VOTING FOR CHANGE (2)?
The result is in. On a 42% turnout, supporters of retaining the status quo First Past The Post system of voting in the U.K. won a thumping victory, by 68% to 32%. The alternative option, the Alternative Vote system, was at the same time both too complicated to understand easily and only marginally different from what everyone long had been used to. That's never a good basis for change.
The result is a crushing blow to the Liberal Democrats, and especially to their leader Nick Clegg. Having played his hand with great skill a year ago in order to create the Coalition Government, he made a strategic blunder in my view in not then pressing for a referendum on swtiching to Proportional Representation. PR is not without difficulties, but the devil is in the details. In contrast to AV, it does at least have a fairly snappy overall message that everyone can understand; "if you get x% of the votes, you get x% of the seats, and that is fair".
Worst of all, the no vote for change is liable to put back the cause of political reform for a generation. The last U.K. referendum was in 1975, so it is quite possible that there won't be another one for 30 years or more.
However, if the referendum was rather dull, some of the other results (for local elections) were not. Scotland in particular represented huge change, as the minority Government Scottish National Party won an extra 23 seats to get an absolute majority of 69 in the 129 seat Scottish Parliament. All the other major parties suffered, with Labour posting its worst election result in Scotland since the 1930's and losing 7 seats, and the LibDems falling from 17 seats to just 5. Both of the parties' Scottish leaders have already resigned.
This is the first time that one party has had an overall majority in Scotland, since devolution took place in the late 1990's. What makes it especially interesting is that it is likely to lead to the SNP's calling a referendum on full independence for Scotland later in the Parliamentary term. Scotland is big enough to be an independent country, and has separate legal and educational systems from those in England. Up until now, opinion polls have suggested that the Scots like the SNP to lead them, but not to take them out a union that has formally existed since 1707. But perhaps that will change.
Interestingly, although the Scots, like the rest of the U.K., voted not to change the FPTP system for elections to the Westminster Parliament, the voting system for elections to the Scottish Parliament is different. 73 seats are decided on a traditional FPTP system. But there are then a further 56 seats, with 7 members for each of the 8 regions used in European elections, which are decided by a form of PR.
Meanwhile, the LibDems are licking their wounds. As well as losing the referendum on voting reform and being stuffed in Scotland, they also took a drubbing in local council elections in England, losing control of 9 out of 19 councils (including Mr. Clegg's home town, Sheffield) and almost a third of their councillors across the country. Not surprisingly, the big winners here were Labour, who benefitted from voters worried about cuts in public services. But the Conservatives still managed modest gains, suggesting that voters' wrath about the current economic situation has been vented on the junior Coalition partner alone. Calls for his demise have been muted, but Mr. Clegg is undoubtedly under pressure.
Walter Blotscher
Saturday, 7 May 2011
Friday, 6 May 2011
RURAL ETIQUETTE
Here's a puzzle to start the weekend. When you live in a rural area, should you (or should you not), mow the grass verges between your and your neighbour's property, even though those verges are not on either of your properties?
It should be said up-front that the local council won't do it. On the grounds - presumably - of road safety, they get a local farmer to trim the overhanging trees once a year. But the verges don't cause traffic problems, not least because there are only four houses on our road, and it's a cul-de-sac. I did once back out of my drive into the path of a stray tractor pulling a gylle wagon. But the prospect of being covered in 20,000 litres of pig urine has made me more careful since then.
OK, back to mowing. As readers will know, I am a big fan of mowing. But there are divergent opinions on whether it should extend to the verges. My daughter's girlfriends, for example, think I am clearly bonkers. However, since the chances of my daughter's girlfriends getting their hands around a lawnmower and pushing it are about as small as my hitting a gylle wagon, I am inclined to disregard their views. Basically, I think it looks nice when the verges have been mown, as you can see below. I hope you agree.
Walter Blotscher
Here's a puzzle to start the weekend. When you live in a rural area, should you (or should you not), mow the grass verges between your and your neighbour's property, even though those verges are not on either of your properties?
It should be said up-front that the local council won't do it. On the grounds - presumably - of road safety, they get a local farmer to trim the overhanging trees once a year. But the verges don't cause traffic problems, not least because there are only four houses on our road, and it's a cul-de-sac. I did once back out of my drive into the path of a stray tractor pulling a gylle wagon. But the prospect of being covered in 20,000 litres of pig urine has made me more careful since then.
