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 "...

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 Ea...

  "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...

Five days ago, the early British Columbian provincial election of 2020, which should not have been called that early given that the coronavirus pandemic is still ongoing, resulted in a landslide for the New Democratic Party, Canada's answer to the Labour Party. Even though the NDP were the party to call the early election, having only had a minority of seats and relying on the Greens for confidence and supply, they benefitted surprisingly well. The NDP gained 14 seats, 13 from the Liberals and one from the Greens; as it happened the provincial NDP MP who gained the seat of Oak Bay-Gordon Head from the Greens, following the retirement of former BC Greens leader Andrew Weaver (who left the BC Green caucus earlier this year) was Murray Rankin, who represented Victoria in the Canadian House of Commons; Mr Rankin was almost defeated by the Greens the first time he stood (in the Victoria by-election of 2012), and Victoria remains a top target for the Canadian Greens. In compensation the ...

The Lithuanian parliamentary election of 2020 concluded yesterday when the 68 of its 71 single member constituencies that had to undergo a second round of voting declared their results, with the proportional representation results having been finalised a fortnight ago. The Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union (LVZS)-led coalition suffered a resounding defeat, even though coronavirus infection rates have been low in Lithuania (10,949 active cases, 136 deaths, with at least 6000 patients having recovered). LVZS only polled 18.07% and won just 32 seats, knocking it down to second place in seat terms as well as regarding vote share, with the conservative Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD) once again topping the poll. Given the fragmentation of Baltic politics, it was however unsurprising that their vote share was only 25.77%, representing an increase of just 3.14% on the 2016 elections, and their seat total came to 50, amounting to just 35.5% of the Seimas seats. It was ...