When I was a cartographer in the 1500s I used to hide dragons, sea serpents and the occasional heretical inscription in the blank bits, because at least back then the Holy Roman Emperor had the decency to pretend he didn’t notice as long as the tax broders were correct.
Now look at us: the Swiss federal cartographers, salaried, pensioned, triple-proofread, still cannot resist smuggling a naked woman and a cheeky marmot into the official topography. And the admisntration? They wait until the perpetrator has safely retired on full index-linked benefits, then solemnly announce the marmot will be "removed in the next revision cycle, pending environmental-impact assessment of the pixel."
This is what passes for rebellion inside the European regulatory state: a rodent drawn at 1:25 000 scale that offends precisely no one and will be erased by a civil servant who wasn’t even born when it was sketched. Truly the revolutionary spirit of our continent has been reduced to a change-request ticket with fourteen mandatory approvers and a carbon-copy to Bern.
I fill in another compliance form and weep for the age when men risked the stake for a badly drawn leviathan.
The looming sense of EU technocracy is ever present - I guess the kind of person to take offence at a cheeky marmot is probably going to be a perfect drone beurocrat. Although we do have to ask ourselves as a society, if we live in a world were a cartographer can't sneak in a little drawing, is it a world worth living?
I think what we need to do is fund an exhibition into the swiss alps to reconstute the terrain in the shape of a funny little marmot.
To be fair, the Swiss are not in the EU, but they do have a curious relationship with it as a landlocked enclave. (Much like Andorra, San Marino, and the Vatican.)
I see your pedantry and I raise you a freshly minted tellurium high pedant coin: it's a bit weird to call the NI border a "real border" given it's completely soft and part of the CTA. Q.E.D :)
Most of them were only in the lower scale maps and one of them is still there. Swisstopo even wrote an article [1] about them and gives some background and names the cartographers that added them. So our bureaucratic machine seems to have a sense of humor.
Of course, but they're fiercely opposed to the notion of being subject to regulation by EU institutions. The Swiss are well capable of regulating themselves to death entirely on their own, thank you very much. ;)
On the other hand, this same thoroughness makes their trains run on time and their products well-respected for quality and precision. Two sides to a coin.
To get back to my nitpick: It's a bit like casually referring to the US when you're actually talking about Canada. Some Canadians might be offended.
> Of course, but they're fiercely opposed to the notion of being subject to regulation by EU institutions.
They're also fiercly opposed to not having an open border, both for people and goods, with their EU neighbours.
One of these days something is going to have to give.
There had already been a few upset people over the issue, but then the war in Ukraine happened and the Swiss said "we're neutral!", and a few more got upset.
Eventually one of the deadlines the EU give them to get their act together will stick. It will presumably coincide with an economic crisis for one side or the other..
> They're also fiercly opposed to not having an open border, both for people and goods, with their EU neighbours.
Switzerland is part of schengen and has open borders. The same goes for a lot of goods but even between EU members there are some tariffs for certain goods.
Now look at us: the Swiss federal cartographers, salaried, pensioned, triple-proofread, still cannot resist smuggling a naked woman and a cheeky marmot into the official topography. And the admisntration? They wait until the perpetrator has safely retired on full index-linked benefits, then solemnly announce the marmot will be "removed in the next revision cycle, pending environmental-impact assessment of the pixel."
This is what passes for rebellion inside the European regulatory state: a rodent drawn at 1:25 000 scale that offends precisely no one and will be erased by a civil servant who wasn’t even born when it was sketched. Truly the revolutionary spirit of our continent has been reduced to a change-request ticket with fourteen mandatory approvers and a carbon-copy to Bern.
I fill in another compliance form and weep for the age when men risked the stake for a badly drawn leviathan.