Scrapbook for September

09.09.2026 – Switzerland: government by wishful thinking

So, we finally find out, about a year after the fact, that it wasn't Trump's hard-nosed dealmakers cheating poor little Switzerland out of their 'fixed-price' contract for F-35 fighter jets.

According to the just-published findings of the Geschäfts­prüfungs­kommission (GPK), 'Parliamentary Surveillance Commission', a 'fixed price' contract never existed – with the result that the price of the jets rose serenely over the course of the ten years in which the Swiss government fretted about this and that.

Egg on faces time all round, but particularly for Viola Amherd, the Bundesrat, 'Federal Counsellor', who was a small-town lawyer before she took over the responsibility for the Swiss Department of Defence. The fixed price fantasy seems to have popped into her and her advisors' heads. Oh well, never mind, she'll get by somehow on her very substantial pension and, though she left the job under a cloud, need fear no accountability.

In matters of defence, the Swiss can sleep soundly in their beds knowing that Amherd's successor, Martin Pfister, a historian by training, comes from the same party, Die Mitte, and is just as clueless about what he is supposed to be doing.