If that budget is for an 8-man team, in a sport with a 3 1/2-week season...
An (American) NFL team has 53 "active" players (plus a practice squad, plus ...), and plays a 5-month season. And has a lot of "maintain a major stadium"-type expenses, which (my guess) cycling teams don't have.
Based on your figures, and trying to scale...no, the cycling team budgets really aren't peanuts by comparison.
It's clear you don't know much about cycling. A pro team often consists of ~30 riders, and then 8~12 of them are selected for various races during the year. And similarly, that's the main team and they have development teams on the second level, junior teams, women teams etc
The season is longer than tour de france, that's just the most prestigious tour. There are other tours and other races. It's about 8 months long.
And I don't really think how long the season is has any relevance. You still train and need your apparatus whole year round.
The stadium stuff also doesn't really work in the favor of nfl. A pro team makes no money on tickets or concessions, and has to travel the world with their gear instead of a few states away.
The tour I think of like the World Series or Champions League tournament. Only one, highly visible, piece of a long calender (roughly Februrary to October)
> An (American) NFL team has 53 "active" players (plus a practice squad, plus ...), and plays a 5-month season. And has a lot of "maintain a major stadium"-type expenses, which (my guess) cycling teams don't have.
Cycling teams have all kinds of expenses too. True, they don't have to maintain a major stadium. But hey do have cars to assist the riders with food, drinks, spare tires, spare bikes if needed (sometimes multiple types of bike for some of the riders); team busses with showers, more food, meeting room (I think they also have washing machines in them, to provide the riders with clean clothing every day in a stage race); a service course for all the equipment, and to adjust and fix the bikes. Plus personnel to equip all those, plus personnel along the road with more food and drinks, and in some races also with spare wheels. Pro teams often participate in multiple races at the same time, so they need all that equipment times two or three. These days many teams haul mattresses along on stage races, to guarantee good sleep for the riders. All of that stuff, and the people involved, need to be transported to each race on time, sometimes to the other end of the world.
I don't know how that compares with say an NFL team, but I do know my head starts to hurt when I think about how to organize all of that (and more; I most likely forgot some stuff) throughout the year.
The financial part of the report I linked shows the NFL team spending $40M/year on their stadium & other facilities. And similar-ish amounts in several other non-player-compensation expense categories.
(Yes, I wish that report's financials were far more detailed.)
Maybe mainstream sports, but not when you spread it across the number of fans and account for their intensity. The Tour de France is likely the only cycling event most people can name. It's an awful lot of money for a very niche sport.
It's a niche sport in the US, but it's huge in lots of European countries. Conversely, most Europeans would struggle to name a single baseball or American football team, but they're far from niche sports in their domestic market.
Ylva Johansson was proposed by the previous Swedish government though (a Social Democratic one), which (sort of) lost the last election. No idea why the current (right wing) government is keeping her in place.
In practise, that means she's supported by all except one of the relevant Swedish parties.
Commissioners are typically not replaced when a national government changes, which is a good thing from a stability perspective (countries can often have two or three different executives in a single year). In the end, a Commissioner is proposed by a country but is then meant to work in the interest of the entire Union, in what is largely an administrative role (Council and Parliament are the real political entities). They are supposed to be uncontroversial people, respected across the entire political spectrum, and typically will stay in post for the duration of their mandate unless embroiled in scandals.
The Commission is far more powerful than the Council and Parliament, since it is the only body that can actually propose legislation to be voted on by the other two. If the commission doesn't want something done, that thing doesn't get done - including changing older laws.
No, I disagree. The Commission cannot pass anything on its own, the agenda is set by the Council and directives are effectively drafted by Parliament bodies (since MEPs have the ultimate say). The Commission largely routes things back and forth between other bodies but has very little power in practice, and is technically required to be fundamentally apolitical.
Until a few years ago, nominations for Commissioner jobs were mostly handed to long-serving but lower-level politicians. This has changed a bit in recent times, but not fundamentally so. One of the critiques of the current constitutional setup is precisely that the executive, in practice, can execute very little without constantly going back to the Council.
The commissioner before her was Cecilia Malmström 2010-2019, a liberal party politician (right bloc) whose second term was wholly during a social democratic (left bloc) government because the nomination happened before the election.
Unfortunately, both Sweden’s most recent commissioners have been prominently advocating against encryption and for mass surveillance. I really hope our new commissioner for the 2024-2029 period ends up with a better track record on privacy advocacy.
Unless it's from the Greens/EFA or The Left there's little hope. And considering that the EPP and S&D still hold the majority of seats in the EP, less so.
