France elections: National Front leads in regional polls

As a conseiller municipal, I had to do my duty and be part of the "permanence" yesterday, even though not allowed to vote. We are now in the new south west department and most of the electorale were making a statement by openly selecting only 2 of the 3 papers available, making a point of leaving the F N. Most unlike other elections when they are very secretive.

Kit it is simple - just re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Far-right National Front fails to win single region in French elections

Common sense has won through again.The people expressed their opinion of Hollande in their own way via protest voting and 'les votes blancs' and abstentions etc though many have stuck with him thanks to his expert handling of the terror situation and perceived success of the Global Warming conference. Sarko has done ok ish though probably nowhere near as well if the Jihadists hadn't intervened. He continues to ride his luck with the electorate not too worried about his personal problems it seems. Ok, he's not Berlusconi maybe but I wonder how many of his antics would be tolerated in the UK ?

The National Front will be licking their wounds not doubt though slightly reassured with a tripling of their seats this time out ?

Marine & Nige probably would make a great combo on Strictly but even that woudn't incite me to watch that load of old rubbish !!

Heard in the local supermarket this morning: Dindes ne votent pas pour Noël.

Marine has just done a Nigel. The Le Pen - Farage duo should enter for Strictly Come Dancing in order to have an audience to see them lose. Hahahahahaha!

We-ell, I spent rather a lot of time in the ME (I'm an Arabist) rather longer than two years ago and it was entirely peaceful then, not at all 'hell' which is what it has become largely as a knock-on effect of unfortunate policies, carried out for all sorts of reasons, mainly by western countries) which have radicalised all sorts of people whose dissatisfactions have been fomented and funded by supposed allies of ours.

Ha ha ha, hadn't seen that. Priceless.

Oh yes Val, that one is precious. He did omit the fact that Netanyahu had also declined to meet him.

Another amusing little Trumpism I saw today (for Brian really but there were no "reply" buttons left) is that he has just postponed his planned trip to Israel. He said he will go and meet President Netanyahu as soon as he, Trump, is elected President of the United States.

Your logic is flawed.
Do not insult the entire usa electorate based on your own bigotry

One bit of amusing Trump news is that Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen awarded Trump an honorary degree. 30 degrees and Change.org campaigned and petitioned against, giving direct links to the university for demands his degree be revoked. The news this morning was that it succeeded after a 'review' of his recent words.

Furthermore, the massive golf course he had built outside Aberdeen became news because of the way he effectively bought planning permissions. However he also caused part of a residential area to be compulsorily purchased, houses demolished and land cleared for the golf course, more than that planning permissions and public services for that estate were blocked by his lawyers. The occupants have had eight years of total misery as a result. He has refused to compensate people but now his golf course is being boycotted by golfers, many have withdrawn or declined to renew membership and local activism has brought about a planning review which should force him to have structures that were not given permission to be erected demolished. In short, his professional level, exclusive membership club is going to be ruined because he got it by bullying everybody he could and buying off others with apparent generosity.

Big mouths, it seems, are often full of garbage like many big holes. However, in common with landfill holes, his large one is being filled in but will continue to smell for many years.

Now it that ain't good news...

A lot of people bought the Reagan myth. When he was running for governor of California, the "general knowledge" of the day was that he was hired as an actor and that a group in the Bohemian Club were pulling his strings. I never saw anything to convince me otherwise.

Brian,

You may have a point about the Republicans plotting; they always do. However, in US elections, the early days are really a free-for-all. Anyone who gets enough signatures and enough money can run. Getting the nomination via the primaries and the Republican National Convention is another thing.

The Republicans have a problem with the fundamentalists they let out of their back woods cages some years ago. Trump and Carson will allow all sorts of extremists to exhaust themselves before things get serious next year. Trump can go Independant if he likes; they never win, especially with the Pentagon against them.

Hillary is such a disappointment for women voters of a certain age. She is too much of a political "wheeler and dealer" to inspire confidence. We would really like to see a woman president in office before we die, and she comes from our idealistic generation, but whatever ideals she had were sold long ago, it seems. She is there, I imagine, because it appears as if a deal were struck when Obama got the Democratic nomination in 2008: she would stand down and it was promised to her next time.

Sadly, I fear it will be a Republican to win next year. Hillary just is not clean enough, Bernie is better but too old. Among the Republicans, take away the crackerjacks and the minority candidates and what do you have? The next offering of the powerful Bush dynasty, more's the pity.

Once the primaries start, people will be weeded out pretty quickly.

