Old PUPS, new tricks

Any Francophones out there interested in minor political parties may be interested to know of a short piece on pensioners' parties in the newsmagazine Alternatives internationales,  which, roughtly speaking, seems to a cross channel version of the New Internationalist. I did want to offer something centring on Slovenia's Democratic Party of Pensioners (DeSUS)- currently undergoing various ructions and splits in the centre-left Slovene coalition government - but they felt that Serbia's Party of United Pensioners (PUPS) was a bit sexier, so as Research Impact is the now  new rock 'n' roll  for academic hese days, I pnaturally obliged and pulled together what I know about PUPS. Should you cher ami not be a Alternatives internationales subscriber and want an electronic offprint, do drop me a line,

A Young Generation Under Pressure?

A Young Generation Under Pressure? a new collection on generational politics and the politics of aging societies appears, perhaps not enirely co-incidently brought out by the German publisher Spring - 'grey' politics looms incredibly large in German academia. There is a short concluding chapter on pensioners' parties in Europe. Who do you suppose could have such esoteric interests to write such stuff, I hear you ask. Can't imagine.

And as a member of middle of the 'rush hour' generation caught between work, kids and life in general, how the hell did I find time to write it?

Norewgian 'greys' get e-thumbs down

A Norwegain website presents a 'semiotic analysis of a political website' - some of kind of university or high school assignment - about the web presence of that country's tiny obscure Pensioners' Party (do Norway's pensioners have that much be disgruntled about?). The site gets the thumbs down for not running Obama style social networking, although it is a masterpiece compared to the websites of many minor parties and one wonders how web savvy even Scandinavian seniors are. I expect they prefer old fashioned communications techniques like email.

Greying democracies

As Facebook and other contacts may know, I have research interest in interest-group politics and ageing societies in CEE, so it was a pleasure to review Achim Goerres’s recent book The Political Participation of Older People in Europe: The Greying of Our Democracies. (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 2009). In the book, Goerres, who has been one of the pioneers in comparatively exploring the political consequences of population ageing in European democracies offers a characteristically empirically thoroughly comparative study of the political participation of older people in 21 European democracies, including the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia.

The book skilfully unpacks the notion of ‘old age’ into a series of age-related factors, which Georres argues fall into three broad categories: 1) life cycle effects such as the transition to retirement; 2) political generational effects linked to political socialization in youth; and 3) socio-economic cohort effects linked to (post-) modernization trends affecting successive (rising educational levels; and individual ageing effects such as the tendency to habituate to social norms with age. After presenting an ‘age-related model of political participation’ which basically integrates these factors into a modified resource perspective, the book considers older people’s electoral turnout; party choice; membership in parties and interest groups; and involvement in unconventional direct forms of participation.

Goerres relies mainly on number crunching quantitative techniques usually examining individual level survey data to gauge age-related effects which he them statistically interacts these findings with country-specific factors to account for further variation. The chapter on party choice, however, uses a paired country comparison of Germany UK), while quantitative findings on unconventional participation are supplemented by a chapter based on interviews with British pensioner activists protesting the impact of local property taxes.

The book’s findings are rich and complex, but the overall picture they present is one of a shifting complex of age-related factors shaping older people’s participation, sometimes working against one, sometimes important only in combination with country-specific factors, but always varying in significance according to the specific form of participation under review. Interesting general findings running through the book include the role played by life experience in substituting for formal education as an influence on participation and tendency of younger citizens to participate more in societies with higher proportions of pensioners or more strongly pro-senior public opinion. There's not much on institutions and limited cross country comparison, but overall, it’s clearly written, thorough and original book offers a corrective to superficial notions that population ageing is turning Western democracies into gerontocracies subject to a growing monolithic ‘grey vote’ or a war of generations– see this week’s Economist on David Willets- and offers an excellent springboard for the development of the more sophisticated political science agenda on ‘greying democracies’ Goerres calls for.

Germany's many shades of grey

A predictable article in Earth Times about the crucial nature of the 'grey vote' in Germany's forthcoming elections. Crucial in the sense there are lot of pensioner voters, but not in the sense of any distinct bloc of pensioner votes. But wait. At the end, we read that Germany now has three pernsioners' parties, who hauled in 1.4 per cent of the vote in June's Euro-elections (quite good in by historic standards). Seems I am behind the times.

