International

Liveblogging the first ever British debate (except for, basically, every week in Parliament)

3.35- Clegg opens. Fairness, greedy bankers, etc…Also, the background looks like a children’s show set from the 1980’s. The Early 1980’s. 3.36- Brown and Cameron spoke. Yawn. 3.38- This seems like a Senatorial debate in the States. NO CHEF’S FROM OUTSIDE THE EU!!!!, Really Gordon? Really? That is where you go, the food makers? Have you tried finding good Mexican food in Britain? It’s impossible, because of THE LACK OF FUCKING IMMIGRATION FROM OUTSIDE THE EU. 3.48- Cameron just talked about robbers burning down a house. Yikes. 4.31- Totally stopped watching. 4.32- Clegg doesn’t like bureaucrats. Really...

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Polltracking the Revolution

Here’s a handy little interactive widget to play with to see how everybody’s doing in the horsey-race that is the upcoming U.K. election: http://cloud.del.co.uk/clients/betfair/betfairelection/tmg-tracker/tmg-election-chart.swf The important thing to know, for those not completely fluent in U.K. electoral politics, is to get a majority and build a majority government, a party needs to win 325 seats. Current polling seems to suggest that the Tories are closing in on 333-335, while Labour + Lib Dems are only at 286 (317 if you count all the “others”). Of course, Labour and the Lib Dems may not, or even probably won’t,...

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No hung parliament here

With the 6 May election coming up in the U.K., there have been a great many predictions of the outcome, and most of them entail either an outright Tory win, or, more likely, a hung parliament. Of course, the obvious next prediction to make, at least by those who are paid to predict outcomes, is how the hung parliament will be structured, and, most importantly, which side will the Liberal Democrats, the perpetual third party who have not enjoyed any power since World War II, will join. It’s pretty much accepted that, given a hung parliament, whichever...

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Walking around the Garden of Eden moaning about the lack of mobile reception

While PM Gordon Brown has yet to officially call a general election in Britain, it is widely assumed that it will happen 56 days from today when the English local elections are scheduled. For two years, the consensus has been that a Tory victory is inevitable. After the failed experiment that was the Iraq War, a faltering economy and a falling pound, fortunes have slightly turned for Labour in the run-up to the Gordon Brown’s first contest as leader. While even now few think Labour will garner enough seats to maintain an outright electoral majority, there is...

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Reader response time

Got a very nice email from a reader: I read your recent post about the possible fraud in Togo’s 2010 election, and your insight of the importance of democracy and deep concerns really impressed me. I think you might find this video interesting. Along with the point you mentioned in your post about how this election could be fraud and how this process could be really hard to challenge in such a political climate, this video covers from many perspectives about the current battle for power and people’s protests, it also briefly touches on Togo’s political history,...

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Ready to die

With so much coverage over the past several months of the Green Revolution in Iran, it’s easy to forget how often disputed election results occur in nascent democracies, how often this leads to street-level protests, which end up, far too frequently, with street-level violence. And even without violence, disputed election results, whether caused by wholesale corruption in the worst cases, or honest mistakes in the best cases, damage presidencies and the overall reputation of democracy. Most recently, Afghanistan’s disputed election last year has undermined President Karzai’s government, while the disputed 2000 election in the United States—arguably the...

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