Jonathon Swift’s ‘Big Ends’ and ‘Little Ends’ Lives On
Belgium is literally divided linguistically and geographically and this is shown in its political structure. No single party has managed to bridge this gap between the two regions and traditionally, the Prime Minister has come from one of the majority Flemish parties as approx. 60% of the countries 10.5 million citizens live in Flanders.
Meaning that when French speaking Miss Belgium of the year 2007, Miss Alizee Poulicek, 20, revealed that she could not speak Dutch, she was booed by some of the 3,400 Antwerp audience.
This reflects the political problems shown by the fact that Belgium is still without a government 6 months after the elections due to a stalemate between the main Dutch and French speaking parties.
The organiser of the contest, Darlene Davos was reported as saying that things could have been much worse. She would have considered it far more painful if they had said that Miss Belgium is an ugly girl.
It seems that, just as in Gulliver’s Travels, it still is of great relevance as to which end we eat our boiled eggs from. Are you a ‘big end’ or a ‘little end’?