Croatian greys quit government

Javno.com reports that the Croatian Pensioners' Party (HSU) have quit the ruling coalition. As they have one deputy that may not make much immediate different but seems is an interesting and direct impact of financial crunch, which has moved down the headlines recently - at least in relation to Eastern Europe.

"ZAGREB, CROATIA 24 July 2009 - The president of the Croatian Pensioners’ Party (HSU) Silvano Hrelja announced today that the party was leaving the leading coalition.
In a conversation for Javno.com, Hrelja revealed that HSU will now join the opposition parties in a battle against the Cabinet’s tricks.

HSU reminds that on Thursday they sent a clear message to the Cabinet that they will not accept a larger tax than the one agreed upon, and that they accept the Cabinet taxing only the difference for amounts over three thousand kuna, at a maximum rate of three percent.
“Considering that the Cabinet did not find the calculation to plug the hole in the budget, they later said that they need to tax the entire amount of all of the salaries and pensions that surpass three thousand kuna, we considered the negotiations over. This sort of burden would mean nearly a four times larger burden for workers and pensioners” say sources from HSU. They consider that the latest Cabinet proposal to also be unacceptable, considering that it is considerable less favourable than the one they had already agreed upon.

“Considering that the Cabinet was at least nine months late to react, and considering that the Minister of Finance Ivan Suker has been deceiving not only the media, and coalition partners, but the whole Croatian public, HSU has brought the unanimous decision to leave the coalition, defending our reputation and continuing the fight for the rights of Croatian pensioners” it says in the report by the central HSU committee, which also seeks the resignation of the Minister of Finance."

Clientelism to lead to pension protest in Romania?

Romanian English language newspaper Nine O'Clock carries the following reflection on the country's clientelistic and fragmented pension provisions, which seems to have shades of the Italian pattern. I rather doubt the apocalyptic predictions of 'massive pensioner protestst' which
uch sectoral divisions strikes me as likely to diffuse unless there is an obviously neglected majority group capable of taking collective actionand/or a highly unpopular priveged special group - in which case one would perhaps expense more generalized anti-political populist protest, if any.

"Pensioner fairytale law

published in issue 4460 page 1 at 2009-06-29

Among the imagines to shock Romania's future are massive pensioner protests, government and prefecture picketing turned not once into street fights with police forces' brutal intervention to restore the 'rule of law', which rule of law does not stand when it comes to daily life and the
4.6 million-strong pensioners, nearly half of whom have pensions below the minimum wage in the economy and 200,000 benefit from 'specialpensions', 70-80 to even 100 times the minimum one, which the governmentin office raised to RON 300 recently.

Romania has several pension laws, the majority of which are drafted in such a way as to unnaturally and immorally favour various categories of political clientele.

Justice, defence, home and foreign affairs and a few other fields benefit from 'special' pension laws.

The decisive factor for the pension amount is not the tax paid on it throughout the years, but the way in which a party president, government head or parliamentary group identified themselves with the interests of the said 'special categories'. Since in Romania, all but every government
official, party head or lawmaker exercise their authority at the expense of the national interest, which results in the bulk of pensioners suffering the most from it.

Such contradictions led to the international financial and political community to ask Romania on and on to sort the salary and pension laws out. The most recent such request was occasioned by the financial loan Romania has taken, with the Boc government pledging to collaborate at the
oonest towards a blanket salary and pension laws. The latter was the subject of long and contradicting talks between government officials, trade unions, employers' associations, heads of Parliament-represented parties. Yet, only occasionally and by means of mass-media only are
pensioners' voices heard. Should this be a mere accident?"

It isn't, as it stands testimony again to blanket pension talks ducking the core of the matter and seeking collateral interest instead. This is why the future pension law doesn't take into count a fair ration between minimum and maximum pensions, a key lawful and fairness principle that
doesn't apply to the overall pension law, unlike its salary counterpart.

Moreover, the current or past opposition has often clamoured about the collapse of the pension fund or payment default. Yet none of them refer to the huge 'special pensions' as the root of the pension fund being likely to enter collapse. Most of them speak of either the large number of
pensioners and the high unemployment rate, the decline in Gross Domestic Product and the 16 per cent rise in salaries over the past 12 months. Yet, it is exactly such aspects of the ongoing economic crisis that call for cutting special pensions down, as they threaten to bring the pension fundinto collapse. How come this reticence?

