Switzerland has no official national animal. Comedian Claudio Zuccolini therefore decided to hold a plebiscite on the matter. The nominees? Cow, ibex, bear and lion. But the marmot, which had missed out in the nominations, suddenly surged ahead with 10,000 votes. Apparently, the poll had been hacked. Via e-voting. Ouch. The cow won in the end, garnering 52% of the votes. A beef retailer from Grisons, no less, announced this victory for all bovines. In no way is that suspicious.
Are they going to take place? The fate of the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo was still in the balance at the time of going to press. Notwithstanding this, Switzerland has won 330 Olympic medals in total at the Winter and Summer Games to date. The only Olympics at which we won nothing were in 1908, 1912 and 1964.
The Swiss National Bank announced profits of 37.7 billion Swiss francs in the first quarter of 2021 – shuffling uneasily in the process, given that this is a deluge of money. The same figure would be enough to cover footballer Lionel Messi’s salary for 248 years – or pay out a lump sum of 4,351 francs to every person in Switzerland.
Mandatory, pandemic-related work-from-home policies are now being relaxed. Opinion polls show that only 10 per cent of us want to continue working exclusively from home. Yet most of us want greater flexibility to switch between home and office working in future.
Travel operators say that many Swiss families double-booked their summer holidays this year, depending on whether they could go abroad or not. Hence, the current flood of cancellations was inevitable.
Picture The voting to name Switzerland’s “official national animal” ended in farce. This yawning marmot missed out in the nominations. As if it cares. Photo: Keystone
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