Today's EuroWord is:

[chrishansenhome]

Flexicurity

One of the items of business in the European Parliament today is: "report on common principles on flexicurity."

I think I know what it means, but I'm quite afraid of it as well.

Comments

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

ooh - ooh - I know! I know!

In these parlous and terrorist-ridden times, the gummint's approach to security needs to change to meet the demands of the day.

You, the public, are the ones who need security, and so you will continue to be subject to almost omnipresent CCTV monitoring, have your fiscal and telephonic activities monitored without your direct knowledge by the security forces. This tracking will of course require more resources on the part of the security forces, who will have to find new ways to bend the rules to make it possible. That's flexicurity.

but of course, a situation where everything is mobile soon becomes a tangle of spaghetti. Some things need to be firm to form a framework around which flexicurity can move. So members of the general public will still be required to co-operate with the authorities when it comes to metal detectors and no-fly lists and what you can and cannot carry onto a plane or in the tube. People who are behaving suspiciously, or who have been reported to the authorities as behaving suspiciously (eg wearing the wrong colour skin, or having terrorist-likely names, or wearing furrin' clothing) may of course be detained at the pleasure of the authorities, with little or no recourse. That's the "secure" part of flexicurity.

Those same authorities however need new powers and abilities to fight terrorists. They may bend any rules they choose with impunity, and do not neet to tell anyone they have done so, and if found out, are permitted to say "so? if we do otherwise, The Terrorists Win. You need to make concessions in order to be secure". That's the "flex" part of flexicurity.

[post-ecdysis.livejournal.com]

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

precisely.

in one draft of my flexicurity(tm) analysis above I was going to rephrase my major point as: "the masses are subject to The Rules. the security forces can bend (or ignore) The Rules. They're flexible, you're secure". Or, as Mr Orwell phrased it, "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others".

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Sounds like it ought to be the brand name of a bandage.