Because of the clan spirit, since both in civilian, and political-parliamentary life especially, there is a strong clan spirit with the most contradicting results. 'Special pensions' are therefore held
to be a 'legally earned right' that cannot be touched by any new law. The fiercest I this respect are the magistrates, whose views drastically change when it comes to the apartments that quite a few Romanians purchase legally from the state. When such properties purchased both legally and in good faith have been claimed by the so-called descendants of the former owners, court rulings are handed down in their favour more often than not.In this instance, there is no such thing as the 'won asset' law , as if the Romanian state of 1996 is not the same with that nowadays.

Further more: many at the high end of the rank and file are rushing to retire under the old laws, still in force, which favour them. And 'special pension; recipients are advised, rank and file wise too, to get their pensions on cards, so that they remain 'secret'. On the other hand, there
is a trend for decision makers to step in so that the value of the pension fund is no longer tied to the average salary in the economy, so its increase will no longer reflect on pensions too, which are to be frozen indefinitely. Other call for special pensions to be frozen at their current level, until the new ones catch up with them. Yet, since such aspiration is estimated to take about 15 years to come true, its perfidious intention is plain to see, as 15 years from now most of the
pensioners will no longer be among the living, which makes the blanket pension law into a 'pensioner fairytale'.

by Mihai Iordanescu"

Grey politics in England's wild West

A regional website in the South West of England carries a short report about the English Pensioners' Party, which is based in this region where it polled a-not-altogether-awful 2.4% in the recent Euro-elections. It didn't field candidates in any other regions, presumably due to cash shortage as the article is mainly about efforts by the party's founder to raise cash. If they had it, it the nascent English Greys might be on the theshold of becoming a viable minor party - roughly,where the populist English Democrats are today (Is English nationalism perhaps an up-and-coming political force of the next few decades, if and when Scottish independence comes into view). On the other hand, the English West Country does seem a rather unusual kind of place politically and something of a minor party shangri-la: a historic bastion of the Liberals and the UK Indepedence Party where the Greens polled well and the Cornish nationalists managed to beat the Labour Party in their home county/country.

Ljubljana diary 2

I am on the early flight to Ljubljana. The plane is packed with holidaymakers going on half-term ski trips, so I find myself in business class (free Adria Airways bottle of mineral water + sweet). I also get to read a three day old copy of the Wall Street Journal - on the op-ed page former Estonia PM Mart Laar recommends continued free market reform as the best possible anti-crisis package but the news pages suggest that if Austrian banks get cold feet the whole of the region could be brutally credit-crunched, not just the current problems cases of Latvia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

****

As we land I get a glimpse of alpine scenery and half an hour later I am standing outside the terminal looking for way to get the 25km from Brnik to central Ljubljana. There aren't any buses for an hour or so, having narrowly avoided getting onto a tour bus to a ski resort, I opt for the minibus shuttle. I'm the only passenger , so the driver want to wait half an hour for some more flights to come into. I sit in the minibus sleepily reading a Swedish crime novel, while two flights land and various prosperous looking locals walk past heading for the small multi-storey car park. In the end the driver gives up and takes me on a loss-,mking journey into town, kindly dropping me off at my hotel.

***

The Slovene Democratic Party's headquarters is a large villa just outside the city centre with party, national and EU flag on large flagpoles in the front garden. They're busy, but in the limited time my interviewees make it clear that - as one would expect of the country's main party of the centre-right - they don't share the loose centre-left consensus and unfussed attitude towards the communist that pervades much of the rest of the Slovene political and social scene. They don't quite match the confrontational free market élan that might mark conversation with Czech equivalents, but (Mart Laar aside) who has much free market élan left these days?

***

Slovenia's Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs is on a top floor of a rather drab, square white gloomy socialist era shopping centre. Teenagers from a nearby school are hanging around outside smoking and gossiping. In the Ministry's reception area, there's an overpowering smell of varnish as the parquet floors are being resurfaced. The security guards, who seem to be from a private agency, ring around and having established that I am expected, take me through.without demanding any ID. The Ministry's offices have the look and feel of a medium-sized company HQ.

