Alan's Green Thoughts

Readers, the results of local by-elections in Scotland (none are scheduled for England or Wales until May 2021, despite the hundreds of council seat vacancies at present) during November 2020 were as follows (NB: votes shown are all indicative of 1st preferences, like all local by-elections in Scotland): (5/11/20):  Aberdeen UA, Kincorth/Nigg/Cove : SNP 1661 (47.4%, +6.7%), Conservative 709 (20.9%, -1.3%), Labour 429 (12.2%, -5.3%), Independent (Finlayson) 367 (10.5%, -0.4%), Liberal Democrats 128 (3.6%, -1.6%), Independent (McLean) 92 (2.6%), Green 58 (1.7%), Bellizzi Houston 31 (0.9%), Independent (Iroh) 16 (0.5%), Libertarian 16 (0.5%). SNP hold at stage 6. (12/11/20):  City of Edinburgh UA, Craigintinny Duddingston : SNP 2920 (39.0%, +1.8%), Con 1420 (18.9%, -4.8%), Lab 1205 (16.1%, -7.2%), Green 1185 (15.8%, +4.1%), Lib Dem 631 (8.4%, +4.2%), Independent (McDonald) 93 (1.2%), Libertarian 42 (0.6%). SNP hold at stage 6. (19/11/20):  Clackmannanshire UA, Clackmannan East : Con 1226

  "It's over. I said it's over." -TalkTalk advert in the UK, 2008. On 7th November 2020, Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden Jnr., who served as Vice-President under Barack Obama and who was a Senator for Delaware from 1973 to 2009 (36 years) made history by not only becoming the oldest President of the United States in history, at age 77 (he turns 78 in less than a fortnight), but also by achieving a decisive victory over divisive incumbent President Donald John Trump Snr, who incidentally in 2016 had set the previous record for oldest President-Elect, being 70 years of age in 2016. With that, Senator Kamala Harris became the first woman Vice-President in American history, and the first BAME US Vice-President, being of Afro-Caribbean and Indian ancestry. All attempts by Trump to throw out the result have been rejected by various state courts as frivolous. Although the election of Joe Biden was, in the circumstances, predictable given that Trump had angered not onl

Last month, the Australian Capital Territory (i.e. Canberra) and the state of Queensland held their respective elections, as did the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The Australian Capital Territory experienced a Green surge, with the Greens obtaining 6 seats, the most they have ever won in the ACT Assembly, which unlike most state elections in Australia uses STV instead of AV to elect its members. They gained 4 extra seats despite only increasing their vote share by 3.2%, with Labor only losing 0.6% of their vote share and the Liberals losing 2.9% of their vote share; both of those parties lost 2 seats apiece. The Green surge is attributable to increasing awareness of the need to tackle climate change, a particularly salient issue in Australia given the increasing number of bush-fires where climate change is clearly factor. However, transfers from both Labor and Liberal are also increasingly friendly to the Greens, and a new party, the Progressives, also split the Labor vote to deny