OK, back to mowing. As readers will know, I am a big fan of mowing. But there are divergent opinions on whether it should extend to the verges. My daughter's girlfriends, for example, think I am clearly bonkers. However, since the chances of my daughter's girlfriends getting their hands around a lawnmower and pushing it are about as small as my hitting a gylle wagon, I am inclined to disregard their views. Basically, I think it looks nice when the verges have been mown, as you can see below. I hope you agree.
Thursday, 5 May 2011
ANTIGONE
I went to see Antigone, by Sophocles, last night with my wife and daughter.
My knowledge of Greek tragedy is pretty much zilch. All I knew was that life in the plays is very difficult, and that they all die in the end. This is exactly what happens in Antigone. But it was well-performed, and not very long (less than two hours, including an interval), so I enjoyed it.
Walter Blotscher
I went to see Antigone, by Sophocles, last night with my wife and daughter.
My knowledge of Greek tragedy is pretty much zilch. All I knew was that life in the plays is very difficult, and that they all die in the end. This is exactly what happens in Antigone. But it was well-performed, and not very long (less than two hours, including an interval), so I enjoyed it.
Walter Blotscher
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
THE CANADIAN ELECTION
Canadians could be forgiven for being grumpy this week at having to traipse to their fourth general election in 7 years. They responded by dropping a bombshell.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper of the Conservatives had won the previous two, though without obtaining an overall majority. This week's election took place after he had lost a vote of confidence, when the opposition parties ganged up on him. Far from agreeing with the opposition, the voters rewarded him with 167 seats in the 308-member House of Commons, a clear majority and up 24 from the previous Parliament.
Not content with that, they delivered a crushing blow to two of those opposition parties, the Liberals falling from 77 seats to 34, and the Bloc Quebecois from 47 to just 4. The Liberals were Canada's "natural" party of Government for most of the twentieth century, and it is the first time ever that they have not finished either first or second. Their leader, former Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff, lost his seat in Toronto, and has already said that he will be resigning. The Bloc represents the aspirations of Quebec for greater autonomy within Canada and/or independence from it. After being a major issue for most of the past 20-30 years, it appears that Canadians are now much happier with the constitutional status quo. Their leader Giles Duceppe also lost his seat, and has resigned as leader.
The other big winners, apart from the Conservatives, were the New Democratic Party, a left-of-centre group with strong roots in the west of the country, who increased their representation from 36 to 102, with notable gains in Quebec. In the process they replaced the Liberals as the official opposition. It was also a good day for the Greens, who won their first ever seat in the House of Commons, in a British Columbia constituency.
Opposition Parliamentary managers must be ruing the decision to call that no-confidence vote.
Walter Blotscher
Canadians could be forgiven for being grumpy this week at having to traipse to their fourth general election in 7 years. They responded by dropping a bombshell.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper of the Conservatives had won the previous two, though without obtaining an overall majority. This week's election took place after he had lost a vote of confidence, when the opposition parties ganged up on him. Far from agreeing with the opposition, the voters rewarded him with 167 seats in the 308-member House of Commons, a clear majority and up 24 from the previous Parliament.
Not content with that, they delivered a crushing blow to two of those opposition parties, the Liberals falling from 77 seats to 34, and the Bloc Quebecois from 47 to just 4. The Liberals were Canada's "natural" party of Government for most of the twentieth century, and it is the first time ever that they have not finished either first or second. Their leader, former Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff, lost his seat in Toronto, and has already said that he will be resigning. The Bloc represents the aspirations of Quebec for greater autonomy within Canada and/or independence from it. After being a major issue for most of the past 20-30 years, it appears that Canadians are now much happier with the constitutional status quo. Their leader Giles Duceppe also lost his seat, and has resigned as leader.
The other big winners, apart from the Conservatives, were the New Democratic Party, a left-of-centre group with strong roots in the west of the country, who increased their representation from 36 to 102, with notable gains in Quebec. In the process they replaced the Liberals as the official opposition. It was also a good day for the Greens, who won their first ever seat in the House of Commons, in a British Columbia constituency.
Opposition Parliamentary managers must be ruing the decision to call that no-confidence vote.
Walter Blotscher
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
VOTING FOR CHANGE?
On Thursday the British will hold a referendum, the first since 1975 (on whether to leave the E.U.), in which voters will be asked whether they wish to change the system under which they vote in Parliamentary elections. Although theoretically eligible, I am no longer on the electoral roll, and so won't be voting. But I have a view nevertheless.
