RIP Rosa Parks

Not much to say really. An example of how an ordinary person can change the world forever.
May she rest in peace.

Tory leadership

Not much to say that hasn't been said. Sort of.

Personally I don't like any of the candidates and wouldn't vote for 'em if I lived in their seats (but that goes for just about every Tory MP so...) but it would be nice to have a Tory leader that's capable of putting pressure on the LibDems.

As for who'll win; Cameron is the latest favourite (I can't help thinking of him as a sort of Tory version of Mark Latham actually...), Davis is sinking pretty damn quickly and that unpleasant little **** Fox is doing disturbingly well. And Clarke is out. But you all knew that.

A lot of stuff happend in September apparently

In a totally random order...

Germany is probably the biggest of September's electoral stories. But it's also the most covered so there's not much point posting too much; just to say that it's yet another example of why it's a good idea not to count your chickens before they've hatched. Quite an interesting election to watch the results come in for actually.
Japan was the other biggie; the LDP's landslide was quite suprising bearing in mind the way the election was caused. The earth-shatteringly huge swings to the LDP in urban areas (especially Tokyo) are especially interesting, as are the less remarked upon relatively poor LDP showings in rural areas. Apparently this has lot to do with the whole Post Office business.
Norway was a good result for the Norwegian Labour Party and one that I enjoyed as well; it's nice to see them back in their traditional position of being the one big party as opposed to being just the largest out of several medium sized parties. And I finally found out how Hammerfest votes.
Poland once again emphatically threw out the governing party (this time round the Post-Commie SLD) although not nearly as hard as when AWS was kicked out last time round. The PiS-PO coalition could be a little fractious as Social Catholics and Free-Markety types seldom get on very well, something that'll be interesting to watch.
In New Zealand NZ Labour just about clung onto power in the face of a re-united Right, winning an historic third term. Some of the vote splitting was odd... with Labour winning the direct election in a fair few rural seats while coming second in them for the PR ballot, while the reverse was often the case in smaller urban centres (like Invercargill).
Meanwhile over here, Labour held Livingston in the by-election following the tragic death of Robin Cook with a fairly strong showing bearing in mind the bad turnout. More suprising was Glasgow Cathcart vacted by Mike Watson following his arson conviction. The expected strong challenge to Labour never emerged and former Glasgow City Council leader, Charlie Gordon, won a suprisingly comfortable victory.

There were other elections too (everything from by-elections in NSW to the first elections in Somaliland) but there's been so much it's hard to recall...

I'm back

It's irritating when you lose your password isn't it? A lot's happend since a little slip of paper managed to lose itself under a floorboard and I suppose it'd be a good idea to do a little sum up of all those elections...
Now then. Where was I?