Today's Google Doodle reminds us all that the European Election results are rolling in....Gill and I have already checked out what the BBC, Guardian, ITN, CNN have to say, read the analysis and posted on the 'Heels for Dust' Facebook site earlier...Impressive? Well it would be if we had actually managed to vote ourselves. Sadly, by the time it was clear that the Euro elections would happen in the UK our postal ballot papers would have arrived after we had left for Scandinavia and we have no-one at home who could vote by proxy on our behalf. Annoying. Anyway - here's the FB. thoughts....
Even if we had not been following the European elections they have followed us - passing posters from a myriad of parties big and small on a journey through six European countries over the past three weeks.
Denmark won in terms of number of parties and posters, it seemed every other lampost from one end of Jutland to the other promoted some smiling wannabe.
The winner of this poll of poles had to be Erik Høgh-Sørenson who had bagged Denmark's most northerly pole in the car park of Grennen Strands , the country's iconic end point.
As a candidate for the Dansk Folkeparti, a far right populist, anti-immigration party, we hoped that topping this pole would not lead to success in polls more generally!
Today's fun breakfast activity - mulling over all those wonderful pie charts and bar charts and shaded maps on the BBC site that inevitably follow an election night, not diagrams for the UK, but across Europe. Lots to digest, discuss and think about.
In an age of 'Russian bot' fuelled misinformation and fake news to was great to read some clear, engaging and balanced political journalism. Star performer in my book was BBC's EU correspondent, Katya Adya on the result in France:
"Contrary to some stark political predictions ahead of the vote, the actual results seem nuanced.
In France, for example, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen beat President Emmanuel Macron at the polls. A huge victory for her, right? And for the nationalist Eurosceptic cause, while Mr Macron clearly failed to persuade voters with his reform agenda for France and the EU.
But the margin of difference was so small between the two politicians, you could argue the opposite: that Marine Le Pen failed to truly capitalise on the weakness of an unpopular president, allowing him to emerge post-election with feathers ruffled, but not plucked. If you forgive my unglamorous analogy."
How good is that as an example of making a complicated point in an engaging and humorous way?
The same argument, I think, could be made about the Brexit party's apparent triumph back home, if you look past the raw results and consider the overall popular vote, then we seem as divided as ever, a close run thing between Leave and Remain. The impasse continues. Time to stop staring at the screen and look out of the window, oh, it's raining. ..
No comments:
Post a Comment