Category Archives: Politics

BNP Membership list leaked online

Politics, UK, ,

What appears to be the complete 2008 membership list for the British National Party has been leaked online today. The list includes names, addresses and occasionally phone numbers, qualifications and even hobbies.

There are already suggestions that this could lead to a collapse in the BNPs funding (by a mass exodus), and that the list might have been posted by a disgruntled party official.

This latest incident appears to be yet another debacle reflecting the seriously divided state of the BNP. While I’m not going to post a link to the list, it is easily available if you do a quick blog search (I’ve seen it). Sod it: Wikileaks has a copy of the list here.

UPDATE: I’m receiving an abnormally large number of direct visits (i.e. no referrer data) today. Could one of you please let me know where you saw my URL posted, so I can see the context, please?

thebadPoll: How should the British press refer to ETA?

'Terror', Politics, Spain, UK, , , ,

Today’s news of a senior commander’s arrest in France has brought ETA into the British press again, rasing as it always does the question of nomenclature.

It is standard for British media organisations to refer to ETA as ‘the Basque separatist group, ETA’, a title which seems perfectly logical to me but which clearly upsets some Spaniards. So this week’s poll considers the linguistics of terror and asks: how should the British press refer to ETA? Please feel free to use the comments section to explain why you picked what you picked.

UPDATED: Oops, forgot one of the choices.

Protest G20 summit this Friday at 1700

Capital, Politics, , , , , , ,

The people behind the Crisi newspaper are calling a protest against this weekend’s meeting of 20 major economies. If you’re interested in taking part, check for your nearest demo point here (there are 70 around the world Spain, plus a couple more in cities further afield).

Spain protests taking place:

Barcelona – Plaça Catalunya

Madrid – Puerta del Sol

Valencia – Plaça Ajuntament

Bilbao – Centro Civico de la Bolsa

Sevilla – Plaza Nueva

(and more). It’s worth noting that if you do want to take part, you’d probably be better off joining the protest in the largest town you can get to (i.e. Barcelona, not Sabadell).

It was thebadrash wot won it! Barack Obama takes US presidency

America, Politics, Site news, , , , , ,

Last night, as I went to bed, the very first precints were announcing results in the US Presidential election. From small areas of eastern states, after about 12,000 votes had been counted, Obama stood at 48% while McCain had 52%. I went to bed with those numbers in my head, convinced that it was impossible for McCain to win but also allowing myself a few fleeting thoughts of just what it would mean if America rejected change for an old man clearly under the spell of the most divisive elements of a radicalising Republican party.

But I needn’t have worried. Ever since my original endorsement of Mr. Obama, in February 2007, he has achieved good results in the polls. Now, I’m not saying that part of his victory doesn’t come down to the $500m of donations he received, the huge voter registration drive or the support he received from diverse elements of the electorate. But let’s face it: there are different degrees of importance when you look at these matters. And my endorsement was one of the important ones.

Seriously though, for those of you who worry that Obama’s just not far enough from McCain and the Republicans in terms of policy: you may well be right. But the important thing here is that positivity seems to have won out against the politics of fear, which is, if nothing else, a firm rejection of everything that nasty prick Bush (and his foul team of acolytes) stood for.

Bush remains president until late January next year. He’s apparently busy signing anti-environment legislation, destruction of the environment being something close to his heart.

thebadPoll: republic versus constitutional monarchy in Spain

coup, Politics, Spain, ,

Over the last 30-odd years, Spain’s politics have been relatively stable. Despite the occasional fascist coup attempt or the more frequent ETA bombings, Spain’s constitutional monarchy seems to have stayed the course. But democracy in Spain wasn’t always presided over by a king. The Second Spanish Republic, target of the 1936 military rebellion, aimed to create a Spain without kings or princes, while Franco’s dictatorship is still praised by some sections of Spanish society for its imposition of order and Catholic purity.

In the end, the Republic failed for various reasons. This week’s poll asks you to pick the best way ahead for Spain. The choices are fairly simple: Constitutional monarchy, republic, or dictatorship. There’s also an “other” option for those who’d like to propose an alternative. As always, your comments are welcome.

My dream about George W. Bush

Politics, , , , , ,

I’m not someone who regularly remembers dreams. On the whole, my only dream memories seem to be packed with Freudian friction and incredibly odd symbolism. Like last night, I dreamt that I pissed on a bush* and then this guy took us to Berry Pomeroy castle (near where I grew up) and they’d built a huge car park in front of it (it was being dismantled)… but the dream didn’t really go anywhere.

A few months back, I had another dream that I woke remembering. I was strolling around a pleasant Mediterranean town (it looked both Catalan and French) when I happened upon a bar with a couple of tables outside. Sat at one of them was George Bush Jr., nursing one of those Spanish brandy glasses with a pitiful measure of rubbish brandy. There were no Secret Service guys around, so I stepped up and immediately recommended Cardinal de Mendoza as a good Spanish brandy.

