the Urban population in France is greater than 80% of the population as a whole though
which is roughly the same as the UK but
I dunno
Mrs BITT is working in Paris this week and all our French friends there are fairly convinced that the head-to-head will stop Le Pen (like it stopped her dad in 2002 when we lived there) but either way they all say that the last 3 Presidents between them have managed to fuck everything so badly that there would hardly be a noticeable difference
which is frighteningly Brexit
still trying to be optimistic though as I remember the alarm in 2002 after the first round of voting resulting in an eventual 83-17 victory for Chirac despite Chirac being roundly despised
the caveat being that Chirac - being the experienced elder statesman - was a no-brainer against Le Pen senior
Macron might not be such an obvious white knight in this instance
Macron?
From what I know he’s a bit of a slick technocrat who wants a generation of French Elon Musks & Steve Jobss to step up & that he’s definitely on Israel’s side & not on Palestine’s but obviously nowhere near as fundamentally anti-arab as Le Pen (or even Sarkozy). So I guess quite Clintony in that laissez-faire (actual) centrist way
he does give me a bit of a Blairite wolf-in-sheeps-clothing vibe though - that secular, militantly ‘fair and evidence based’ mind that you know is gonna run up against some unshiftable core prejudice at some point
Yeah, he seems sound but he also seems like someone who could say ‘Non!’ very firmly & mean it
he also seems to have a neoliberal rather than a humanitarian approach to immigration though; ie ‘it’s good for the economy’ which is not ideal but might just be the best sell tactic I dunno
he seems quite keen on EU wide tax & wage integration as well (to answer @anon30627475 a bit better - he did mention economic position) which could be absolutely great …or could equally be absolute poison.
Maybe the idea of an EU imposed minimum wage is what has May running for the hills (though I doubt it would be set higher than current UK min wage)
outright perverting democracy, really. dunno if it’s strictly fascism but it’s a definite attempt to control public opinion of her government’s shady, slack as fuck handling of the nhs crisis and reshape an unflattering situation to their advantage. brittle authoritarian cunts. imagine the lies and distortions still to come in the eu exit if this is how they handle a local government matter.
There’s already some trutherism going on about those texts - the screenshots are from the same time but the level of signal changes! What’s the deal!?!?!?!?!?
level of signal constantly changes in some places.
Isn’t it well known that it’s not really a true signal reading and just a sort arbitrary value based on several factors? I’m sure QI talked about this. @marckee ?