Most of the United Kingdom (but not Northern Ireland) uses the First Past The Post system. Candidates stand in single-member constituencies, often with historical boundaries tied to cities and counties, and the candidate that obtains the most votes is elected; everyone else goes home. Its advantages are that it is easy to understand, particularly for those who are not good at maths, provides a strong link between the M.P. and the local electorate, and tends to produce a two-party system in which the parties alternate in forming strong Governments with overall majorities. Tories and Whigs in the 18th century, Conservatives and Liberals in the 19th, Conservatives and Labour in the 20th. Or Republicans and Democrats in the U.S., another country that uses it.
There are, however, disadvantages as well. The downside of a strong one-party Government is the "tyranny of the executive", since the opposition is, by definition, in a minority, while backbench M.P.'s from the governing party tend not to rock the boat on legislative proposals, lest they miss out on the possibility of becoming a Minister. Moreover, because of regional concentrations, very few seats are genuinely competitive; in the 650-member House of Commons, the Conservatives always get 250 seats without trying, as do Labour. While at the local level, M.P.'s can be elected with only a minority of votes; in the 2005 election, for instance, only three (yes, three) M.P.'s secured the votes of more than 40% of their constituents, after taking non-voters into account. Which means in turn that massive amounts of votes are wasted, either because they are not needed in order for the winning candidate to get elected, or because they are cast for losing candidates. In 2005, 70% of votes, or some 19 million ballots, were in this category.
Worst of all, in the eyes of many, it squeezes third parties, if their support is evenly spread across the country. Under FPTP, a party can in theory win 49.99% of the vote nationwide and be the most supported party, yet not win any seats, if in each constituency some other party's candidate gets 50.01% of the vote. For the past few elections, the squeezed third party has been the Liberal Democrats, who have accordingly long campaigned for a change to Proportional Representation. Although there are various forms of PR, the basic idea is that provided a party gets over a minimum threshold (2%, 4% or whatever), it is guaranteed representation in Parliament, with the number of seats being roughly proportional to the party's share of the national vote. When the U.K. election in 2010 surprisingly failed to give either Labour or the Conservatives an overall majority, the LibDems seized their chance. As part of the deal that led to the Conservative-LibDem coalition, it was agreed to hold this referendum.
Which immediately raises the first question. Because the referendum gives voters the chance to switch from FPTP not to PR but to the Alternative Vote system, and AV is not a form of PR. AV is, in essence, a form of FPTP, that deals with the problem outlined above, whereby the constituency M.P. may well be elected by a minority of voters. Constituencies are still single-member; but instead of voting for one candidate and only one, voters rate the various candidates in order. If a candidate gets 50% of the first-preference votes, then they win; if they don't (which is likely), then the candidate in last place drops out and his or her second-preference votes are distributed amongst the others. This goes on until one candidate reaches the magic 50% threshold.
This is the system used in Australia (and the party leadership contests for both Labour and the LibDems). Its advantages are that there is no need to change the constituency boundaries, and that it makes candidates chase second- and third-preference voters, and thereby generate a "broad church" locally (so the chances of negative campaigning are reduced). Furthermore, there is no need to vote tactically, since first preferences always count.
But, but, but. In Australia, voting is compulsory, in the U.K. it is not. Furthermore, in Australia, voters have to rank every candidate, so that you get true AV; under the U.K. proposal, voters can rank their first-preference candidate, and stop there. If that happens, either because people don't understand what they are supposed to do, or don't care, then the end result will be somewhere between FPTP and AV. Secondly, and more fundamentally, although AV doesn't require it, the constituency boundaries are being changed, as the House of Commons is reduced from 650 to 600 seats. The general population trend, whereby people have moved from the inner cities to the suburbs, means that for some time, it has required fewer voters to elect a Labour M.P. than a Conservative M.P. Redrawing the constituency boundaries, so that they are nearly all exactly the same size, was the Conservative quid pro quo for the LibDems getting their cherished referendum.
Which raises the second question. Not only have the LibDems accepted a referendum which would lead to a system they don't really like very much (their leader Nick Clegg once called it a "miserable little compromise"), but the Conservative side of the grand bargain has already been passed into law by M.P.'s bound by party whipping, while the LibDem side has to be approved by an electorate suspicious of change, confused that PR is not on the agenda, and who will quite possibly say no to AV.
