Alan's Green Thoughts

Yesterday's general election in North Macedonia was the first to be held since the country officially renamed itself from FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) to North Macedonia, having been repeatedly told by Greece not to merely call themselves simply "Macedonia". Like all elections in this current period, the coronavirus pandemic significantly depressed turnout, which dropped from 66.8% to just 51.3%, the lowest turnout level since North Macedonia gained independence from the now defunct Yugoslavia. Also, because of said coronavirus pandemic, this election was held four months ahead of schedule; it was originally due for November 2020. Neither the social democratic/minority interests coalition "We Can" (comprising of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, the Besa Movement, the VMRO-People's Party, and the Turkish Democratic Party) of former North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev (who still led the coalition in this election even though ...

Ennio Morricone, one of the best film composers of all time, passed away last week. He will be forever remembered for his "sphagetti western" film soundtracks, the most famous of them being from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". His music for "A Fistful of Dollars", "For a Few Dollars More" and other films by Sergio Leone will also be forever remembered, more than 50 years after these films were first released.  Jack Charlton, a former Leeds United player who went down in history when he helped England win the FIFA World Cup of 1966 (our only win of the World Cup to date; the closest we have come since then is when we were defeated in a penalty shoot-out with Germany in the 1990 World Cup semi-finals), died three days ago at his home in Northumberland. He managed to win as many as 108 international caps for England, a record that took Peter Shilton (the English footballer with the most international caps to date) 12 years to surpass (the curre...

The Singaporean general election of 2020 which took place yesterday returned the governing People's Action Party with a large majority yet again, rather predictable.  However, the opposition, led by the Worker's Party and parties that agreed to anti-PAP pacts including the Progress Party, People's Voice, Reform Party, Singapore Democratic Party, Singapore People's Party, the National Solidarity Party, People's Voice, and Red Dot United, managed to win the highest number of seats ever for the opposition since Singaporean independence occurred in 1959. They managed to win 10 seats, by gaining Sengkang GRC (Group Representation Constituency, a type of constituency unique to Singapore where teams of candidates either win all of the seats or none at all), holding Hougang SMC (Single Member Constituency) and holding Aljuned GRC with a 9% swing in their favour against the PAP. This notably resulted in the defeat of Ng Chee Meng, the Minister in the Prime Minister's O...

Yesterday, Croatia held its 2020 parliamentary elections, and as with most elections this year the COVID-19 pandemic significantly reduced turnout because many voters around the world still do not feel safe going to the polls even when social distancing measures are tightly enforced in said poll. Consequently, turnout in this Croatian election dropped to 46.45%, the lowest in any Croatian election since Croatia gained independence from the now-defunct Yugoslavia; this mirrors the sharp drop in turnout in the second round of French local elections the week before, and the Polish presidential election's first round last month. The perceived handling of the COVID-19 pandemic played a decisive factor in this election, allowing the conservative HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union), who were lagging behind the Social Democrat-led Restart Coalition in the year leading up to this election, to achieve a surprise victory, in alliance with the Croatian Liberal Party and the Croatian Demochristia...