The overall result wasn’t at all interesting (so much so that I didn’t even bother with a post on them the day after) but the details were. Some analysis and stuff later (quite a bit, maybe, as some patterns were very interesting), but, for now, a map of the results;
Results Map
The Canadian Federal Election is today; from what I gather we’ll get the first results around 3am BST. I might be up for them, I might not. In the meantime, the results of the 2006 election;
2006 Results Map (by Riding)
…I gather that Paul Krugman won the Nobel whatsit prize for Economics. This is a little strange; they usual give that to random right-wing idiots. Odd that it should be given to someone who actually knows what he’s talking about.
So, Jörg Haider is dead. Killed in a car crash in Carinthia early this morning. A shock, a big shock, but I’m (predictably) not exactly sad. Quite what happens next I’ve no idea; Haider was a fixture on the Austrian political scene and a lot might (might) change with his sudden departure. And I’m not just thinking about the ongoing coalition negotiations.
Funny how fast events seem to move sometimes. Of course that feeling is largely an illusion; a decent media would have picked up on the explosion of stories about the horrors in the financial world and all the drama of bailouts and bankruptcies and so on long before the real life media actually did. The illusion of suddenness has come about because it was all ignored until ignoring it was no longer an option. Apparently mildly pathetic leadership “plots” and the silly, self-indulgent semi-scare-stories about just about anything (except for the trouble in Wall Street and the City!) were all more important.
In other (but related) news, the Government here is to have a go at a bank rescue on a grand scale. Nice to see they’ve been sensible enough to use the word “rescue” instead of, as an entirely random example, “bailout”.
Some idiot on the BBC news website has decided to compare David Cameron to Hugh Gaitskell on the basis of their common use of a fairly common political cliché (“I am a man with a plan”, “I have a plan”, etc, etc, etc). From this awful start, things start to head downhill at some speed (the article even quotes Keith Flett; never a good sign) until we reach the following mindless conclusion;
“…But, as references to 1959 seem to show, the qualities needed to win an election can never be said to be clearcut“
Comparing Cameron, at best a shallow, second-rate schmuck of a politician, to Gaitskell isn’t just wrong, it’s also quite offensive; Gaitskell was, without doubt, one of the most “genuine” politicians ever to lead a major political party in this country. His cold (until the last few years of his life) public image and subsequent reputation as a revisionist (to say nothing of the unfortunate reality that many of those who joined the SDP had once been associated with him) obscure the fact that he was, actually, a committed Socialist and an equally committed Internationalist (I’d go so far as to claim that he was one of only a handful of senior Labour politicians since the war to take Internationalism seriously; his links with SPÖ were especially strong). Cameron, by contrast, quite obviously believes in nothing (other than, perhaps, his own ego and a desire to obtain power at all costs) and is obsessed with his media image; he is (to use an over-used, but in this case entirely appropriate, cliché) all style and no substance. Gaitskell actually leaned firmly in the other direction.
