policy (there's EU and local elections this year after all), or they figured a way to abuse these new rules themselves.

But, the government has no overarching policy apart from staying in power and grabbing control of all potential sources of power (which usually means source of money).

Tamas

In fact, after CEU, they are now gunning for MTA, which is the Hungarian Science Academy, the main organisation supporting Hungarian researchers since the mid-19th century, when our great reformer, Szecyheni, founded it from his own (vast) income.

It is a source of (limited) power and money and the organisatio resisted the first attempt at gaining direct government control over its funding. So it needs to go.


Also, Mike Pompeo just visited Hungary. I recon they'll want to out-bribe Putin and reclaim the premises.

Tamas

Hmm, interesting, if true:


Tamas

What seems to be getting next to no attention so far is Hungary consistently trolling the EU offices into inaction at any given opportunity.

Latest was what should have been a routine new agreement between EU and Switzerland which contained no controversy. But Hungary didn't agree to have EU-ambassadors accept it, they forced it on a debate. The reason for it officially was that one parapgraph talked about migration. In it, basically, both parties congratulated themselves for handling migration so well. Big deal.

Recently Hungary torpedoed an agreement between Arab states and the EU. It also concerned migration although IIRC in the context of promising to curtail illegal one. Nope, veto veto veto.

The serious part of it is that in fact any actual solution to the illegal migration issue will be sabotaged by Hungary, of that I am absolutely certain. They have not given any other reason to exist to their citizens apart from stopping all them colored folks from getting in. Orban even told on his once-a-decade press conference that migration and Soros are "ought to be the leading issues" for the next 20 years.


The Larch

Does Orban expect Soros to last for 20 more years? The man's 88, after all.

Tamas

Quote from: The Larch on February 14, 2019, 06:35:00 AM
Does Orban expect Soros to last for 20 more years? The man's 88, after all.

There have been some faint attempts already to make his son stick as the heir to the throne of evil. Not only he goes to parties (!) but he apparently at least once did so with a black guy! (!!)

Threviel

Is the son also a Jew? Otherwise it'll be a hard sell.

Tamas


Valmy

QuoteOrban even told on his once-a-decade press conference that migration and Soros are "ought to be the leading issues" for the next 20 years.

What sort of final solution does he envision for the migration and Jew crisis?
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."