Recently released EU figures show that Switzerland is the fourth best re-cycler in Europe after Germany (64%), Austria (59%) and Belgium (57%). Swiss municipalities recycle 50% of all waste collected. Europe’s three other large economies, the UK, France and Italy recycle 46%, 39% and 38% respectively. Malta, at the bottom of the table, recycles a paltry 12.1%.
Swiss referendum aims to change health insurance
Many of those in favour of the Swiss health insurance changes proposed for the 28 September  2014 referendum believe they will deliver cost savings and reduce average compulsory insurance premiums.  Swiss health care costs were the second highest in the world after the US and 66 percent higher than in the UK, according to a recent analysis by the Economist Intelligence Unit.  Often cited reasons for these often high costs are a lack of cost competition between medical practitioners, a system that reimburses the charges of all registered practitioners regardless of price, and the high prices of patented drugs – a 2005 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranking showed Swiss retail pharmaceutical prices to be the most expensive at nearly double the OECD average.
The referendum however is not about addressing these problems. It is focused on whether to replace 67 private health insurers with one national insurer for compulsory health insurance (LAMal). Compulsory health premiums can differ significantly. Just a quick check on bonus.ch revealed that in a typically standard case, the cost of a compulsory insurance premium ranged from CHF 533 to CHF 875 for exactly the same service, under exactly the same conditions.
Importantly, irrespective of the vote’s outcome, private insurers will still be able to compete to insure supplementary care and services not covered by compulsory insurance.
Those in favour of the proposal say that a single national fund would avoid the marketing, administrative and actuarial costs incurred by private health insurers, while opponents argue that a system which has only one insurer lacks competition and will lead to even higher prices.  Although both sides might agree on the problem, they appear to disagree on the solution.
For more information click here.
For more stories like this on Switzerland follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Swiss jihadists – foreign fighters recruited by extremists over the internet
Are Swiss Jihadists a danger? The silence of Switzerland’s moderate Muslims was broken last week following the arrest in Kosovo of two imams who had travelled to Switzerland to recruit for Syria and Iraq. Four days later, the Albanian Islamic Centre of Lausanne denounced what it called “the brain washers†whose actions “daily shock the world and which have nothing to do with Islamâ€. One of those arrested is the imam of the Grand Mosque in Pristina, Shefqet Krasniqi, who visited Switzerland on his Schengen visa. The police found a considerable sum of Swiss francs when searching his home, according to Albinfo.ch, the Lausanne-based website for Albanian-speakers. Swiss-born Muslim convert Nicolas Blancho, known for his extremist views, including a bid to create a caliphate, had invited Krasniqi to address local mosques. The official view from Bern is that there is little risk of jihadist attacks against Swiss citizens and that ISIS activities here consist mainly of enrolling fighters via the internet and attempting to hack into banks to finance its holy war. The Swiss Intelligence service (SRC) has not updated its May 2014 estimate that there are 40 jihadists from Switzerland now in Syria and Iraq. Terrorism experts are also monitoring the online activities of 60 others on Swiss territory.
A francophone network was recently uncovered, involving several Swiss jihadists. According to a French television (TF1) report on 12 September, Switzerland has become a target of French intelligence following the arrest of an alleged terrorist from Thonon-les-Bains, who was part of a recruitment network led by an unnamed Swiss from Orbe.
“This is a war being managed online, on Twitter, Facebook or through blogs,†said Christina Schori Liang, a security expert with the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP). “This has caught the international community flat-footed. It is the first digital war the world has seen and we don’t know how to fight it. They are basically friends talking to each other online. What happens is that one of them leaves and then helps to recruit others. ISIS is not allowing them to return because it is training them to become martyrs for suicide missions.â€
Other experts say that while Westerners are beheaded when ransom money is not paid, it is moderate Muslims who have more to fear because they oppose a caliphate. Schori Liang and others believe one effective weapon against ISIS is counter-propaganda. The US Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications recently posted a video showing ISIS sympathizers blowing up mosques with Muslims inside and executing others. It ends with a note to would-be martyrs: “Travel is inexpensive because you won’t need a return ticket!†It then shows a body being thrown off a cliff.
Meanwhile, the Savatan Police Academy in St Maurice is planning a forum on 10 October to discuss the return of religious wars and how to use the internet to combat jihadist recruitment. Lorenzo Vidino, a security expert at the Federal Institute for Technology (ETH) in Zurich, agrees with the official view that the primary jihadist activity in Switzerland is using the internet to recruit martyrs and hack into banks. He also believes the jihadist threat to Switzerland is small because “the Swiss policy of neutrality does not provide a source of political grievanceâ€.
Pamela Taylor
Solving Switzerland’s bike theft problem
According to Le Matin Dimanche in 2013 over 40,000 bicycles were stolen in Switzerland of which fewer than 500 were recovered.  The costs are enormous.  Insurers pay out around CHF 60 million in claims a year, a cost that is ultimately borne by policy holders via premiums.  In Geneva, Bern and Zurich, Le Matin Dimanche put GPS trackable chips on bicycles to see how quickly they would be stolen and to see if they could track the thieves.  In Geneva the fitted bike was stolen in 20 minutes and sold to Cash Converters. In Bern the bike was stolen and used for repeated trips between the thief’s home and the train station and in Zurich, the stolen bike was found carefully parked on the balcony of a brothel.
