Cold Climates

[Gustaf]

I will make a futile attempt at getting this discussion back on topic, since I find it interesting. I think the real climate rule is that colder countries are more decent and better off than hot ones. Look at tropical states like Congo or Indonesia. They're among the most messed up in the world. South Africa is the coldest in Africa and they are doing better than many of the others. Countries like Iceland and Canada are among the most successful in the world when it comes to measuring everything.

Finally, I will once again bore you with a Swedish perspective...

Here, the capitol trends right, whereas other big cities are to the left (I think so anyways, but its hard to tell in a country where everyone trends left). Northern rural areas are left-winged, southern ones are to the right. Rich suburbs are, of course, to the right. So there are similar patterns, but not identical. Isn't the Dems more federal than the Reps, states rights, etc. and that explains urban/rural differences?
 

[Gustaf]

Areas with a history of heavy industry are always left wing. That's the nature of left wing parties surely? Historically they are the parties of working class, blue collar workers. The Cornwall seat of Falmouth & Camborne used to be safely Labour for years, because of the tin mines, similarly with Forest of Dean (coal). I'm sure this is applicable in all developed countries?

Yep, probably is! What about capitol cities? In Sweden it leans to the right but D.C. (to put it mildly) leans to the left. What about London, or other capitols? Paris has been right-winged for a long time, but was recently won by the left.

[Gustaf]

The Paris area(the Ile-de-France) is immensely complicated.

The City of Paris itself is divided between the rich west and poor east(which is not "really Paris". Call it an "inner-inner suburb"), while the suburbs are also divided.

The Ile-de-France is composed of 8 cantons, however only 7 are part of the Paris area. They are:

Outer suburbs: Yvelines, Essonne, Val-d'Oise
Inner suburbs: Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne
City of Paris: Paris

Yvelines
Cantonial Government: UMP
Deputies[M.P's]:
UMP:11
UDF: 1

Essonne
Cantonial Government: PS
Deputies:
UMP: 7
PS: 3

Val-d'Oise
Cantonial Government: UMP
Deputies:
UMP: 7
PS: 2

Hauts-de-Seine
Cantonial Government: RPF
Deputies:
UMP: 9
PCF: 3
Ind-D: 1

Seine-Saint-Denis
Cantonial Government: PCF
Deputies:
PCF: 5*
PS: 4
UMP: 3
UDF: 1
*includes a Deputie elected as an independent who later re-joined the PCF

Val-de-Marne
Cantonial Government: PCF
Deputies:
UMP: 7
PS: 5
PCF: 1

Paris
Cantonial Government: PS
Deputies:
PS: 10
UMP: 7
Verts: 2
UDF: 1
Ind-D: 1


Complex, eh?      

How do you know all these things??!!

[Gustaf]

I vote Republican, but only when it's above 70F.

Good thing the election is in November.

Haha...

[Gustaf]

I've just been looking up Norwegian politics, and there are some very interesting trends there.

The Northern part of Norway (very cold) votes DNA (Labour), which backs up the cold climates theory.

But a very interesting trend is that the DNA do best in rural counties (as do the centrist Christian Democrats and the Senter Party) while H (conservatives) do best in more urban counties.

It's same in most of Scandinavia. In Sweden the Conservatives always do best in urban districts and rich suburbs, and I believe the same thing goes for Finland. The Swedish SAP do good everywhere...basically whereever there are poor people...

[Gustaf]

...and there are poor people everywhere.
The Urban/Suburban-Rural divide seems much stronger in Norway than in most other countries I've looked at.
As far as I can tell the only right wing rural areas are farming areas in Southern Norway and the only particulary left wing cities are Trondheim and Tromso (both Northern).
Oslo and Bergen are both right wing, although it's all relative and the Scadinavian "right" is centre-left on an internation scale.
Even the Progress Party would be considered moderate anywhere outside Scandinavia.

BTW is there a reason why The Norwegian Labour Party includes the word "the" in it's abbreviation? (DNA)?

Nowegians are stupid...

[Gustaf]

Ha! It would make sense... except for the fact that like all Scandinavian countries Norway has a very high literacy rate and so on...

Maybe it was incase a break-away group was formed?

I'd guess that it's traditional now...

BTW all Scandinavian parties have nice logo's

Have you seen the "M" of the Swedish Conservatives? I find that pretty ugly, but that's my opinion....

Sweden is over-loaded with jokes about Norwegians where the overall theme is that they're stupid, so that's the origin of my comment...most countries have some stereotypical group which is supposedly dum. But I was not serious of course...I've never been good at abbreviations, so I don't know why they include that D. But Norwegians are kind of fond of their traditions, so it might be something like that. The DNA is kind of tragic, they used to be the most dominating labour Party in the world, but after a defeat in the 1960s they've become one of the weakest in Scandinavia.

[Gustaf]

They have been recovering recently (up to 30% with an 8% lead over the FrP in the most recent poll I've seen, and they won the recent local elections. But the Christian Democrats seem to have imploded recently), but they could really do with the SV disbanding.
Or the introduction of FPTP which would result in the same thing.
The problem with PR is that it fragments the political landscape, with FPTP the DNA would score about 10% higher.
But they do seem to have (finally) turned the corner and should win next years elections.
But the future looks bleak for both the Christian Democrats and Venstre.

