Comment by slightwinder
8 hours ago
> Ursula is basically a lobbyist without much expertise in anything.
She doesn't need to have any expertise, nobody can have deep expertise on everything. It's basically a politician job to have no clue and find reliable sources for an educated decision. And this usually fails hard on bleeding edge topics, because not many have an educated opinion at that point.
But as a side note, she did study something medical, so she does have some deeper expertise outside the political area.
> I think the whole EU should be reformed.
No reform can fix this problem. And always calling for reforms because of some detail not working how you want it is harmful.
"I think the whole EU should be reformed" reads exactly like a junior dev demanding a full rewrite from scratch.
Sometimes you have to rewrite from scratch when the original is broken beyond repair and institutional knowledge is lost.
A young dev may have an easier time seeing this.
Devs should not recommend rewrites until they have a workable plan on how to move forward without a rewrite, so they can compare the costs of rewrite vs. no rewrite.
> She doesn't need to have any expertise
By living in a bubble, she became less knowledgeable on common matters than an average citizen, and this even extends to her cabinet.
The proof at hand is the story of her "GPS-jammed" landing in Plovdiv.
She lied, her press secretary lied and there was none around to tell them about ADS-B, FlightRadar24 and how these lies can be trivially verified.
> By living in a bubble, she became less knowledgeable on common matters that an average citizen
I would trust an average citizen in those matters even less. We are not talking here about the daily egg-prices or which is the hottest celebrity at the moment. That woman is the leader of the executive branch of a Pan-National Organization. This is by definition a job with problems, which are very far away from the daily dread of the average citizen.
> The proof at hand is the story of her landing in Plovdiv.
What are you talking about? Pretty sure she is not flying here own plane, nor making the technical decision when it lands. Whatever happened there, has no relation to whichever abilities she might have or is lacking.
> What are you talking about?
Sorry for not being specific enough. I am talking about the "GPS jamming" of the plane that she flew to Plovdiv 31 August 2025.
Here are the fake news by Ursula von der Leyen press secretary at the morning briefing next day: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/media/video/I-276341
Here FlightRadar24 publishing the facts: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1962565122326700178
Here is the parliamentary question that asks why EU Commission was spreading fake news: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/O-10-2025-0000...
The majority of HN readers would have immediately understood that such lies can be easily disproved.
That there was none around Ursula von der Leyen nor her press secretary to warn them about this is really worrying me.
Not only these ladies are clueless... the whole cabinet is probably as clueless as they are.
If you take time and watch that press conference, you'll notice something even more alarming. Podesta, the press secretary, uses the words front and frontline quite a lot and give the impression that they are already at war.