When voting about the law in the swedish parlament, both the left and green parties voted for chat control despite having campaigned against the law in the EU election.
Both claim it was a misstake, but ironically leaked chat messages seems to indicate that the green party MP Rasmus Ling did vote for it intentionally.
The "EU" is not "greenlighting" that proposal this week. The Council of the EU will vote on their negotiation stance, which is merely one step in the legislative process, after which the Commission (which is pro-scanning) and the parliament (which is broadly against it) will get involved.
> As the commission is the executive branch, candidates are chosen individually by the 27 national governments. Within the EU, the legitimacy of the commission is mainly drawn from the vote of approval that is required from the European Parliament, along with its power to dismiss the body.
So, the part of the EU appointed by member governments is the part driving this. The EU (as often) is being used here as a scapegoat for anti-democratic policies desired by national governments.
>The EU (as often) is being used here as a scapegoat for anti-democratic policies desired by national governments.
But if the representatives are chosen by the, presumably, democratically elected governments how are they "anti-democratic". Unless representative democracies are inherently undemocratic (and therefore most European government themselves undemocratic), I fail to see how this can be described as "anti-democratic".
In basically every democracy there is a way for the elected representatives to push through legislation which is unpopular or only supported by a small portion of the population. But this is an intentional feature.
If you read
>The EU (as often) is being used here as a scapegoat for anti-democratic policies desired by national governments.
as
>The EU (as often) is being used here as a scapegoat for anti-democratic policies desired by democratically elected national governments.
This is a perfectly fine statement. The policy is argued to be anti-democratic because of its substance, not because of how democratic the process is by which it is adopted.
A measure with broad popular support can be anti-democratic, a measure only supported by a small portion of the population can be pro-democratic. It's orthogonal and if anything there is an inverse correlation.
The issue of chat control is also orthogonal to it's "democracy". It is neither democratic nor anti-democratic. It obviously in no way invalidates people's rights to determine their government, labeling arbitrary issues as "anti-democratic" just because you don't like them is very unhelpful.
Without expressing my stance on this policy itself: Many measures can be reasonably called "democratic" or "anti-democratic" because they have the potential to affect the ability of the populace to express dissent, and organise political opposition, or because it is seen of creating the tools for the government to create a chilling effect in that respect. As such, it is not at all "obvious" that everyone will agree that it does not affect peoples democratic rights, whether you think so or not.
> It obviously in no way invalidates people's rights to determine their government
But it can do that, if / when it starts getting misused.
There was this "SS not all criminals" political party, AfD in Germany, that got lots of votes during the EU elections. AfD + Chat Control is not any good
Nonsense. Chat control is prior constraint of speech. You can't argue that automated content filters are not censorship. You can agree with the ends (or what content is filtered, and even the governance), but the means themselves are thoroughly anti-democratic. And rife for abuse.
The problem is they see democracy as only the power of the people and not the power of the people in humanitarian context.
So if 80% want to kill 20% that’s ok with them but wouldn’t be ok with people with a humanitarian democracy view.
The member states are as much a part of the EU as the parliament is.
It's disingenuous to say that this is not the EU, of course it's also disingenuous to say that the EU is a monolith who wants this at all levels, but two wrongs don't make a right
>And at every stage people will talk about how horrible EU is as if this has already passed, just like last time.
Even the idea makes me loose all faith in the institution. How can you be okay with people as deranged as this making rules about the future of your country?
"Not everyone is insane", just isn't a particularly strong point.
Could instead be like the US where citizens aren't even allowed to read parts of the spying laws that apply to them. The endgame being to surreptitiously bug every device and application with local scanning; changes in ToS that allow this invasion are helpfully conflated with the same language a corpo would use if they wanted to train models on your content.
There is: EU citizens can engage their peers in dialogue on how this behaviour is terrible and they can try their darnedest to convince their peers to never vote for politicians who are part of the problem.
Yes that will work. Just like referendums work in the Netherlands for example. 90% the population vote in a referumdum against a particular agreement. The government voted for it anyway and then got rid of referendums.
I would prefer to have decentralised government. This centralised rules for millions doesn't work and eventually escalate badly.
Just because we give up our responsibility to electorate in hope that they solve our problems. How could they possibly do that for millions of individuals with different problems and needs?
Sure, I can vote people into office, and after their tenure they disappear. But I can't vote their incompetent arses out of offices or prevent them from ever getting elected again when they display blatant disregard for human rights.
I wish that we had this possibility, but here in France the bad political parties have strong regulatory barriers to prevent independent and need comers to be candidate or have a chance to be president and sometimes parlement members...
