Not Funny April 30, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Elections, England, Britain and the UK, Italy.trackback
Time, on the London mayoral race:
Any enthusiasm for addressing this democratic deficit could be diminished if the May 1 elections see the British National Party pick up its first-ever Assembly seats. Promising to “stop immigration”, to give “British jobs to British workers” and to “House British people first,” the party is hoping its crude populist message will resonate with white Londoners. Some pollsters predict they’ll win one or two seats. It’s a timely reminder that politics isn’t always a laughing matter.
Yes, because stopping immigration, giving British jobs to British workers, and housing British people first would be such a crude tragedy, wouldn’t it?
The reason that Red Ken might lose and the BNP might gain seats is that a “city” in England and a “city” in America are defined differently. In British parlance, “London” doesn’t mean the core central city (which is actually small and doesn’t have a big population), it essentially means the metropolitan area. Imagine how different St. Louis City Hall would be if the whole metropolitan area could vote. Since Mayor Slay wants to make St. Louis City seem more crime-free than it actually is by manipulating metropolitan area crime statistics, it’s apropos.
Speaking of big city mayors, Gianni Alemanno will be the new mayor of Rome (actually, the Rome area). He was Silvio Berlusconi’s agriculture minister during his previous stint as PM. And he will be the first right-wing mayor of any majority-white city/area considered a “world city” in my conscious lifetime. He promises to make crime and immigration his top-burner issues.
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