My interviewees' previous meeting is overrunning, so I have to waut. I look through my notes and study the childrens' paintings on the wall. I don't, have to wait too long however, and my interviewees turn out to be extremely open and helpful. One of the most interesting interviews , I've done in fact. "Tell our boss, we speak excellent English," one of the officials jokes at the end (and, of course, they all do). The Slovene civil service may lack clockwork timing and bureaucratic punctiliousness of Czech official, but exudes an underlying efficiency and competence.

***

The weather's still cold and but bright and sunny. Sitting in my heavily discounted hotel room opposite the main police station, I read through part of the statutes of Slovenia's two main left-wing party with the helped of dictionary and some guesswork and look over the front page of Delo. Mainstream parties are desperate to stymie a referendum initiative to block Croatia's accession to NATO, because of an unresolved Slovene-Croat dispute over seaways and border demarcation. There are some issues with big Slovene companies with unemployment and retenchment, but I can't quite follow the details., but I do understand that unemployment is over 10%. My left-wing interviewees tell me that Slovenia iswell placed to weather the storm, as it wisely avoided the perils of excessive foreign ownership and carried off many of the high social standards of the socialist period. I don't know when I'll be back in Slovenia again, so oater that afternoon on my final visit - to the University - I stock up on cheap and free books on Slovene politics.

***

Early morning service at the airport has improved: the coffee bars in the departure lounge are opening up before flights depart. I stand grumpily in line with travellers going to Prague while the expresso machine gets a final polish. "Do you take crowns?" a grey-haired American with a pony-tail and a wad of Czech currency in his hand asks. Unsurprisingly, the answer is 'no'. At last I get a my hands on a bela kava. It keeps me awake just long enough to take a look out the window at the clouds over Julian Alps as we fly out. My next sight is the M23 motorway near London Gatwick airport.

Israelis seek winning formula for interest parties

Ha'aretz carries an interesting report about how various Israeli politicians are trying to repeat the success (unlikely to be repeated) of the Israeli pensioners' party GIL in 2006 with a formula by combining interest politics with a dash of populist razzmatazz. This time a disabled people's party and a couple of constitutional reform cum clean government parties seem to be taking the field. The conflict in Gaza, however, seems to have dampened the Israeli electorate's appetite for novel micro-parties this time, howoever

Romania gas emergency decree hits pensioners

One group of victims of the current gas supply crisis - acute in SE Europe where supply seems to have been stopped and reserves are low to non-existent - are Romania's pensioners. However, it's less because they are freezing in unheated homes, but because - Nine O'Clock reports - emergency government decrees make it illegal to receive a state salary and a pension simultaneously. This common (and discriminatory practice) of applying financial sanction against working pensioners - or pensioners who want to work - has more often been seeen as means of shaking out the labour market and helping the young unemployed, but here seems to be have been smuggled in as an emergency measure. Romanian trade unions seem to defending the interests of their retired (former) members.

Update: Romania's Constitutional Court has a subsequent report notes since ruled this element in the emergency decrees illegal and unconstitutional, although the government seems intent on pushing the policy through legislation (the ruling centred on the permitted scope of emergency decrees). Prime Minister Boc has come out with all populist guns blazing, claiming that the measure is needed to prevent 'debauchery of state funds' by unnamed elite groups (seem to include some former judges) rather than hard pressed retired public employees who may need a few extra lei to make ends meet.

Israel pensioners party banks on stars

The Jerusalem Post reports that the leader of Israel's fractious pensioners party GIL has replaced its current MPs as with celebrities/personalities on the party's electoral list for the forthcoming Knesset elections. Polls suggest GIL will at best gain two MKs. Reports from STA suggest that Slovenia's pensioners party DeSUS is also taking a beating in the polls only months after its record near 8% score in the country's elections. However, this may be part of the new left-wing coalition's sudden drop in popularity.

Poland: mirror mirror on the wall, who's the most social of them all?

The Warsaw Voice reports the latest political shenanigans around the law restricting Poland's currently wide ranging entitlements to early retirement. President Kaczynski has vetoed the bill, putting the small post-communist social democratic left in a (for once) important position: their votes would be needed by the liberal-peasant coalition govenment to overide the veto. Having looked like they might initially play the role of defenders of social welfare and big and early pensions, they now seem likely to opt for the role of modernizing opponents of the conservative-national right and help overturn the veto. Well, this is Poland, after all.

