Category: elections

Malemaville 

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News from the far North East of the country, and the Economic Freedom Fighters final pre-election rally in Polokwane, the report on which contained this quote from an enthusiastic fan of the boys in red:

Am I… am I alone in thinking that this might prove somewhat confusing for the good people of (the province currently known as) Limpopo?

How are you going to meet a friend in that bar at that junction when every pub is called “Malema’s” and is on the corner of Malema and Malema? No, not that corner of Malema and Malema, this corner of Malema and Malema. (Although, of course, thinking about it, Malema does cross Malema as well.) (Several times.)

Every business you call would have the same name too: “Hello, Malema’s. How can I help you?”. You’d never be sure that you were speaking to Malema Taxis or the accounting firm of the same name.
Well, let’s face it, absolutely everything would have the same name, wouldn’t it?

Just how far would this policy go? Imagine the chaos at Malema Park when a dog owner calls his pet over and all the dogs in the park come running, answering to their identical name. Apart from Malema the beagle, obviously, because Malema the beagle completely ignores any human command.
For whoever he is named after, Malema is still a beagle.

Even when everything changes, nothing changes.

Look,  I’m sure that the apparently Teflon coated king of the EFF would love the idea of an entire province of stuff named after him. I’m just not sure that it’s an entirely practical idea.

OK (KE)

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Great news for Greek communists everywhere. You no longer have to make that onerous decision as to which of the Greek communists you’re going to support.

Yes:

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The KKE (Marxist-Leninist) Party and the Marxist-Leninist KKE Party have decided to join forces once again in the Greek elections with the joint aim of “overturning the barbaric Memoranda, and the fetters of imperial dependence and capitalist domination”.[link]

“It’s really impressive how two parties that span the ideological divide can come together like this,” stated one commentator.

Right or fair?

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The whining continues on Facebook:

The Tories won with 24% of the total electorate and yet have the power to govern with 100% – how can that possible be right or fair?

I was going to pass comment on there, but I actually can’t be bothered to get into an early morning political argument. And besides:

reason

But then, it struck me that I’m actually in full agreement with our querying correspondent above. Because earlier this week, Sheffield United lost the play-off semi final ties at Swindon Town 7-6 on aggregate. (I may have mentioned it here.)

Essentially, we lost by 7.7% of the goals, yet Swindon end up going to 100% of the final at Wembley. How can that possible be right or fair?

But then, those were the rules set out before the match started. And I probably wouldn’t be complaining if United had won, now would I?

Maybe there’s a lesson in there for Ms Facebook.

Election faces

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I think this sums things up.

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On an unexpectedly good night for the Conservative party, it looks like the end for Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and (possibly even, at the time of writing) Nigel Farage. After a tight election, during which campaigning was anything but exciting, widespread Facebook sharing of the political beliefs of various comedians, actors and musicians seemingly mattered not. What a shame.

The only downside is that now we have to put up with the pitiful calls of how unfair the FPTP system is (as if we didn’t all know that was the electoral methodology we were using) and the bias of the newspapers and the allegedly low turnout and and and… and how the NHS is dead and buried now (although that hasn’t happened in any of the previous 40 years that it’s been around under a Conservative government).
Just for the record, I worked in the NHS under a Conservative and a Labour government and both of them treated it with equal contempt. In fact, the only major difference that I could see was that we had a lot more infections in traumatic amputation wounds from the “45 minutes to WMD” Iraq war under the Labour government.

Anyway, it’s done. The winners will crow, the losers will whine.
At the end of the day – that’s how democracy works. And yes, it looks like a much better system when you’ve just won.

Freedom

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Ages (one year) before Mel Gibson did his thing in a kilt, although some time after Bill Wallace allegedly shouted the same stuff, came 1994 and South Africa’s first democratic elections, as today’s Google doodle reminded us.

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Much has been achieved in the 21 years, although I think that you’d be absolutely correct if you were to say that a whole lot more could have been done with a bit better government and a great deal less corruption.