I watch politics like a hawk but have begun to see a trend that makes me suspect a Republican plot. Trump has been allowed to run free, they knew what he was capable of. They threw in Carson also knowing he would do as he did. What they have is two people they can now jettison, they have started that process by disowning Trumps most recent utterances. The other candidates look whiter than white, unblemished and untarnished by these months. Now they can push the people they want, totally lose Trump and Carson in a cloud of disarray of their own making and get the 'chosen son'. It would not be the first time that kind of political manipulation has been used anywhere. Behind it all, read the text closely and all one finds is the same ideas gift wrapped very nicely.

Hillary Clinton is not going to find it easy going once this phase is over. She has done nothing substantive to put Trump on the back foot. Bernie Sanders could have made mincemeat of Trump but he has been kept out of the limelight enough to mistakenly do that and show Hillary up for what a weak candidate she actually is. She is a clearly very intelligent person but also ambitious. I saw one of her 'performances' at the UN. UNICEF was presenting the 'Promise to the world's children' by Nelson Mandela and Graça Machel. Somehow or other Hillary got a spot in the proceedings. Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF had probably got her to do it. Bellamy was nominated, thus effectively appointed, by Bill Clinton who was president at the time. Anyway, Hillary got up and did her speech and spent half an hour spouting vacuousness, well presented and full of (never fulfilled) promises. I have no idea what her capacity other than president's wife was, on what authority (if any) she spoke and realised that there was not a lot there behind a smiling ego.

For all of that, realising that Sanders has little chance of nomination against her, she is the best the USA has on offer. That is where Trump is useful. Once he is put down the other candidates can take Hillary on and under the present political conditions and with the priming done by Trump one of them might give her a serious political thrashing.

Martha, the problem with Europe is we seem to be getting all Trump and nothing else. The media are having a field day portraying this bumbling billionaire with nothing 'serious' coming out which I believe is making the US political news seem like a joke

Oh, I do not think Trump will win at all. It is early in the campaign. At this point, Americans are enjoying his outrageousness. They find him entertaining because he blurts out outrageous things that people sometimes think or feel but, after refelction, do not act on. When it comes to the votes, he will get few, I think.

He has another point very strongly against him, though again, it is early days. A couple of days ago, the Pentagon issued a statement disapproving of his anti-Muslim comments.The Pentagon making any comment about any candidate is a first, I believe. (It was the Pentagon that finally brought down Joe McCarthy, recall, when he started saying the US Army was full of Communists.)

Sadly, even with Trump removed, the other Republican candidates have policies that are just as bad.

If only I could. I get the feeling I have spent the best part of half a century trying to make the world a better place for children, thus better for the adults they grow to be. What I have actually seen is the world optimistic out of the 1960s into 70s, become complacent and now cynical. For me it is like an addiction to keep going but those of us doing what we do know we are more and more up against the wall. There are things like technology indeed changing morality that change the rules of the 'game' so that nobody needs to have any kind of bad conscience up in the high places because their decisions do not cause the mass casualties predecessors had on theirs. In fact, the word game is now appropriate because much of what is happening is so comparable with a game that it is often hard to make the distinction between the real and play worlds. With a family again later in life I can be out of it before it gets really bad, they have longer to survive.

I could have a rant about the cruelty of capitalism, but I think we all know that the world is become gradually the 'property' of a very small number of excessively wealthy people who are really those who say what goes. Whether it is climate change, migration, war or whatever, they control fuel sources, transport, weapons production and so on so allow all of the money making bad to go on. Sooner or later they too will lose control and there is going to be an almighty mess. The likes of Donald Trump are just the visible ones who are tolerated and used because they distract away from the really powerful people, but they may be digging their own graves if they continue to push that man toward the presidency of the USA.

Cheered you both up enough :-(

Thank you, Joan.

Exactly right, Joan. Technology can indeed alter morality. Close quarters combat has been replaced by the ability to strike with devastating effect remotely. Not being confronted immediately with the result of your actions as would happen if you were on the battle ground is probably "easier" on the conscience. The more remote weapons are used, the more it becomes standard practice and the more "acceptable" it becomes for those using them. That is where I think morality is losing ground.

I will now leave it to Brian to cheer you up D:)

Actually Peter, that is Europe. With at present 38 wars and war-like states in the world and a few more likely to spark of (Sudan may even be today - yet again) there are numerically more conflicts and people affected by them than there have been over the last two millennia. Shocking isn't it. I often feel we somehow live behind a cotton wool façade. It has been part of my professional environment which has seen things get worse rather than better over four decades.

Trump, yep!