As predicted, the European School Complaints Board has delivered a cowardly and intellectually dishonest decision in our discrimination case. It claims that it is not less favourable to have one’s children registered at Lux II rather than Lux I. There is no advantage to having your creche, pre-school, primary school and after school care facilities at your place of work rather than in a town 12 km away from that work. And the criteria for dividing up the languages are objective and fair – even though it is clear that a simple circle has been drawn around the South Eastern corner of the map of Europe to single out those for the out-of-town facility.

The thinking of the members of the Complaints Board is what George Orwell, in his novel 1984, referred to as blackwhite. Blackwhite means the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. It is caused by fear, indoctrination and the repression of one’s individual critical thinking. The fear here is caused by the enormity of the problem – to acknowledge the problem would mean having to confront it, and nobody wants to take on that task.

It is no coincidence that both of the Greek members of the Complaints Board were kept off the panel. The German member was also kept off, given that Germans now simply refuse to use Lux II. Instead, the panel was rigged with the remaining members – all from non-Mamer bloc, privileged countries – BE, ES, and FR. With Mr Kivinen from Finland, and not a single women assessing the case, there was little chance that the blackwhite thinking needed to deny discrimination would be challenged.