He was grateful and bought me a glass too, so I sat down and had a chat with him. My main memory of this chat is that Bush was a charming guy, occasionally clipped but mainly talkative. As I smoked a Ducado, I chatted with Bush about Iraq (he admitted he was wrong but that it had happened so there was nothing much to do).

But when we moved on to crime, we disagreed. I said that I thought that America hadn’t dealt with poverty sufficiently under his presidency. He argued that the sort of people I was talking about were mostly criminals. Shortly afterwards, we went our separate ways; I crossed a bridge and saw Bush’s bodyguards come out of the woodwork.

After I woke, I had the dream of Bush, the good ol’ boy, the bon viveur, the OK guy on my mind… and the taste of Cardenal de Mendoza brandy in my mouth. I liked him.

=

* Yeah, I know

thebadPoll – Who should be the next US president?

Politics, Polls, , ,

thebadPoll has not had the most auspicious beginning. But I’ll press on with it, stubborn as I am.

The US presidential election is now only a few days away. Barack Obama seems to have the lead across the country, including most of the ‘battleground states’. But as they say: it’s not over until it’s over.

This week’s poll is simple: who do you think should be the next US president? There are three choices: John McCain, Barack Obama or neither/someone else. As always, your comments are welcome… is this a chance for transformative change, irrelevant, more of the same?

You can vote at the top of the page, to the right of the main article area (no registration necessary).

thebadPoll – Historical memory

Catalonia, Politics, Polls, Spain, , , , , ,

I’ve just started reading The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge by Paul Preston and I’m finding it to be an interesting, though terribly sad, piece of work. One of Preston’s main hypotheses seems to be that the way Spain suffered under dictatorship for so many years after the Civil War meant that it was very difficult for the Spanish people to ever truly reconcile themselves to what had happened, and what they and their neighbours had done.

Anyone living in Spain will have noticed that the Civil War and following dictatorship continue to be not just the cataclysmic events of Spain’s 20th century but also reference points which are sure to be mentioned sooner or later in almost any discussion about Spanish politics, culture, society or even geography. Only yesterday, I saw on the Catalan news that plans are still afoot to give and official pardon to Catalan president Lluis Companys, 68 years after he was executed at Montjuïc fort. And many families continue to struggle for the right to exhume the bodies of relatives left in mass graves throughout the country.

There seems to be both a political and a personal angle to the way the Civil War is so frequently conjured up, and I have little doubt that this experience is different in Catalonia than in other parts of Spain.

This week’s poll asks: What’s the best way to deal with Spain’s historical memory?

You can vote in the sidebar to the right, and of course, leave comments on this post in the traditional manner. With this poll, you may select up to two options, as they’re not all mutually exclusive.

Fox News and the ‘split’ vote

Language, Politics, , ,

If you haven’t seen this video, it’s quite amusing. A Fox News Channel roving reporter asks the customers in a diner somewhere in Pennsylvania who they’re planning to vote for, and the vast majority raise their hands for Barack Obama.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTkqosRiyYo[/youtube]

My question: does the word ‘split’ always imply ‘into equal parts’? Or does the presence of a couple of McCain supporters actually make the ‘split’ word accurate, if still misleading?

McCain: them Spanish names all sound the damn same!

Politics, , , , , , , , , ,

Poor old John McCain. Yes, he of the strange shape. Yes, he of the hilarious “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” song. I’m not writing about the US presidential elections for various reasons, but given that this is a Spain-related story, I couldn’t resist.

Republican presidential candidate, John McCain was being interviewed recently about how he’d manage relations with the various leaders of Latin American countries upon which the US wreaks havoc at will who don’t have great relations with the United States. As if in training for another GenericOff, McCain muttered about standing up to America’s enemies etc…. But when the interviewer asked him about Spanish PM, Zapatero, McCain allegedly went blank and blustered for a bit, clearly clueless about exactly who this Zapatero guy is.

Now there will be some out there who see this as a surefire sign that Zapatero’s a loser who has taken Spain ‘off the world stage’ where it was put by prince Ansar. That’s the wrong tack, I reckon. The truth is that these days, politicians (and especially presidential candidates) have to answer so many questions about so many things that all they can really do is bluster banal generalities, hoping that they don’t mess it up. McCain’s an old man (which makes this sort of thing that much harder) and clearly suffers from some psychological problems, along with cancer, so I think people should just cut the man some slack and leave him be.

Yes, he’s a dangerous fool; yes, he probably will be president (and potentially an even worse one than GWB); yes, he called his own wife a cunt; yes, he will probably die in office, leaving the the “ugliest hottie ever” to manage the world’s only superpower in the style of a hockey mom…. but you know, there are a hell of a lot of things that McCain doesn’t know, many of them far more important than the PM of Spain’s name.