Ljubljana diary

I arrive at night Ljubljana's Jože Pučnik Airport (newly renamed after the dissident and statesman, who led the anti-communist DEMOS coalition and founded what is today the centre-right Slovene Democratic Party - just ejected from office in parliamentary elections). We're then whisked by minibus in pitch darkness in the direction of Slovenia's capital. I try to imagine picturesque mountains and well tended , frosty fields outside, although breakneck narrow roads and the minibus's driver's juggling of fag, mobile and steering wheel tends to distract.

20 minutes later we're dropped off near the station. It's looks pretty unprepossessing , but after I've walked a couple of streets things get neater and better tended and I am in a street lined with imposing 19th century banks and hotels. Then, suddenly, I am in Prešeren Square, the heart of the city. It's draped all over with blue and white Christmas illuminations and, slightly less magically, filled with oompa music . There are some open air stalls and bars and I treat myself to Carolian sausage and a honey brandy (medica) to psyche myself up for the search for my hotel Three minutes later I am already there. Ljubljana is indeed small.

(....)
Viewed in daylight, my initial impression is that Ljubljana that has the look and pace of a Austrian or Scandinavian regional capital albeit with some architectural gems and government ministries unexpectedly thrown in. My Slovene colleague at the University of Ljubljana has been incredibly helpful and I have interviews to do and a translator to help out recruited via the local student union. First port of call is Slovenia's pensioners' party DESUS, where I meet both the party's General Secretary and it 2002 presidential candidate Prof Anton Bebler, whose flawless English and political science background make for a very smooth and interesting interview. (Slovene academics, I later discover, often make the transition to politics, not infrequently acting as independent expert nominees for ministerial posts).

The headquarters of Slovenia's main labour federation is, understandably, a smaller and more compact affair than the vast echoing trade union HQ I visited in Prague last month, But it also seems busier and more business-like - Slovenia is the most unionized country in CEE and, although membership rates have slipped - is still a force to be reckoned with. The representative of Slovenia's pensioners' trade union who are kind enough to make time for me despite being are on a tight schedule, are clear and informative. They also ask me some good questions at the end. Next day at the Slovene pensioners' federation, my translator- who has more experience with arts and cultural events than issues of interest aggregation - has a much more challenging time, especially when discussion turns to the political structure of Socialist Slovenia's highly complex, multi-layered brand of self-managing socialism. Luckily, she is resourceful and clever enough to cope and I am (just about) well informed about socialist Yugoslavia to follow it all. Terms like 'self-managing community of interests' are now part of my (very limited) Slovene vocabulary. Going over my notes and the diagram my interviewee helpfully drew for, I realise that such legacies are indeed central to what I'm interested in.

Making an early New Year's resolution to learn some proper Slovene, I head off to buy a dictionary and a grammar for foreign learners. All the bookshops, bar one, seem to be owned by Mladinska knijga but, in any case, there's a good (if expensive) selection of both. There's also an interesting selection of English language books on politics and current affairs mixed in with the Slovene language ones. Later I'm very pleased to meet political blogger Pengovsky and over lunch I learn inter alia that Slovenes are, as I had suspected, big readers and bad drivers and, that electoral appearances aside the the Slovene right has never enjoyed the social and political traction it has elsewhere in CEE. There are , admittedly, bitter arguments between Slovenes about the moral and political status of the wartime communist partisan movement and collaborationist domobranci , but a Slovene lustration law or a flat tax reform would be about as likely as a snow flake in July.

(...)

Before meeting to colleagues at the Social Sciences Faculty, I still have a little time to kill. I feel a a bit guilty just walking round the Old Town seeing the sights, so as the rain sets in I set off for the Museum of Contemporary History, which is just outside the city centre in grounds of the Tivoli park in a small chateau-cum-palace. By the time I get there, the skies have darkened and the rain is pouring. I'm dripping wet and also the only visitor. They switch on the lights and multi-media displays especially for me. There's a special exhibition about Slovenes in the First World War as well a permanent exhibition about the Slovenia's 's 20th century history. I am struck by the intensity of the propaganda drive to attach Slovenia to the emergent Yugoslav state in 1990s; the fact that even the most radical Slovene nationalists seem not to have contemplated independence (perhaps Slovenia, like Slovakia was then too small and too poor); and the slightly odd jumps from darkly condemning post-war crimes of the Tito regime against political opponents to celebrating Slovenia's industrial achievement in 1960s and 70s.

