Icelandic Pirate Party Wins 3 seats In Parliament 92
First time accepted submitter Thorhs writes "According to preliminary results (all votes counted, no official word yet) the Icelandic Pirate Party was able to secure 3 members of the national Parliament, the first PP to reach a national Parliament. Things were hairy election night, the PP lost all their MPs when they dropped below the 5% barrier 'needed' in the somewhat complex election system. Thankfully they managed to slip back up above, with 5.1% of the total votes. The old 'crash parties', the ones in charge before our epic financial crash, (Independent and Progressive parties) are the prime candidates to form a new government with just over 51% of the votes, getting 40 of 63 seats. RUV (Icelandic) has good coverage."
Re:Great! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, not too many years ago, the Greens in Sweden (and, I strongly suspect, Germany) were the dumping grounds for nutjobs no other party wanted to do with. I strongly suspect that is a phase any new party has to go through on the way to become a long-term viable political force.
Not just the British, German mood too! (Score:5, Interesting)
I just read the comments in the FAZ (a major German newspaper) to the article about that election. Overwhelmingly BY FAR the comments were AGAINST the EU and they congratulated Iceland.
It is NOT just Britain! I am most certainly not "backwards", "anti-Europe" (in fact I prefer to see myself as "European", not German) or "right-wing", neither are those comments. Quite the opposite, actually! The point is, the EU is the LEAST democratic thing that Europe has come up with since WWII ended, and it gets worse and worse. Anyone who dares to raise any objection is immediately branded "right-wing" and "anti-Europe". It's like trying to criticize the role (and all the money for) of the military in the US - you just don't want to do that, unless you are a nobody in an Internet forum, because of the (sh..)storm.
Re:EU looses. Iceland wins. (Score:5, Interesting)
The WWI Western front is the point of Europe? That's what you said just then.
Yes, WWI and the Sequel WWII are some of the prime motivators behind the European Union. It has grown far beyond that but the people who originated the EU were partially motivated by the idea of preventing future wars by increasing economic integration to the point where war had become a sport that was to expensive to indulge in. and for what little it seems to be worth to conservative anti EU tossers these days, hundreds of thousands of those reasons that are buried in Flanders, and whom the GP spoke of, are British.
Where's Iceland fit into this?
Iceland exports in excess of 70% of it's manufactured goods to the EU. Iceland has enacted about 75-80% of the laws needed to join the EU and Icelandic politicians have proven them selves to be a bunch of incompetent nepotistic tosspots who cant keep the inflation graphs from looking like a set of sharks teeth. If you want to have a laugh compare the inflation graph for Iceland to that of Germany:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/iceland/inflation-cpi [tradingeconomics.com]
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/germany/inflation-cpi [tradingeconomics.com]
Notice how the German figure hovers between 0 and 5%, now compare it to the Icelandic graph. You would laugh even harder if you could see data from before 1989. Inflation in Iceland since 1944 fluctuated between ~3% to as high as 25-30% and occasionally topped 100%. In 1979, these wankers that make up the Icelandic political class, finally had to index-link loans to inflation to motivate capital owners to start loaning money. What that means is that if your loan carries 6% interest and there is 8% inflation you are effectively paying 14% interests. Now try to imagine what happens when inflation hits 20% and you will understand why Icelanders are so angry they are spitting acid. Joining the EU would force their brainless politicos to... well... behave. And additionally when you export 70% of your manufactured goods to the EU it's kind of dumb to want to have no say in how the EU's inner market evolves which makes me wonder why the British, who depend on the EU for 50% or so of their exports want to leave the EU. It's kind of like robbing yourself of the ability to influence how your country is begin governed by voluntarily relinquishing your right to vote.
Re:Great! (Score:4, Interesting)
Single-issue parties are not unusual; they use the fact that they have no commitment to other policies to engage in political horse-trading in favour of their issue of choice. Everyone in Iceland now knows where to go to get three votes for their policy du jour, and what it's going to cost them.
Re:EU looses. Iceland wins. (Score:2, Interesting)
That's fine, medicine rarely is nice.
But compare, how successful was their previous non-German economic model? At least the German model is proven to work, so are you advocating that they should've stayed with models that collapsed and demonstrably did not work?
Re:Not just the British, German mood too! (Score:4, Interesting)
"The point is, the EU is the LEAST democratic thing that Europe has come up with since WWII ended"
Technically as a British citizen I have more of a say in the EU than I do my own country due to the fact the EP uses proportional representation whilst the UK uses FPTP and I live in a safe-seat area.
This means no matter how small, my vote in the EP still has more effect and more relevance than my vote in British national elections.
"and it gets worse and worse"
It does? The Lisbon treaty and a number of others have actually decreased the powers of the unelected bodies of the EU whilst increasing the powers of the elected bodies, so how is this the case? It still has some way to go, but it's certainly not getting worse in this respect.
People are just pissy at the EU right now because they're looking at anything to blame other than themselves. Yes, I'm talking about people like the Greeks who thought it was a good idea to protest to maintain the ability to retire in their 50s, work a short working week, and have a tax system that was in effect pretty much just optional. Euroscepticism in the UK has the same problem, eurosceptics forget that EU membership was instrumental in pulling us out of the shit after our economy crashed in the 70s.
But perhaps more importantly, people also forget how bad Europe was before the EU - if you think things are bad now...