The short answer is that in the pre-coalition haggling, AV was the best deal on offer, what the LibDems now call a "baby step" on the way to full PR. One disadvantage of AV is that it may attract lots of first-preferences for extremist parties (the anti-E.U. UK Independence Party, for instance), whose candidates nevertheless do not get elected, since they don't pick up any second-, third- or fourth-preferences. Howls of protest from those disappointed first-preference voters (and their candidates) would then lead to demands for moving to full PR. This is a thin argument, in my view. The British are notoriously conservative (with a small c) when it comes to politics, and chopping and changing electoral systems on a regular basis is highly unlikely (indeed, it is not clear that this referendum will produce any change). The LibDems would have been better served by holding out a year ago for full PR, on an everything or bust strategy. One big argument for doing so is that PR is the system used in most other E.U. countries, and also for elections within the U.K. to the European Parliament.
Despite my thinking that the LibDems have rather bungled things, I would nevertheless have voted for AV if I were voting in the referendum. For two reasons. First, AV is not a particularly good system, but FPTP is a bad one. In 1951, 97% of all voters voted for either Labour or the Conservatives; in 2010, only 65% did, yet the two main parties still got almost the same number of seats, and that is not fair. Secondly, I think it's time for a change, even if AV represents only a modest one; British politics has been stuck in the mud for far too long.
Walter Blotscher
On Thursday the British will hold a referendum, the first since 1975 (on whether to leave the E.U.), in which voters will be asked whether they wish to change the system under which they vote in Parliamentary elections. Although theoretically eligible, I am no longer on the electoral roll, and so won't be voting. But I have a view nevertheless.
Most of the United Kingdom (but not Northern Ireland) uses the First Past The Post system. Candidates stand in single-member constituencies, often with historical boundaries tied to cities and counties, and the candidate that obtains the most votes is elected; everyone else goes home. Its advantages are that it is easy to understand, particularly for those who are not good at maths, provides a strong link between the M.P. and the local electorate, and tends to produce a two-party system in which the parties alternate in forming strong Governments with overall majorities. Tories and Whigs in the 18th century, Conservatives and Liberals in the 19th, Conservatives and Labour in the 20th. Or Republicans and Democrats in the U.S., another country that uses it.
There are, however, disadvantages as well. The downside of a strong one-party Government is the "tyranny of the executive", since the opposition is, by definition, in a minority, while backbench M.P.'s from the governing party tend not to rock the boat on legislative proposals, lest they miss out on the possibility of becoming a Minister. Moreover, because of regional concentrations, very few seats are genuinely competitive; in the 650-member House of Commons, the Conservatives always get 250 seats without trying, as do Labour. While at the local level, M.P.'s can be elected with only a minority of votes; in the 2005 election, for instance, only three (yes, three) M.P.'s secured the votes of more than 40% of their constituents, after taking non-voters into account. Which means in turn that massive amounts of votes are wasted, either because they are not needed in order for the winning candidate to get elected, or because they are cast for losing candidates. In 2005, 70% of votes, or some 19 million ballots, were in this category.
Worst of all, in the eyes of many, it squeezes third parties, if their support is evenly spread across the country. Under FPTP, a party can in theory win 49.99% of the vote nationwide and be the most supported party, yet not win any seats, if in each constituency some other party's candidate gets 50.01% of the vote. For the past few elections, the squeezed third party has been the Liberal Democrats, who have accordingly long campaigned for a change to Proportional Representation. Although there are various forms of PR, the basic idea is that provided a party gets over a minimum threshold (2%, 4% or whatever), it is guaranteed representation in Parliament, with the number of seats being roughly proportional to the party's share of the national vote. When the U.K. election in 2010 surprisingly failed to give either Labour or the Conservatives an overall majority, the LibDems seized their chance. As part of the deal that led to the Conservative-LibDem coalition, it was agreed to hold this referendum.
Which immediately raises the first question. Because the referendum gives voters the chance to switch from FPTP not to PR but to the Alternative Vote system, and AV is not a form of PR. AV is, in essence, a form of FPTP, that deals with the problem outlined above, whereby the constituency M.P. may well be elected by a minority of voters. Constituencies are still single-member; but instead of voting for one candidate and only one, voters rate the various candidates in order. If a candidate gets 50% of the first-preference votes, then they win; if they don't (which is likely), then the candidate in last place drops out and his or her second-preference votes are distributed amongst the others. This goes on until one candidate reaches the magic 50% threshold.
This is the system used in Australia (and the party leadership contests for both Labour and the LibDems). Its advantages are that there is no need to change the constituency boundaries, and that it makes candidates chase second- and third-preference voters, and thereby generate a "broad church" locally (so the chances of negative campaigning are reduced). Furthermore, there is no need to vote tactically, since first preferences always count.