Swiss law enforcement agencies may be interested to learn of the efforts being made by Dutch police. Bike theft is an even bigger problem in the Netherlands with nearly half a million bikes being stolen last year according to Dutch daily, De Telegraf. Astonishingly, this figure represents a drop of 39% due to new measures being taken by the Dutch police – one small experiment in Noord Brabant led to 96 arrests in six months. Validating the claim, according to the force’s website, decoy bikes fitted with a track and trace system have been used successfully for some time in the Netherlands. English-language Netherlands News.nl, last year reported that bicycle theft in the country is increasingly dominated by organised crime and stolen bikes are being exported to countries including France and Spain.
Apple’s U2 iTunes stunt has polarised opinion
Le News went to Swiss iTunes and found U2’s new album “Songs of Innocence” there for free. Yes free!  This is Apple’s latest marketing stunt. Millions of U2 fans were happy to find it. Macrumours.com reported that the album had been downloaded over 2 million times by users just three days after being made available.  Many others however have been complaining.  They say it affects people’s view of their personality when their friends browse through their music collections and find it.  Apple has responded by providing an album removal tool. Let us know what you think.
Exploring tomorrow’s terrain
Planning for the future? Of course you are. We all are. But a solid plan needs to be based on a vision of how the future might change. How solid is your vision?
Most organizations rely on projections or forecasts to try and get a handle on the way things will develop in the future. Concocting plans based on a forecast may be fine in the short term, but if you’re crafting a strategy meant to assure your competitiveness five or ten years from now, forecasts and projections may actually be dangerous.
Why? Because projections paint a picture of the future as if it will be a variant of the way things already are today. You take the current numbers, tweak them a bit, and – hey presto! – you’ve got a picture of the future terrain. Or you think you have, and that’s the problem. By projecting growth rates, prices, exchange rates, etc., your focus is on the details, whereas it is probably bigger and broader trends – so-called â€driving forces†– that will actually affect you more profoundly.
Think about it. Is your long-term future success more likely to be affected by exchange rate movements, or by political developments, societal changes, technological innovations, or shifting consumer behaviour? For most companies, these are the changes that will have a real impact, yet in the typical 3-year forecast, such big-picture developments are often ignored.
So is there a way to discern the future lay of the land, given these changes? A fascinating approach is called scenario planning. This structured process helps you identify the most critical uncertainties your organization will face – the ones that could be make-or-break factors for you in the long run. By imagining how they might play out, you generate a range of different â€scenariosâ€, alternative ways your business environment could plausibly develop.
Unfortunately, even though its logic helps you visualise different futures, scenario planning can’t tell you what will actually happen. It is not a tool for predicting the future but rather for exploring it: what could happen in your future business environment? A thorough scenario generation session can open your eyes to new ideas about your future competitive environment. You can then see that different future landscapes will present different opportunities and threats, and you can ask yourself about your readiness to compete in these landscapes:
• How would you best differentiate yourself in each scenario?
• What challenges would you face in these landscapes? Can you already prepare your company now?
• What financial, marketing, operational, or human resources policies would serve you best in each scenario? How much would they cost to implement?
Thinking about the future in terms of alternative landscapes means you can make better strategic decisions today and more of them. But scenario planning is also a leadership tool. If you want to make ambitious plans, you need to convince your colleagues (and your Board) to support your vision of the future. This means you need to demonstrate that you’ve anticipated the changes that could emerge in your landscape. Scenario planning lets you do just that. More information: www.11changes.com
Woody Wade is the author of Scenario Planning, A field guide to the future. He is also a futures coach and speaker (wade@11changes.com)
Blatter to stand for fifth Fifa term – England not supportive
Blatter’s decision is not universally welcomed.
Sepp Blatter (78) has confirmed he will stand as Fifa president for a fifth term next year despite repeatedly denying that he would do so. Blatter claims that the support expressed by most national associations at Fifa’s congress in São Paulo made him reconsider. Several Fifa members, including England, state that they will not support his re-election.
SMS tickets to move smoothly around town
SMS: 788 for your ticket
Both Geneva and Lausanne transport companies have recently introduced easy ways to buy tickets on public transport. Travellers just send an SMS (text message) to buy a ticket on their phones and voila! But be aware that you need to buy your ticket before you get on the bus, tram or metro. Gaming the system by buying in transit will end in tears when conductors check the time of purchase. You can buy several tickets at the same time as long as you travel with the people for whom you’ve bought.
In Geneva send a text: tpg1 for a full price 60 minutes ticket (CHF 3.50) or tpg2 for a half price 60 minutes ticket (CHF 2.50, for children and people with a demi-tariff) to 788. But note your SIM card must be with a Swiss provider.
SMS: 456 for your ticket
In Lausanne, send a text: GL for a full price 60 minutes ticket (CHF 3.50) or GLR for a half price 60 minutes ticket (CHF 2.20, for children and people with a demi-tariff) to 456. Transport Lausanne does not stipulate that your SIM card should be with a Swiss provider, but don’t be surprised if that is in fact the case.
And the good news is that in both Geneva and Lausanne the cost of your SMS is borne by the transport company. For variations such as additional zones tariffs and terms and conditions, visit: t-l.ch and tpg.ch respectively.
Apple takes aim at Swiss watch industry
There’s so much more to a watch than time-telling
Apple, the US-based technology company, has predictably tried and to a degree succeeded in getting a rise from the Swiss media by claiming that its latest device, a digital watch, will cause the demise of the Swiss watch industry. The campaign disingeniously ignores the truism that a wristwatch is worn for far more than just telling the time. Apple’s new watch.
Swiss organ donor shortage
Every year 100 people in Switzerland die due to lack of an organ transplant, but the country’s nationwide organ shortage could now be reduced. A new smartphone app developed by Jocelyn Corniche, an anaesthetist at Lausanne University Hospital, and Swisstransplant, informs emergency-room staff that the phone’s owner is a registered organ donor – even if the phone is locked.
