Who will win the german elections?

[Drake Tungsten]

I wasn't talking about the Kiwis. They're about a reliable as the French, which is funny considering how much they hate the French.

edit: And they are your future!!!

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
NYE, though we didn't have to independently declare war (as we didn't yet have an independent recognised foreign policy), it would have been a neat question as to what would have happened had Parliament disavowed the British DoW

My feeling is that the G-G would have refused to sign it and we would be a Republic today.

Neverless, the fact is that ultimate control of any contribution to be made to the war effort rested in the hands of the GoC. There would have been no way to force contribution from us had we decided to withold it. Look at the conscription debate, for instance...

Ahh, no. The PM would have been strung up on a lamp post, by his own MPs. This was a different age, KH. The identity of Canada was firmly wed to England in many, many minds.

The conscription debate came after casualty lists from early '16 and after started rolling in. Those casualty lists gave us our first taste of costs to go along with jingoism.

Trying to stand in the way of Canada going to war in '14 would have been trying to hold up a freight train with a match stick.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

We do know what loyalty is, afterall.

Yep. The rest of the Anglosphere is going to miss you guys.

Thanks. Let us know the next time you intend to show up to a war in Europe less than a few years after us.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I wasn't talking about the Kiwis. They're about a reliable as the French, which is funny considering how much they hate the French.

edit: And they are your future!!!

What are you banging on about?

[Drake Tungsten]

I thought we were supposed to be trolling...

Thanks. Let us know the next time you intend to show up to a war in Europe less than a few years after us.

Well, if we had shown up any earlier there wouldn't have been any fighting for you guys to do.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I thought we were supposed to be trolling...

I'm just trying to piss you and KH off.

[Drake Tungsten]

Excellent.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by notyoueither


Ahh, no. The PM would have been strung up on a lamp post, by his own MPs. This was a different age, KH. The identity of Canada was firmly wed to England in many, many minds.

Uhh...my supposition was that there was an act passed by the Commons.

Nobody's doubting that the eventual outcome was never in doubt; the real question is where the sovereignty over foreign affairs lay.

De jure in Westminster, de facto in Ottawa

[Blake]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I wasn't talking about the Kiwis. They're about a reliable as the French, which is funny considering how much they hate the French.

edit: And they are your future!!!

I have no idea.

[Bereta_Eder]

hell what a waste of a trhead if i ever saw one. didnt read any of the worms' replies that infest this part of cyberspace masturbating between themselves


but hell BEBRO, you could have answered me, you can usually see past my flamboyance. and if it was too touchy a subject just say who you think will win. even though in some 24horus we'll all know.

[Pekka]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


The Canadian who killed him.

Brad Pitt?

[Heresson]

Usually I support the left wing, but in the case of these German elections, I hope CDU-CSU will win.

[techumseh]

German Left Party has Momentum!

Enough pointless Canadian banter. Be worthy of our victory over the Americans in the War of 1812!

Germany's new Left Party has momentum going into Sunday's vote

By Andreas Tzortzis | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

BERLIN – Helmut Geppe is the kind of guy embattled Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and front-running conservative challenger Angela Merkel should be clamoring to please before Sunday's general election.
The father of two lost his job as a machinist in east Berlin two years ago when his company folded because of cheaper competition from Eastern Europe. He has tried - unsuccessfully - to get a new job, even taking classes to qualify himself for other positions.

"People are scared about the future," says Mr. Geppe. "Politicians are telling us 'It will get harder and harder.' But they don't have any answers anymore."

So Geppe has decided to look for answers elsewhere. The search led him to a lively gathering held in August by the four-month-old Left Party, a curious mix of former East German socialists and disgruntled West German unionists that has shocked Germany's political establishment by rising to third place in the polls behind Mr. Schröder's Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Ms. Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Geppe liked what he saw, and the shifting loyalties of voters like him have put the major parties on notice.

Part populist, part socialist, the Left Party currently commands between 7 and 9 percent of the vote, ahead of the conservatives' possible coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Schröder's junior coalition partner, the Green Party. Should they retain their lead, they could force the CDU and the SPD into a "grand coalition," with Merkel as chancellor and Schröder's party as her junior partner - a prospect experts predict would halt the CDU's planned pro-market reforms because of political infighting.

Nothing would please the Left more.

Fundamentally, the Left Party is offering a radically different answer to the question of how Germany should reform its lethargic economy to remain competitive and grow jobs. Until now, the major parties have been telling Germans that cuts to the country's bloated social welfare system, tax reform, and a more flexible labor market are crucial to reviving the "sick man of Europe."

The Left Party, on the other hand, invokes terms like "social economic justice" to comfort voters like Geppe by suggesting alternatives to liberal reform.

"There need to be fundamental changes in the system," says Bernd Ihme, a Left Party official. "We don't want big business to think that it's not responsible for the well-being of the people."

The Left is strongest in the economically depressed East, where current polls show them commanding around 30 percent of the vote, several points ahead of both the CDU and SPD. The party's push for further tax hikes on the rich in order to finance employment programs, the education system, and the continuation of Germany's welfare system resonates with a region that lived under a socialist economy for more than 40 years.

"They have collected protest votes, and the votes of people who normally don't vote," says Uwe Andersen, a political science professor at Ruhr University.

Close to 5 million people, roughly 11.5 percent of the population, are unemployed in Germany, a figure that has moved steadily upward since Schröder won re-election in 2002. The modest reforms he has introduced have so far failed to deliver on the promise of new jobs. Widespread discontent pushed him in May to call for new elections, one year ahead of schedule.

Jens Höhne who started his own business with help from a self-employment program launched by Schröder's government, says he isn't sure if Schröder will get his vote again.

"The job market needs to be a lot more flexible," he says. "But there should also be some social justice in the economy."

The rest of the country is also struggling to figure out how much to change, a process not helped by the campaigns of the SPD and CDU, which don't want to alienate voters by appearing too radical in their reform concepts. The SPD has even moderated their pro-reform platform by quietly imitating some Left Party points, like the call for a minimum wage.

"[The SPD] are taking steps away from the Agenda 2010 and inserting symbolic, leftist elements," says Mr. Andersen. "If you look at it that way, the Left Party has already succeeded."

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Pekka


Brad Pitt?

Many Canadian men do resemble Brad Pitt.

[notyoueither]

Re: German Left Party has Momentum!

Originally posted by techumseh
Enough pointless Canadian banter. Be worthy of our victory over the Americans in the War of 1812!

There is no such thing as pointless when you canuck a thread.

Tsk, tsk.