Hannah Cann tells us why she loves political correctness.
Do you have swine flu? No. Do you know anybody who does have swine flu? Probably not. So what's all the fuss about?
Can't afford ethical clothing but can afford a night out at Ziggy's? Jennifer Heyes discusses where students' priorities should really lie.
Three of The Yorker's blogs team have had a hard think about what general rules they live their lives by and written them down in the form of their own Personal Philosophies.
Yet every year as the morning sun peeps out his head and I rub my weary eyes, I wonder why I made the effort.
For a start, you have to wait about 5 hours for any exciting results; up to that point it’s just:
And now the parties are so ideologically similar that when a constituency does change hands, it’s often just a home county constituency returning to the Tory fold after a reckless fling with the Lib Dems.
So thank God for the US Presidential elections, the most absurdly illogical and entertaining political process in the world.
Thus far there have been seven caucuses/primaries some involving both parties, others just the one. But then on the 5th February, the Super Tuesday bomb will be inexplicably dropped on the electorate when 25 states vote at once. Why? The first few states on the primary schedule hold a disproportionate amount of influence gaining the kind of media attention that poor old Delaware, nestled anonymously in the pack of 25, can only dream of.
If a candidate doesn’t perform at least moderately well in Iowa and New Hampshire, the media loses interest, campaign finance dries up and a candidate can go from serious contender to also-ran in the time it takes Barrack Obama to change his mind.
This is exactly what happened to Fred Thompson, the much vaunted star of Law and Order who was meant to bring a touch of Reaganesque glamour to the Republican campaign. Unfortunately in the eyes of the electorate, TV cops do not good presidents make. After running an ‘awkward’ and ‘lacklustre’ campaign with no top place finishes to date, he decided to save some pennies and call it a day knowing that even with Super Tuesday still to come, the damage had already been done.
Another problem with the key early primaries is that their populations are completely unrepresentative of America at large. With all due respect to the people of Iowa, they are hardly microcosmic. According to 2006 census information, 94% of Iowans are white compared to a national average of 80% and 60% of Iowans who voted in the Republican caucus considered themselves to be ‘evangelicals or born again Christians’ compared with 25% nationally. One Iowan voter commenting on the caucus in the Wall Street Journal observed ‘four or five people carrying bibles’ and spoke to a handful more who openly ‘based their political thinking on Revelations’.
An unthinkable scenario for us Brits with our Church of England sense of moderation.
The American nomination process could have been thought up in a Hollywood studio. There are no boring landslides, no inevitable outcomes and in the eyes of many cynics, no actual politics to speak of. It is the greatest show on Earth and one which I will be watching with keen interest.
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