Pelister showed what it means to have someone guarding

A camera trap caught a wolf carrying a roe deer in the middle of the night. A chamois, the first species to disappear under pressure, appeared before the lens again after a long absence. Staff at Pelister National Park say wildlife is being spotted more and more often since ranger service activity was stepped up. A predator at the top of the chain means there is enough food beneath it, which means an ecosystem that actually works. The open question is how long the service that delivered these results will keep being funded.

The camera caught what the patrol never reached

On the way out of the country, at the Tabanovce border crossing, police detained a 35-year-old Dutch citizen. Not because of anything seen at the crossing itself, but because the Safe City system had him on record as a driver who did 168 kilometres per hour where the limit is 80. Twice the limit, caught by a camera, which means he drove like that without a single person stopping him. This is the first case of its kind at that crossing.

Skopje started counting the litres only after fitting a device

The same logic applies in Skopje. The public transport company saved half a million euros on fuel in six months, and it did so with fifty more vehicles on the road, once those vehicles got monitoring. The figure is good news, but it raises the uncomfortable question of how many years the same fuel was flowing with nobody counting.

An answer without a single number in it

The monitoring did not reach the timetable, though. People in Skopje wait for a bus longer than the ride itself lasts, and the transport company's answer to that question contains not one single figure.

The fires burn where nobody pays

Near Nikushtak, 81 tonnes of water did not stop the fire, and an armoured carrier holding six tonnes waits a hundred metres from the first houses. At the same time, Kumanovo is putting out other municipalities' fires while those neighbouring municipalities do not contribute a single denar toward the firefighters who turn out on their territory. There is no camera here and no monitoring. There is only a bill somebody else is paying.

Violence documented after it had gone on for years

In a single day, two reports arrived of violence against people over 78. In Tearce, an 80-year-old woman was attacked in her own yard. In Veles, police detained an 82-year-old man for physically assaulting his wife, and the police statement contains the sentence that says everything: these events had been happening over a longer period of time. The institutions act after the violence has already happened, and the word they use is clearing up, not protection.

An anthem left unplayed and an apology from the wrong man

The folklore festival in Pustec ended up as a regional political story. Mayor Pali Kolefski had asked in advance for the Albanian anthem to be played as well, was ignored, and then apologised for a mistake that was not his. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama used the occasion to talk about "circus troupes of Balkan national folklorism". The Macedonian community in Mala Prespa has the right to celebrate its culture publicly, and that right does not become any more disputable because somebody forgot to press play.

An average almost nobody lives on

The average net wage fell in June to 48,381 denars, down 1,163 denars from May. The lowest sector average is 34,200 denars, the highest 88,262. Everything the word average leaves out sits between those two numbers. In Serbia the average wage is around 945 euros, in Croatia 1,500, in Slovenia 1,630. As long as the story is told in percentages the growth looks solid, but converted into euros the conversation ends quickly. Meanwhile housing loans jumped by 16.6 percent and companies pulled 8.7 billion denars out of their accounts in a single month.

The announcements stay parked until September

Filipche is announcing a Master Plan only in September, while saying the team and the programme have been ready for a long time. In Ilinden, meanwhile, an old kitchen is being turned into two playrooms for another 50 children, a concrete piece of work finished without any announcement at all.

The lighter part of the day

Ohrid got an all-Macedonian final, Gjukikj levelled it seconds before the end and the Super Cup went to Gevgelija. Jokic knocked over France in front of 20,000 people in Belgrade. This is the part of the day that does not need an institution to function in order to be good.

The rest of it does. Pelister and Tabanovce show that results appear where somebody is present and paid to be present. Nikushtak, the Kumanovo firefighters and the two reports from Tearce and Veles show the opposite: when there is nobody to pay or to react in time, the situation simply continues until somebody from outside documents it.