Election

I hope the Americans on the f-list will forgive me for commenting on their election: I am not, after all, a citizen of the USA. But what happens in the US affects the rest of the world, and I am deeply relieved that the American people seem, in the main, to have rejected a reactionary, extreme and bigoted worldview. I am finding it entertaining, in a bleak way, that there is currently so much incomprehension among far-right Republicans over the electoral outcome. I suppose if you shout loudly enough, and insist on your opinion being the only correct one, it is literally baffling when your desired result fails to manifest.

I said on FB that the Conservative party here in the main supports Obama. He's a lot closer to them than he is to the Tea Party. It is by no means inconceivable here that we might see a swing to the far Right, but it's looking increasingly unlikely. The last election saw the BNP and the EDL pretty much hammered although the former, hilariously, suffered a massive schism in the week before the election and their webmaster, in a fit of pique, took their website down. People have historically tended to look to the far right in times of economic crisis and that doesn't seem to be happening at the moment. I suspect that most Tea Partiers would regard the Tories, with their (in general) pro choice, pro gay rights, nationalised health care agenda as being close to bomb-hurling communists (and the Tories would almost certainly scrap the NHS if they thought they could get away with it, by the way, but that's a rather different matter).

The sole supporter of a change in the abortion laws, our homegrown ghastly Palin-a-like Nadine Dorries, has just slit the throat of her entire political career by bunking off without the Chief Whip's permission to appear on I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. She's been suspended. Words cannot express how amusing I find this.

On top of the election, we've just got a new church head - the new Archbishop of Canterbury - who supports women being ordained as bishops. He's been rather more circumspect about gay marriage, although those who have had experience of him seem hopeful. The world is changing, and in Britain and the US, at least, its more Medieval elements seem to be being left behind.