Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Two farmers and a donkey


Two farmers owned fields that lie side by side.  They don't like each other, and they never have.  But fate has put their fields next to each other.  Farming is a tough life, and neither makes much money.  So, the two farmers agreed, with heavy-hearts, to buy a donkey jointly, and to share it to till their fields. 

For a while it worked, but as the spring wore on, and the days started getting hotter, both farmers wanted to till his fields in the early morning, when it was cooler.  

The donkey stood in the middle, on the line between the two fields, while each farmer tugged as hard as he could, trying to pull the donkey in his direction. The donkey didn't move.  He couldn't.  He was being pulled in two opposite directions, by farmers of equal strength.  After several minutes of excruciating pain, the ropes around the donkeys neck, being pulled in opposite directions, choked the donkey, and he fell to the ground with a dull thud. 

The farmers glared at each other for a few minutes.  Then they grinned, shook hands, and agreed that it was a damn dumb donkey not to follow their commands.  

oh, and except for the damb dumb donkey, everyone grinned and applauded this.  

2 comments:

Aaron said...

It will put companies in very awkward positions of being damned if you and damned if you don't. So much for all that talk of how the legislation will be really useful to business.

I think the LIBE Committee have over-reached here and have muddled the purpose of the Regulation. We were told that the Regulation was needed because harmonisation of data protection laws was needed (effectively they are through the Directive; even if a country does not implement the law or implements it badly, the law is directly applicable). So what we have is the Directive with some tweaks made into a Regulation. It goes over basic data processing rules and guidelines.

In that context, is the Data Protection regulation really the best place to be dealing with US-EU relations and FISA? This sort of re-purposing of the legislation would only end in rubbish law, that if enforced causes way more problems than it solves, prompting another series of statute as policy makers try to legislate their way through a problem.

It's important to remember that MEPs are up for re-election in May 2014 (when this legislation is due to be voted on) so this sort of grand-standing is for 'defender of civil liberty and standing up to the evil American bullies' cred.

If there is anyone with sense in the Commission, this stuff will be struck out.

Unknown said...

Haha, great analogy. I'm curious how things will end up with the regulation, it's touching all sorts of variables that no one seems to manage well. I guess it will be yet another example that when emotional discourse takes over ugly things often happen.