Hollande has it!

[ChickenLickn]

Exit polls give François Hollande 52 per cent of the vote for the final round of the french presidential elections. www.newstatesman.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/hollandes-victory-looks-assured

Iraqis looked fairly happy on the news as US tanks were rolling into Baghdad. With tears and stuff.

Well doh, it was you who raised the non residency point, not me! I'm not overly political either - just attempting to balance the scales - not all French people are wringing their hands at this result. Some of them (actually more than half of them) voted for Hollande.

Yep - pretty much. Odious man who would have shown his true colours ultimately.

.... and now I must get to bed. (can't quite believe I've allowed myself to be drawn into defending the right of the French to reject one leader for another - and to assert that a morally corrupt liar and cheat is probably not a good leader in the modern world)
Blimey!
Night all.

You are deliberately trying not to understand (I hope).

I don't care who French elect as President. I am not affected. It has no bearing on my life. What I have told you are the thoughts of French people who live in France, who will be hugely affected by Hollande's inevitable fuck-ups. They are worried by his victory.

Just like me, your students who live in Belgium will also not be affected by Hollande's ignorance and inevitable mistakes in the name of his ideology. Just like me, they are laughing. It doesn't affect them.

This is why they are not worried. Because it's no skin off their nose.

Nomen - all this rubbish about not scaring the markets is what has got us into this mess. Boot's very much on the other foot - it was 'the markets' i.e. the financiers who created the crisis in the first place. Europe has tried austerity and it has merely turned a crisis into a disaster. Now hopefully there will be a bit of fresh thinking.

I think it is understandable to be worried - it is uncertain how the French economy will do - I imagine that the tax avoiding bankers markets will not like a left wing election, and given how dependent on the stock market we seem to have become (don't quite get how our economic future became dependent on what seems to be a system of gambling) that could be difficult. But I totally get why people are happy, and it could yet be good - in the US they aren't cutting government spending and they seem to be doing better, no?

But there must be a good rate of French who are convinced Hollande will do well, no? You know, lots of people in and out of France were convinced that Sarko wasn't actually that big on facing the crisis.
And France right now isn't in great shape.
Only time will tell.

Belgium and every single European country will be affected if France starts to shake, btw

Sorry in advance, but I was really fucking hoping Hollande would win.
SO.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! ALLEZ HOLLANDE! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK I'm done.

I hope you are right to be so happy. I remember being absoultly over the moon when Blair won - surfice to say I wasnt happy for long.

If Hollande does do what he says he will, the situation in France will worsen, IMO. Investors will pull out. 'Fresh thinking' doesn't put money in a government's pocket, regardless of how much magical thinking goes on.

Surely one can see why a man who promises to lower the age of retirement will be popular with voters? It's economic suicide.

However, we'll see. I hope you are right, or as franca says, we will all feel it.

Its a good result. Sarko had gone too far to the right, and Europe needs an alternative to the austerity that is causing recessions all over the place.

Lowering the age of retirement to give young people jobs? Win-win, as far as I can see.

The age of retirement... Mmm... Yes lowering it might create jobs for young people... And yet people life's expectancy is getting higher and higher...

Nomen - current groupthink amongst the EU leaders certainly hasn't done anyone any good. It was Sarko who lost France its AAA status. Not the left.

I have the impression that at this stage France would have lost its AAA no matter what.

Also, other European countries have been badly governed by right wing coalitions, my own country - Italy- springs to mind. I am aware that no one is comparable to Berlusconi, but he was "on paper" a liberal.... hahahahahah (laughing to avoid crying)

Greek stock market down 8% this morning.

Can someone tell me something very basic? Is the French Socialist party basically their equivalent of Labour?

They are more real socialist than New Labour.
The French want to do some good things such as reduce retirement age unlike our "socialists", and they want to do some more socialist things like taxing people who earn 1 million Euros at 75%.

Right.

Thanks for the explanation. I guess there will be a lot of wealthy French leaving France then?

I was going to post that they're nothing like Labour, as they are genuinely on the Left. But it's not quite as clear cut as that, for example under Jospin they were pro-privatisation.

It will be interesting to see what, other than dumping the Euro bail-out deal, Hollande lays out as his first-to-be-enacted policies.

At the start of this thread, right-wingers were shrieking about a socialist president as if he was some big bogeyman whose election would make the markets freak out. Yet it was a right wing president who lost France its AAA status. It was right wing governments who were in charge across the developed world when the shit hit the fan - France, Germany, the US. We are the only exception as far as I can see (yet somehow the Tories have persuaded everyone it was all to do with public spending - and have oddly forgotten to mention they signed up to match Labour's spending targets).

Well said edam.