But, but, but. In Australia, voting is compulsory, in the U.K. it is not. Furthermore, in Australia, voters have to rank every candidate, so that you get true AV; under the U.K. proposal, voters can rank their first-preference candidate, and stop there. If that happens, either because people don't understand what they are supposed to do, or don't care, then the end result will be somewhere between FPTP and AV. Secondly, and more fundamentally, although AV doesn't require it, the constituency boundaries are being changed, as the House of Commons is reduced from 650 to 600 seats. The general population trend, whereby people have moved from the inner cities to the suburbs, means that for some time, it has required fewer voters to elect a Labour M.P. than a Conservative M.P. Redrawing the constituency boundaries, so that they are nearly all exactly the same size, was the Conservative quid pro quo for the LibDems getting their cherished referendum.
Which raises the second question. Not only have the LibDems accepted a referendum which would lead to a system they don't really like very much (their leader Nick Clegg once called it a "miserable little compromise"), but the Conservative side of the grand bargain has already been passed into law by M.P.'s bound by party whipping, while the LibDem side has to be approved by an electorate suspicious of change, confused that PR is not on the agenda, and who will quite possibly say no to AV.
The short answer is that in the pre-coalition haggling, AV was the best deal on offer, what the LibDems now call a "baby step" on the way to full PR. One disadvantage of AV is that it may attract lots of first-preferences for extremist parties (the anti-E.U. UK Independence Party, for instance), whose candidates nevertheless do not get elected, since they don't pick up any second-, third- or fourth-preferences. Howls of protest from those disappointed first-preference voters (and their candidates) would then lead to demands for moving to full PR. This is a thin argument, in my view. The British are notoriously conservative (with a small c) when it comes to politics, and chopping and changing electoral systems on a regular basis is highly unlikely (indeed, it is not clear that this referendum will produce any change). The LibDems would have been better served by holding out a year ago for full PR, on an everything or bust strategy. One big argument for doing so is that PR is the system used in most other E.U. countries, and also for elections within the U.K. to the European Parliament.
Despite my thinking that the LibDems have rather bungled things, I would nevertheless have voted for AV if I were voting in the referendum. For two reasons. First, AV is not a particularly good system, but FPTP is a bad one. In 1951, 97% of all voters voted for either Labour or the Conservatives; in 2010, only 65% did, yet the two main parties still got almost the same number of seats, and that is not fair. Secondly, I think it's time for a change, even if AV represents only a modest one; British politics has been stuck in the mud for far too long.
Walter Blotscher
Monday, 2 May 2011
THE DEATH OF OSAMA BIN LADEN
Osama bin Laden was a very bad man. He twisted a religion to try to justify killing people who did not agree with his interpretation of things. He was responsible, both directly or indirectly, for the murder of thousands of innocents, both Muslims and others. He admitted to these atrocities, indeed revelled in them. The world is undoubtedly a better place, now that he is dead. Why then do I feel a sense of unease more than anything else?
Two reasons, I think. The first is the manner of his death. We will never know the full details of what happened in a residential compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan. But it had all the hallmarks of a liquidation; the U.S. is back in the assassination business. Even if you accept that the "war on terror" is a real war, rather than just dealing with a series of criminal incidents, there are rules. One rule is that if your enemy surrenders, then you take him prisoner and keep him in accordance with international conventions. Was bin Laden given a chance to surrender? Probably not. Contrast that with what happened after the Second World War. The leaders of the Nazi industrial killing machine, which, let's be honest, makes al-Qaeda look like hapless neophytes, were arrested and tried in an internationally sanctioned court of law, which then sentenced them on the basis of evidence presented to that court. They were not simply taken out the back of the building and shot. Or with Saddam Hussein, who was handed over to the Iraqi authorities to be tried in a court of law.
Get real, I hear you say, President Obama had to do it to assuage domestic political opinion. I dislike these realpolitik, "the end justifies the means", arguments. Osama bin Laden was a bad man, but there are plenty of those around in the world. Who is next on the list? How bad do your actions have to be before you get on it? It seems from the crowds of people shouting "USA, USA" that the American people like what has been done on their behalf; but they also look remarkably similar on television to crowds of people in other countries shouting "down with USA, down with USA".
However, even more than the realpolitik arguments, I dislike the moral ones. President Obama chose, in his address to the nation telling them what had happened, to justify his actions in the following way:
"Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth and power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with justice and liberty for all."
