I hate staying within rules. My mother thinks I was born a disruptor. She says it with pride like her stubbornness paid off and she lived her life as the Queen Elisabeth and not as an abused and poor Romani woman. Anyway being a disruptor, is clearly a brilliant (and arguably) genetic choice as being a Roma/Gypsy would not have sufficed.

For the last many years I was, paradoxically, employed or involved in the activities of some of the most elitist political bodies. Enjoyed greatly being a misfit. Not as much as I enjoy writing about the experiences I had to the dismay of the high level bureaucrats, politicians and diplomats I worked with. Some of the opportunities, I guess, came because I was a Gypsy and having a Gypsy on the payroll shows some kind of commitment to human rights.

During these years I had the “pleasure” to meet many morons, sociopaths, vulnerable or easy to blackmail, corrupt, mediocre or spineless leaders. I also met some very polite thugs in incredible power positions. Most of the times those were surrounded by rather decent people that decided to validate a catastrophic institutional culture based on lip-service, shameless praise towards the authority and vicious gossip to release accumulated frustrations.

People that are fully dependent on ridiculous salaries considering the efficiency of their actions. People that will not hesitate to make incredible compromises for the sake of keeping their own position and rationalise their choices in order to fit their positive bias.

I also did have the chance to meet some truly exceptional people, some, in positions of leadership. Those, unfortunately, are just the exception to the rule.

For most of these years I kept a diary. Recently I was invited to talk about trafficking. I talked about the industry of fake solutions. An industry built on talks and imagined solutions from very expensive offices, based on reports that have little to do with reality. About the hypocrisy around the refugee crisis, the stupidity in the way we tackle prostitution and begging.

And I remembered something.

In my last job I was told that what I write doesn’t fit with the institution I was supposed to represent. That I am “more like a foreign body “within the institution and that I need to adapt to the ‘organisation’. The guy telling me this was a retired ‘diplomat’ that worked all his life in the same institution. That used his privileged personal relationship with one of the leaders of the institution to obtain a position that he had no qualifications whatsoever for it. It was done in order for him to get a higher pension.

I realise that indeed compared with him and many others I am a foreigner and I kind of like being one.

I decided that I will write a monthly episode about the industry of fake solutions. Most probably I will start writing about a stupefying meeting with a Director General of the European Commission.

Too many ‘emperors’ are not just naked but toxic for our democracies. Most, I believe, even if they try could not get a grip on reality or change their ways. Lip-service is not going to save anything but a culture of hypocrisy. Corruption is not going to disappear if we continue to imagine there is a silver line in any disastrous project financed through public money. Yes there might be value even in a turd but not if it costs more than the horse it produced.

Well intended bureaucracies and NGOs that rationalise the corruption of politicians, that totally or partially close their eyes to nepotism and incompetence as well as blatant abuses against Human Rights in order to continue to have access to funding tend to end up being a reason for the problems and not the solutions of Europe.

These following articles contrary to most of what I write are not pamphlets. On 4th of November will publish the first one.