The exhibition culminates with a room commemorating the Ten Day War in 1991, when Slovenia's territorial forces and police put up unexpectedly stiff resistance to the Yugoslav Federal Army's brutal, but ill-coordinated (and ultimately short-lived attempt) to keep them in the disintegrating Yugoslav federation by force. A multi-screen documentary tells the story through well cut archive footage interspersed with interviews. It is emotive and manipulative in places - there is a broader and much grimmer political outcome to think of - the Ten Day War as the overture to wars of Yugoslav succession) but every new country needs a founding narrative, and as these things go, seems one that stands up. As I watched the scenes of tanks pushing aside bus barricades and angry crowds chanting 'okupanti' at soldiers at passing armoured vehicles, it all struck me as eerily reminiscent of August 1968 in Czechoslovakia - and, of course, Czech failure to resist after Munich September 1938 is still an open wound. I suppose the Czech equivalent is the Velvet Revolution, but can (and has) been dismissed as the overdue collapse of a rotten regime, rather than an active national project.

(...)

I turn up at Pučnik airport an hour before my 7am flight. I needn't have bothered. The usual security and passport checks take a grand total of 20 minutes, boarding takes place 10 minutes before take off. There are various coffee bars in the recently modernized airport, but they are all closed. I sit and sleepily re-read Sherlock Holmes for a while. Most of the passengers sensibly appear at the departure gate five minutes before boarding. The Adria Airways jet, is like Slovenia itself, is small and comfortable but unflashy and unfussy. At Gatwick we walk for 25 minutes to get to passport control.

Into the grey

An interesting up-to-date briefing on population ageing and reform in emerging economies by the Oxford Centre on Ageing appears here.

Prague diary

I'm in Prague - doing more interviews with age-oriented NGOs and pensioners' interest groups. After Brno and Hradec Kralové, Prague at first seems to be terribly crowded and hurried, but after travelling around a bit on bus and metro a bit and making a few arrangements, I quickly realise, that compared to London, the Czech capital and its pace of life is all still on very human scale. Contrasting organizations have contrasting locales: the Život '90 NGO is headquartered in a cobbled streeton the outskirts of the Old Town, a few metres from a postcard view of Prague Castle across the Vltava. The slightly unreal air is added to when walking a little further down the street after the interview, my wish for an internet café and somewhere to buy groceries are instantly granted. I stand in a queue with some Ukrainian building workers in a oddly old fashioned grocers with all the good behind the counter, then have a cup of coffee, wriite up some notes and check my email in the café. It's approaching lunchtime, but I'm the only customer.

The office of the retired trade unionist' organization also has a fantastic panoramic view across Prague from its ninth floor office in the massive communist-ara House of Trade Union. But there any similarities end. The trade union HQ is situated on the historically working class, traditionally bohemian, but now rather down run-down Žižkov district. Ugly on the outside, it size and scale inside are imposing despite its rather faded and worn appearance. More palpable perhaps are the sense of emptiness and inactivity in the wide, dimly lit corridors. The Czech trade union movement is still a force to be reckoned with, but, as my hosts explain over coffee and chlebičky, is in slow decline, meaning the pensioners' movement needs to hedge its bets and be more than just organiying as the retired wing of the labour movement.

The Economic University is just up the road and, perhaps because of this, there are various cheap shops and cafes nearby. I pop into one for another coffee and a few minutes to collect my thoughts and go over my notes away from the icy rain outside, but succumb to the cheap pizza on special offer (two slices for 80 crowns). I go upstairs to get away from the blaring radio. Ithe upstairs is empty apart from an old lady sitting in the reading Literární noviny, who has also taken advantage of the same special offer. The pizza is excellent.

I head back to my hotel. In the metro some some of the passengers are amused by a bit od neatly written political graffiti

"Co to je za svět?
... komunisté zpět"

They agree, as Czechs always do, that things are indeed going to the dogs. Slightly odd , as Prague is still very much controlled by the right and the Communists are zpět only in five of the country's 14 regional authorities and only have direct represention in the regional executive in two.