The Swedish conservatives logo is quite ugly, but the rest of the parties all have nice logo's

Well, DNA (that abbreviation looks funny, it's never used in Sweden) has been going up and down a lot in polls over the last years. The problem in Norway is unusual, in Sweden we have a very stable situation!

The joking aside, we do have two political blocs and one of them wins and that's that. In Norway they have messed up, b/c they have a strong populist party (Fremskrittspartiet, FrP) which no one wants to cooperate with, a weak left and a divided right. That makes for a lot of trouble. I wouldn't expect SV to dissolve, most Nordic countries have a socialist party of some sort outside the main social democratic party. If they united they would get faction fights, and the party's appeal to centrist voters would lessen. In Sweden the socialists, V, have to cooperate with SAP, so they have always been ignored by SAP, which knows that they will get the support anyway.

[Gustaf]

Norwegian politics is very unstable at the moment; for about a month last year the SV led in the polls...

Yes, I remember that...Norwegian politics has been unstable ever since the "election of discontent" in 1973, when FrP got elected to parliament. But has gone worse over the last 5-10 years. They actually had a goverment coalition with only 25% of the seats in parliament and, I think, none of the THREE biggest parties included. That's kind of tough to govern with.

[Gustaf]

Remember: It would be worse were it not for the fact that the Storting has fixed election dates that can't be changed...
If it didn't the current government would have fallen ages ago...

I hope that after the past 2 years of instability the Norwegian electorate gives both the DNA and H better numbers, but the SV cut into the DNA's numbers and H is part of the current (and extremly unpopular) government...

Oh yes, I had forgotten about tha fascist rules of Norway. It makes for a lot of fun though...

Even a revival of the major parties would not cure it completely. As long as FrP is around, and as long as the Norwegian right is fractioned, they will have immense trouble getting stability.

[Gustaf]

Maybe when Hagen dies...

haha, lol!

[Gustaf]

Ah? The old Calvinist work ethic?

That has traditionally been very strong in Sweden, but is weakening due to "progressive" social policies from the state.

I will restate what I said before: cold climates give you decent countries and people. The rest is hard to prove.

[Gustaf]

Very interesting! Finnish politics has always confused me... so thanks for clearing most of it up!

BTW do you know where I can find a map of Finnish Regions? I've got results for each of them, but I can't workout where any of them are (except for Helsinki and Lapland)

Have to read up on your Finnish geography, RP...

[Gustaf]

I think that Vaasi is in west Finland, Helsinki is easy, as is Lapland, but as Finnish is a non-Indo-European language it gets confusing

Yes, I know. A lot of people think Swedes can understand Finnish, but we cannot, ince the languages are not at all related.

[Gustaf]

I remember being told that Finnish is distantly related to Hungarian.

Yes, it is. There is Estonian as well. And the language spoken by the Samish minority in Lappland. And then, if I'm not mistaken, there is Turkish as well.

[Gustaf]

I remember being told that Finnish is distantly related to Hungarian.

Yes, it is. There is Estonian as well. And the language spoken by the Samish minority in Lappland. And then, if I'm not mistaken, there is Turkish as well.

My maid on the Alaska cruise was Estonian.

Cool...did you notice any similarities with Finnish or Hungarian?

[Gustaf]

Realpolitik. Thank for you interest! I found this site for you. There is several maps about Finland and lot of other information about our history, society, economy, nature, way of life etc. All in English.

http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/english/finnmap.html

I also found maps of elections. But that site wasn't run very good. Also in English.

http://kartat.stat.fi/default_en.html

Finnish language is Finno-Ugrian one like are Hungarian,  Esthonian, Sami's language and several small minoritylanguages in central Russia.

Gustaf. Turkish isn't Finno-Ugrian language. It belongs to the Altaic branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages.

Yes, but I have this vague recollection of a language map where Uralic languages (including Finno-Ugrian and Samojedian) existed in Asia...I will check it and come back later.

[Gustaf]

Gustaf. I found this information in website of University of Helsinki.

http://www.helsinki.fi/hum/sugl/fgrlang.html

The Finno-Ugrian or Uralic language family includes a group of languages (mainly) in northern Eurasia. (According to the traditional terminology, Uralic means both main branches of the language family, the Finno-Ugrian and the Samoyedic languages, but some colleagues use "Finno-Ugrian" as a synonym for "Uralic".)

The greatest Finno-Ugrian languages are Hungarian (ca. 14 million speakers), Finnish (ca. 5 million) and Estonian (1 million). Other Finno-Ugrian languages are smaller, practically all of them more or less endangered. (List of Finno-Ugrian languages and speaker statistics.)

Some hypotheses have been made concerning the possible genetic relationship between Uralic and other language families (Altaic, Indo-European or even Basque, for example), but Finnish Uralicists at least take a very reserved attitude towards them.

OK, then, thanks for the info, I guess I was just plain wrong then... Happens to the best of us...

[Gustaf]

Guess that explains a lot: It's said heat waves produce increased criminal activity and violence. Is it a coincidence that the warmer the climate, the more conservative the political structure?

Cold climates leads to more efficiency, individualism and more respect for human lives. And i'm not just saying that b/c I am from Sweden...