I'm sorry, are you talking about the plastic caps that stay attached to plastic bottles so that they are more likely to be disposed of properly rather than end up in some marine (or other nature) environment?
I cannot believe you're comparing that (an effort designed to make recycling more effective, which is generally a good thing) to EU citizens entirely losing our access to privacy in the digital world.
The same, it solves a marginal problem (people that throw away on the highway only the plastic caps, and somehow keep separate the bottle), in an absurd way that punishes all the nice users, again, just to solve a small % of very cases.
The guys who somehow enjoy throwing away plastic caps, will likely remove it anyway.
The same with the spying, all users will suffer, but those who want to work around it, will find a way.
The irony is that it makes driving more dangerous now, as you need two hands to drink from a water bottle.
Punish is a strong word, it slightly inconveniences all "the nice users".
It's really not that big of a deal honestly, you unscrew the bottle, flip the cap up (it kinda locks like that and stays out of your way in one of the designs I've seen, in the other it's just attached and can easily be kept out of the way with a finger), then you drink, I fail to see how you suddenly need two hands as opposed to before...
There are many regulations that slightly inconvenience the many, to address the problems of a few. Individually these cases are benign. As a group they compound complexity.
Each new reform should be evaluated on both its benefits and the burden that it brings.
Wholeheartedly agree. But we (as a society) have neglected the environment for far too fucking long now, some inconvenience for tiny gains is valid until we start seeing societal and environmental improvements.
How exactly do bottle caps in the EU end up in marine environments? And if they do that should be pretty easy to fix.
These regulations won’t do anything to stop countries in Asia, Africa and other places from pumping their garbage into rivers and oceans…
To be fair I don’t really mind the bottle caps (unlike the plastic straw ban) but it hardly accomplishes anything beautiful allowing people in the EU to feel better about themselves because they are doing their part (which is possibly actually counterproductive).
The solution was an EU-wide plastic bottle deposit, this way, it pushes people to bring back intact bottles with their caps and get ~0.10 EUR back for each.
And if you are too lazy to bring it back or just a person who throws away stuff carelessly, someone else will do (big sorting centers as it's a big revenue-stream, the cleaners, the homelesses, some bored students, etc).
I'm all for requiring bottle deposit/returns schemes. I loved the Norwegian one for example, but if you require the return of both or nothing, you will likely end up with a net reduction in returned plastic. If you were to reward returns separately, maybe. But even then you'd be more likely to ensure caps don't get lost if they stay attached.
I dunno how you drink out of a bottle, but I most certainly don't deep throat it to have its neck in my mouth. Please enlighten me how it would make it impossible to "drink properly" when the bottle is flipped beyond the neck.
I have problem with 0.5l yoghurt bottles. Yoghurt is best when shaken before opening the bottle because its viscosity spreads evenly, otherwise you get watery yoghurt on top, bottom is too dense.
I enjoy having morning breakfast in the park, drinking yoghurt straight from the bottle. When I shake it, yoghurt sticks to the cap. When caps were removable, I'd put it aside so that yoghurt that stuck to the cap does not spill on my shirt, re-screw it after I finish and throw bottle and cap to the bin. Now it's hard to remove the cap and I spill yoghurt on my shirt frequently, so I go to greater lengths to tear the cap away and re-screw when I empty the bottle.
I do not know what it means to "flip a bottle beyond the neck".
Tetrapack milk packages have some sort of a "roof" on top. The opening is on one of the sides of the roof. It is hard to drink from that anyway, now additionally the cap is pressing against the lips.
You don't have to "deep throat" a water bottle either to feel the effect. The cap always disturbs.
It is also ugly of you have water bottles on a dinner table with the cap hanging on the side.
It is also harder to screw the cap back on.
But like in the EU, criticism here can just be flagged and then it never happened.
Passing is one thing. They waste everyone's time by threatening to pass idiotic legislation every 6 months. But perhaps that is the goal so people do not investigate why the EU is getting poorer and all money goes into housing and healthcare.
I'm not sure that's ever been true on PPP? It may have been on a nominal basis from time to time due to a weak dollar (1 EUR hit 1.60 USD or so during the financial crisis), but that's of limited interest for the average person.
It is still possible to contact your EU permanent representative group via email. Op link in "what to do" section has a precompiled email which you can send to your permanent representation group.
As little as it may be, I sent it to the Italian representative group, to the team that oversees telecommunications
Technically the commission came first, after this vote it'll go to parliament and then if there's a need for mediation the commission will be involved together with parliament and council
Also, don't project your own experience on others.