France 2012: the official thread

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

French politics seem more complicated than anything I've heard of before. Good job with the thread though Hash.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

How come the Le Pen support is falling?

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Departement-by-departement 1st round results have now disappeared... Too bad I wanted to do one last map.

That's what happens when you leave things to Socialists

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

And here's one Twitter account that I won't be following: https://twitter.com/#!/NicolasSarkozy

Is he really using "A Strong France" as a slogan? Talk about original...

"My opponent has never run anything except his parliamentary office" would be another good slogan...

Well, he ran the Socialist Party for more than 10 years...

Considering it's the Socialist Party of France I'm not sure how running it is really a merit.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/nicolas-sarkozy/9189231/Francois-Hollande-would-destroy-Frances-economy-within-two-days-Nicolas-Sarkozy-claims.html

Someone's been stealing from David Cameron's "a re-elected Labour government would turn us into Greece" playbook.

The European right brought us into this sh*t and now they claim they're the only ones who can save us. How lame.

European consensus brought the crisis. The left-wing goverments in Spain and Britain did no better when they were still in office.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

It's pretty ridiculous that no pollster's polled these hypothetical match-ups.

Not, it isn't. The likelihood of such scenario is neglectable.

I'm surprised the silly ZOMG all candidates must have the exact amount of media attention rule doesn't force pollsters to poll all candidates in the 2nd round. I mean how awful to actually aknowledge that some candidates are less relevant.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

This isn't looking good at all.

*Sigh* I like Sarkozy.

He will be missed.

No. I refuse to give up. France can't go the way of Greece and Spain with Hollande. People need to wake up in the polling booths and realize this is no time to be throwing the UMP out for something as risky as the Socialists.

I've got news for you: it was the conservatives who threw our economy off a cliff between 2004-09.

Yes it was the Conservative party, but because they spent like drunk Socialists. You can hardly accuse austerity politics for the crisis in Greece. It was spending (and people not paying their taxes). Who did the spending is hardly relevant. This whole talking-point from the left that austerity politics are not the way to go, is bull.

Sweden had an economic crisis in the early 90's because both Socialist and Right-wing goverments spent and lend way too much money. Then in 96 the new Social Democratic PM cut the budget so much his base revolted and went voting for the commies, and kept a really tight austerity budget, and it worked and that is the reason Sweden is not part of the crisis today.   

(Not that Sarkozy would pursue a responsible Economic policy, and Hollande's talk of overturning European consensus is quite obviously just pondering to the left-wing base, so it won't really matter how this election goes.)

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Then in 96 the new Social Democratic PM cut the budget so much his base revolted and went voting for the commies, and kept a really tight austerity budget, and it worked and that is the reason Sweden is not part of the crisis today. 

The reason Sweden is not part of the crisis is because they're not part of the Eurozone.

As much as I hate the Euro, the Euro itself has very little to do with wether a country's economy had a crisis or not. Some countries with the Euro, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg managed to do just fine, and some countries without it had it's economy fail misrable, such as Iceland. So no, not being part of the Euro is not what saved Sweden, although not having to bail out five, six other countries does help.

What is true though, is that being part of the Euro is a major block for Greece's and Spain's financial recovery. If they had their own currency, they could simply devalue it, which would make it cheaper for foreigner's to trade and tourism with the countries. If it's cheaper trade increases (as does tourism) and the economy slowly starts rolling again. Unfortunatley, since they thought it good policy to surrender their own currency they can't do that. So while the Euro didn't cause the problem it is making the problem worse.       

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Then in 96 the new Social Democratic PM cut the budget so much his base revolted and went voting for the commies, and kept a really tight austerity budget, and it worked and that is the reason Sweden is not part of the crisis today. 

The reason Sweden is not part of the crisis is because they're not part of the Eurozone.

As much as I hate the Euro, the Euro itself has very little to do with wether a country's economy had a crisis or not.      

You're wrong. If we had our currency then we could have gone through this crisis much less painfully by devaluing it, just like Poland does.

If you bothered to read my entire post you'd see that's exactly what I said.