My concept of justice obviously does not accord with his. Obviously, capture and trial would not have been risk-free, even though the evidence against bin Laden would have been overwhelming. But it would have shown to the world that the West really does practice what it preaches. Yes, the U.S. has gained a lot today; but I also believe that when the world looks back on this day in 100 years' time, it will feel that the U.S. lost a little bit as well.
The second reason for unease is that bin Laden was killed only 100km from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. It has long been the view that elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence services are sympathetic to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and nothing in what happened last night suggests that this view was wrong. I personally find it difficult to believe that someone can live in such a large house in a poor country for so long without someone else knowing. Which suggests in turn that although al-Qaeda has lost its head, it may not be finished as an organisation.
Finally, does the death of Osama bin Laden make the world a safer place? On that, only time will tell.
Walter Blotscher
Osama bin Laden was a very bad man. He twisted a religion to try to justify killing people who did not agree with his interpretation of things. He was responsible, both directly or indirectly, for the murder of thousands of innocents, both Muslims and others. He admitted to these atrocities, indeed revelled in them. The world is undoubtedly a better place, now that he is dead. Why then do I feel a sense of unease more than anything else?
Two reasons, I think. The first is the manner of his death. We will never know the full details of what happened in a residential compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan. But it had all the hallmarks of a liquidation; the U.S. is back in the assassination business. Even if you accept that the "war on terror" is a real war, rather than just dealing with a series of criminal incidents, there are rules. One rule is that if your enemy surrenders, then you take him prisoner and keep him in accordance with international conventions. Was bin Laden given a chance to surrender? Probably not. Contrast that with what happened after the Second World War. The leaders of the Nazi industrial killing machine, which, let's be honest, makes al-Qaeda look like hapless neophytes, were arrested and tried in an internationally sanctioned court of law, which then sentenced them on the basis of evidence presented to that court. They were not simply taken out the back of the building and shot. Or with Saddam Hussein, who was handed over to the Iraqi authorities to be tried in a court of law.
Get real, I hear you say, President Obama had to do it to assuage domestic political opinion. I dislike these realpolitik, "the end justifies the means", arguments. Osama bin Laden was a bad man, but there are plenty of those around in the world. Who is next on the list? How bad do your actions have to be before you get on it? It seems from the crowds of people shouting "USA, USA" that the American people like what has been done on their behalf; but they also look remarkably similar on television to crowds of people in other countries shouting "down with USA, down with USA".
However, even more than the realpolitik arguments, I dislike the moral ones. President Obama chose, in his address to the nation telling them what had happened, to justify his actions in the following way:
"Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth and power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with justice and liberty for all."
My concept of justice obviously does not accord with his. Obviously, capture and trial would not have been risk-free, even though the evidence against bin Laden would have been overwhelming. But it would have shown to the world that the West really does practice what it preaches. Yes, the U.S. has gained a lot today; but I also believe that when the world looks back on this day in 100 years' time, it will feel that the U.S. lost a little bit as well.
The second reason for unease is that bin Laden was killed only 100km from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. It has long been the view that elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence services are sympathetic to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and nothing in what happened last night suggests that this view was wrong. I personally find it difficult to believe that someone can live in such a large house in a poor country for so long without someone else knowing. Which suggests in turn that although al-Qaeda has lost its head, it may not be finished as an organisation.
Finally, does the death of Osama bin Laden make the world a safer place? On that, only time will tell.
Walter Blotscher
Sunday, 1 May 2011
MAY DAY
Danes are pretty big on May Day. Many workers get a half, or even a whole, day's holiday (though they wouldn't have needed it today, of course). However, rather than dancing round the maypole or similar, they support the more modern version of the day as International Workers' Day. That means going to political rallies in the park, complete with flags, bands and beer, and where various party leaders tell them why things are going to be so much better, if only they were elected.
Having a picnic with your family in the park on a sunny day is a nice idea. But why combine that with listening to politicians? I can't think of anything more boring. Which is why I played in a bridge tournament instead.
Walter Blotscher
Danes are pretty big on May Day. Many workers get a half, or even a whole, day's holiday (though they wouldn't have needed it today, of course). However, rather than dancing round the maypole or similar, they support the more modern version of the day as International Workers' Day. That means going to political rallies in the park, complete with flags, bands and beer, and where various party leaders tell them why things are going to be so much better, if only they were elected.
Having a picnic with your family in the park on a sunny day is a nice idea. But why combine that with listening to politicians? I can't think of anything more boring. Which is why I played in a bridge tournament instead.
Walter Blotscher
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