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Czech Far Right Has-Bean
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After a long period of exam season induced hibernation - if that's the right word in the summer - I've completed a conference paper for a workshop on populism The Czech Republicans 1990-1998: Rise and Fall of Populist Radical Right Outsider Party. N...
Tide of eco-anarchism
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I picked up a eco-anarchist community newsletter , the PorkBolter on the beach in, of all places, Worthing: an odd mix of populist anti-capitalism and surban nimbyism. Apparantly, a 'pork-bolter' is a historical name for someone from Worthing. They m...
What price Czech democracy? About three quid a vote
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The Czech press reported that Roma in Ostrava were each being paid 100 crowns (about 4 euros or £3 sterling) to vote for the Social Democrats, although there seems to be no real evidence that the practice of vote buying (a not unknown occurence in s...
Czech parliament: Public Affairs and Communists do best on women and youth
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And how new are those new Czech parties? In terms of youth and greater representation of women - both useful tools in the content-free populist's political toolbox, but also genuinely important in terms of democratic quality - a quick glance at the n...
Czech Republic: What the elections mean
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So, what does the Czech 'earthquake election' mean for Czech and Central European politics? As with the famous Ho-Chi Minh quote on the French Revolution, it is basically too early to tell - and probably will be for about another 10 or 20 years, but,...
Czech elections: How I got it wrong (again) - and why
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The Czech election have happened and as soon as the exit polls came in, it was clear something pretty unusual had happened. When the results came in the Social Democrats 'had won', but both big parties' score were way down on what had been predicted...
Wordle-izing Slovakia's centre-left
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And, as I know you've all been lying awake, wondering about the politics of Central European social democracy, here's a quick Wordle-ization of the prgramme that Robert Fico's Smer is serving up to the Slovak electorate for their also forthcoming ele...
Czech elections: Mind my Wordle
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So what are the Czech elections about? Well, as glance at the rash of orange billboards - and milder outbreak of blue ones - will tell you "It's the welfare state, stupid". And especially the health service, where the nominal charges introduced by th...
Czech elections: More new old politics
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The Czech elections are on the horizon and they promise to be interesting, if, as ever, deadlocked and inconclusive. They should perhaps tell catetaker Prime Minister Fischer and his government of technocrats not to packs their bags just yet.Over a...
Now listen carefully children....
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Hmm, the Czech Civic Democrats seem to be pitching for the votes of 12 year olds in this South Park parody reported in iHNed.cz- still what were British Conservative candidates told to bear in mind when addressing audiences? "Imagine you are talking...
New old politics
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The unfolding drama of coalition formation, although in a more lucid moment I had inadvertantly predicted it, left me non-plussed and not very happy: partly because I didn't like the outcome and because, not for the first time, political events I th...
Election diary
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I tried very hard not to be interested in the election campaign, avoiding the historic TV debates and most of the day-to-day media flim flam - although 'Bigotgate' offered a grim confirmation that politicians are exactly has depicted in the TV satire...
Polls together
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The Guardian has thoughfully offered all its ICM/Guarduan opinion polling figures for last 26 years in downloadable form for readers to mash up. So in the spirit of do-it-yourself quantitaive analysis, I decided to look at the 1984-2010 six month mov...
Golden Brown: How Gordon might have pulled it off?
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And here's a UK election result you won't see this Thursday - again courtesy of the Prime Minister Forever 2010 computer simulation game: Labour and the Tories tied for the popular vote on 30% with Labour gaining 300 seats and Cameron's Conservatives...
Virtually Nick Clegg
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I didn't go to Westminster school, can't ski, don't speak Dutch and may not vote Liberal Democrat, but in a very real sense for about an hour last night I was Nick Clegg and, what's more, I see the 2010 election results come in seat-by-seat and I can...
Eurostar to Brno? The Economist's fantasy Europe
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The Economist offers an odd, slightly heavy handed bit fantasy geography (aren't there just a few more important things going on?) re-arranging the countries of Europe by character, political stability and fiscal rectitude. The Czech Republic is now...
Regional poll suggests Czech Christian Democrats face electoral oblivion
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Lidovci příliš nezáří ani na jihu Moravy - ve své tradiční baště reports ČT24, the Czech CNN (as if). Translated this means that the Czech Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL) are - according to regional polling - down to a grim six percent ev...
The Straight Choice online UK election leaflet archive
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I came across a very interesting website mapping UK election leaflets - The Straight Choice | The election leaflet project. Voters are invited to photo or scan election material that comes through their letterbox. Interesting, as it picks on variatio...
UK Tories to send gay MP to quell Polish social conservatives
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Conservative party to send gay MP to quell EU extremists reports The Guardian. The story? Nick Herbert, Conservative MP for Arundel and South Downs, Tory spokesperson for the environment and one of several openly gay Conservative MPs has drawn the sh...
Shock horror - Czech Social Democrat leader once a Socialist, then a moderate
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I have been sent convincing proof that Czech Social Democrat leader Jiří Paroubek was in 1989 a functionary of the satellite Czechoslovak Socialist Party (ČSS) (above right) and gave an interview to the ČSS newspaper saying nice things about Vict...
