There are a lot of interesting polls going on around the world just now.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow (Saturday), there is a general election in New Zealand and the next day (Sunday) there is a federal election in Germany. \u00a0In both cases, the incumbent party is a Right of Centre one: the National Party in NZ and the Christian Democrats in Germany. \u00a0In both cases, a new leader for the Left of Centre party caused a jump in the party’s popularity which has now – more in Germany than NZ – subsided: Martin Schulz of the Social Democrats in Germany and Jacinda Ardern of the Labour Party in NZ.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile on Monday (25 September), there will be a referendum in the Kurdish part of Iraq seeking support for an independent Kurdistan. Then, on 1 October, there is due to be a referendum in Catalonia seeking support for independence from Spain. In both cases, the national government and most of the international community are opposed to the very idea of a referendum, fearing that support for independence from parts of Iraq and Spain could lead to other parts of those nations and other countries wanting to break away.<\/p>\n
Fascinating times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are a lot of interesting polls going on around the world just now. Tomorrow (Saturday), there is a general election in New Zealand and the next day (Sunday) there is a federal election in Germany. \u00a0In both cases, the incumbent party is a Right of Centre one: the National Party in NZ and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21959"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21961,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21959\/revisions\/21961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}