Alan's Green Thoughts

Without a doubt, 2020 has been the worst year so many British people like myself have experienced in living memory. First came the actual day of Brexit, and the realisation for many Brexiteers that Brexit was in fact built on fantasy and lies. Secondly came the global coronavirus pandemic, where Britain became the "sick man of Europe" once again with the highest death rate in Europe (or one of the highest death rates in Europe, depending on which month it was) and all its attendant consequences. Now for millions of Britons, Christmas has effectively been cancelled due to new restrictions. My 2020 Christmas message is therefore a short and simple one: Merry Christmas everyone, let us try and make the most of the next 10 days, let us remember all those who have died from coronavirus this year, and let us strive for a 2021 that will more than make up for 2020. 

The Romanian parliamentary election of 6 December 2020 resulted in a remarkable shift towards the economically and socially conservative. The Social Democrats (PSD) under Marcel Ciolacu (who did not become Prime Minister of Romania at any point, by the way) suffered a dramatic loss of support, dropping from 45.47% to just 29.24%, although they still finished top of the poll due to the opposition vote being heavily split. In fact by the time this election occurred, Romania had acquired a Prime Minister from the opposition National Liberals, Ludovic Orban (no relation to Hungarian PM Viktor Orban) due to the collapse of the PSD government, which resulted in some defections from PSD to the PNL, and to the Humanist Power Party. The previous PSD PM, Viorica Dancila, had lost the confidence of Romanian President Klaus Iohannis following numerous controversies over the Romanian embassy in Israel and a remark where she referred to some (neurotypical) MEPs as autistic simply because they "...