While Switzerland isn’t the most financially secretive nation in the Tax Justice Network’s recently published report, its combination of size and secrecy pushed it into first place, the worst rank in the Financial Secrecy Index 2018. Size is factored in because it measures the damage a nation’s financial secrecy has on the world, says The Tax […]
Archives for February 2018
Ticket cheats in Switzerland soon to be listed in a national register
Tickets cannot be bought on public transport in Switzerland. Passengers are required to have a ticket before commencing their journey. Those caught on public transport without one will soon have their names put into a national register. This will ensure progressively higher fines are issued to repeat offenders. The new database will be rolled out […]
FILM: PHANTOM THREAD – with the inimitable Daniel Day-Lewis. Not to be missed
PHANTOM THREAD **** Any film with the inimitable Daniel Day-Lewis should not be missed. Remember MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDERETTE, MY LEFT FOOT, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, LINCOLN? This versatile actor has won three Oscars and may win his fourth with this film by Paul Thomas Anderson, with whom he also collaborated in THERE WILL BE […]
Switzerland’s most unhappy political parties unhappy for the same reason
Overall little changed in a year. 36% of the more than 22,000 surveyed in a poll recently published by Vimentis, said they were either satisfied or fairly satisfied with Swiss politics. On the flip side, 45% were dissatisfied or fairly dissatisfied and 19% were non-comital. The year before, 36% said they were either satisfied or […]
Recent poll shows how much Swiss care about the environment
Poll results published this week show how Swiss view the environment and climate change. 72% agreed it was necessary to do something to combat climate change, 5% were undecided and 23% said it wasn’t. 43% were in favour of a carbon tax – a tax paid by polluters and redistributed to everyone, 14% were undecided […]
CERN gains new insight into a particle responsible for the burning of the sun
After years of subatomic particle busting and number crunching, researchers at CERN now know the mass of the W boson particle1. The findings are part of the ATLAS experiment, which uses CERN’s large underground particle accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to smash subatomic particles into each other at extremely high speeds. The […]
The number of false Swiss residents coming clean rose in 2017
French communes bordering Geneva saw a rise in the number of those living in France but pretending to live in Switzerland coming clean in 2017. According to the newspaper Le Temps, the neighbouring commune of Saint-Julien-en-Genevois saw the number rise to 1,130 in 2017, more than the 1,000 in 2016 and the 600 in 2014. […]
Geneva – cross-border school rules to get stricter
Last week, Geneva’s government changed the rules on who qualifies for primary schooling in the canton. Currently, if there is room for children living outside the canton (usually in France or the canton of Vaud) they are accepted. Schools are managed at a municipal level and in some communes (municipalities) they are overflowing. François Longchamp, president […]
Bad traffic – Geneva and Zurich rank among Europe’s worst
Excluding the highly congested cities of Russia, Geneva and Zurich were the fourth and fifth most traffic congested cities in Europe in 2017, according to the automotive data company INRIX, which publishes a traffic ranking of around 1,360 cities across the world. Istanbul (3rd), Paris (2nd) and London (1st) were the only european cities ahead […]
Switzerland’s course for mathematically gifted children
It is easy to assume that exceptionally bright children are the lucky ones, automatically destined for great things. But being a very bright child can be hard. Many of these children feel lost at regular school. Some become withdrawn, others disruptive, while some leave school early. Kathryn Hess Bellwald, a Swiss-American mathematician at EPFL, one […]