As someone with an interest in Politics, I found the Euro election results quite interesting.
Whilst I'm not an exponent of the Far Right parties (some of whom did very well in the elections), I am glad to see that some of the populist liberalist parties got a bit shaken up and saw a drop off in their support, in some countries at least.
Equally with UKIP, sure they still have a few old codgers in their ranks who come out with pretty un-PC comments, but the overall thrust of UKIP's policies have some merit, from what I can see.
Sadly there has been some serious trolling of them and Farage in the mainstream and trendy leftist media circles, but ultimately the UK public voted with their feet, which was refreshing.
The Spectator has had some excellent articles on UKIP in recent weeks, here's one:
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse...-thursday/
On another somewhat related point, I was recently having a discussion with a Swedish girl I know, she's married with a kid, early 30s, very much on the Left.
I challenged her with a couple of jibes about Sweden's obsession with Gender and Equality, etc.
First up, she was quite taken aback, clearly she's not used to anyone challenging her views.
Second of all, she made a comment(half in jest), about my being a Right Wing extremist!
I laughed about it at the time, but afterwards I began to realise that that she was half serious in her comments, effectively her thought process went 'If you do not support us on the Left, then you must therefore be a Right Wing extremist'!
And a perusal of Swedish media reveals a similar thought process, across almost the entire Swedish MMS.
There's even been cases of parties on the right being persecuted by the liberal press.
The same happened to author Mikael Jalving (who wrote a book about his concerns about the direction Sweden was going in, particularly in regards to accepting so many immigrants from poor countries and the negative effects this is having on Swedish society).
All this in supposedly tolerant liberal civilised Sweden!
I could throw this stuff back at my friend, but am pretty sure she'd never speak to me again, so have refrained for now, but it certainly gives one food for thought.
Whilst I'm not an exponent of the Far Right parties (some of whom did very well in the elections), I am glad to see that some of the populist liberalist parties got a bit shaken up and saw a drop off in their support, in some countries at least.
Equally with UKIP, sure they still have a few old codgers in their ranks who come out with pretty un-PC comments, but the overall thrust of UKIP's policies have some merit, from what I can see.
Sadly there has been some serious trolling of them and Farage in the mainstream and trendy leftist media circles, but ultimately the UK public voted with their feet, which was refreshing.
The Spectator has had some excellent articles on UKIP in recent weeks, here's one:
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse...-thursday/
On another somewhat related point, I was recently having a discussion with a Swedish girl I know, she's married with a kid, early 30s, very much on the Left.
I challenged her with a couple of jibes about Sweden's obsession with Gender and Equality, etc.
First up, she was quite taken aback, clearly she's not used to anyone challenging her views.
Second of all, she made a comment(half in jest), about my being a Right Wing extremist!
I laughed about it at the time, but afterwards I began to realise that that she was half serious in her comments, effectively her thought process went 'If you do not support us on the Left, then you must therefore be a Right Wing extremist'!
And a perusal of Swedish media reveals a similar thought process, across almost the entire Swedish MMS.
There's even been cases of parties on the right being persecuted by the liberal press.
The same happened to author Mikael Jalving (who wrote a book about his concerns about the direction Sweden was going in, particularly in regards to accepting so many immigrants from poor countries and the negative effects this is having on Swedish society).
All this in supposedly tolerant liberal civilised Sweden!
I could throw this stuff back at my friend, but am pretty sure she'd never speak to me again, so have refrained for now, but it certainly gives one food for thought.