I flop down in front of the a generously sized hotel television, but quickly tire of Euronews and instead watch a historical docu-drama called Kdyby ('What If') on ČT2. This week's counterfactual is what if Czechs had resisted the Munich Agreement in 1938 and fought the Nazi invasion. The programme's answer is plausible if obvious: they would have lost in a few weeks or months, but gone down albeit fighting with Prague in ruins. Less convincing, is the fact that the main dramatis personnae are a serious of obscure generals: we never see Beneš or the other politicians, who really made the real decisions in 1938 and might - perhaps? - have decided otherwise. It would, for once, also be useful to have some historians' views interspersing the rather wooden acting and cod 1930s radio annoucements.

Greys push Serbian coalition for pension hike

Serbia’s pro-European government has (more) problems because of an obstreperous junior coalition partner. However, it’s not the communists-turned-socialists-turned-nationalists-turned-something-else of the Socialist Party who are the problem, but, reports B92, their allies and sidekicks in the Party of United (or if you prefer Associated) Pensioners (PUPS). And, for once the issue, isn’t nationalism but bread and butter who-gets-what politics that anyone can understand: PUPSs is straightforwardly demanding a big and costly pension hike. Similarly hard bargains have been driven by pensioners’ parties in the newly formed quad-coalition in Slovenia and the now defunct Kadima led administration in Israel.

Update: And, just to update, Earth Times reports that a deal has been signed

“In the end, the smallest partner in the ruling alliance, the pensioners party PUPS, wrangled a concession to keep a 10-per cent increase of pensions that it promised its voters ahead of May polls.

To compensate, [Serbian PM Mirko] Cvetkovic was forced to agree to a freeze in public sector salaries starting immediately and lasting until at least October 2009 - which may lead to protests and strikes.”

A neat illusion of generational politics and the usefulness of a small kingmaker pensioners' party? Perhaps, although Balkan Insight notes that the deal does involve then freezing pensions in 2009

In Croatia similar pressures linked to an IMF bailout reportedly threatens the Sanader government’s coalition with the (much weaker) Croatian Pensioners’ Party (HSU), although I dare say he may manage a little more easily without the HSU’s one deputy.

Grey days in the Czech Republic

I am on the road in the Czech Republic , or rather on the rails - travelling by tram and train - using some study leave and a small grant to do some research on interest groups representing pensioners. It is an unresearched field - indeed, apart from a lot of literature on the American AARP and to a certain extent on the Canadian and Swedish senior movements - there is not a lot even on West European cases. Perhaps a little too under-researched then.

Today I am in Brno. I used to live here, so I know the city reasonably well, although the tram routes have been confusingly changed and it seems impossible to get a cheap cup of coffee anywhere in the city centre. Social policy and social security seem to be the flavour of the month in the Czech Republic just now: the Social Democrats are taking over in the regions rolling back prescription charges wherever they go, sometimes in coalition with the Communists, sometimes with newly pragmatic local Civic Democrats and sometimes alone, but with a little help from the Communists.

The weather is grey and autumnal. Three fully kitted out ice hockey players walk through the city centre, but no one bats an eyelid. I get the tram back to where I am staying to type up my research notes and listen to the man in front complaining that he bought a second hand mobile and the girlfriend of the previous owner keeps ringing him up by mistake.

Tomorrow I go to Hradec Králové.

Poland: retiring early retirement

The Warsaw Voice reports protests by trade unionists over the scaling back of early retirement schemes - one of the last remaining special social policies of the transition period intended - some say - to dampen down the possibilty of Latin American style social unrest. Probably the political system is stable enough, the government popular enough, the coffers empty enough and workers in declining heavy industies weak enough to allow this to happen now. Public sector workers may have few unpleasant surprises up their sleeves, but as events last year in Bulgaria showed, no one cares that much if the education system grinds to halt.

Slovakia and Argentina: the East becoming the South - or the North?

Slovak daily Sme discusses the parallels between Argentina, Iceland and Slovakia as small vulnerable economies and, specifically, the state taking control of the second pillar of a reformed pension system (compulsory individual savings). The global financial crisis is of course in a sense, good news for politicians with genuine etatist leanings such as Robert Fico, for whom the three pillar pension system left by radically reforming predecessor governing has become a real battleground.