The Off Topic Topic

[Camerus]

"Oh, that's a nice picture." Better than "damn, your twenty year old daughter is eminently fuckable" anyway. 

[Grey Fox]

"You know Sarah? She was at my place last weekend, fun girl"

[The Larch]

Apparently the Macedonian name change referendum flopped and only got a participation of 30 something %.

[Zanza]

Well, I guess we can't force Western integration...

[The Larch]

It seems that the Macedonian government is going to keep forward with the name change despite the low turnout (35%). 91% of those who voted did so for the "Yes" option.

[The Larch]

In other news, Japanese politicians are a bunch of stiff, stick-up retrograde bastards. News at 11.

Japanese politician thrown out of meeting for sucking cough drop
Yuka Ogata, the councillor at the centre of last year's breastfeeding row, rails at 'outdated attitudes'

A Japanese politician who was forced to leave an assembly chamber last year after her colleagues objected to the presence of her seven-month-old child has been thrown out again for speaking while eating a cough drop.

Yuka Ogata, a member of the Kumamoto city assembly in south-western Japan, was ordered to leave the chamber last Friday after she refused to apologise for the incident – a move she believes is part of a campaign to frustrate her attempts to make the council more family-friendly.

She claimed that attitudes towards her had hardened since she took her child into the assembly last November. She had earlier asked for permission to breastfeed him in the chamber, or for daycare to be provided in the assembly building for the children of councillors, staff and visitors – requests that were rejected by the council.

"Many of the other councillors have openly criticised me, implying that I'm not a good mother, or claiming that many citizens think it's outrageous to provide daycare services for council members with young children," Ogata told the Guardian.

"They felt bad that their outdated attitudes had been exposed and criticised in public. Ever since then, they have tried to portray me as someone who behaves selfishly and unreasonably."
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In March, the assembly decided to restrict non-members' admission to the chamber in response to Ogata's actions.

While there is no ban on eating and drinking in the chamber, Ogata's critics claimed she had damaged the assembly's integrity by addressing other members with a lozenge in her mouth.

"A lot of the people have misunderstood this as an issue related to my behaviour, which is how it has been reported in the media," she said. "This is part of a struggle between me and other councillors, most of whom are older men, to make the council more relevant to the everyday lives of ordinary people."

Ogata was speaking at the podium when the chairman, Shinya Kutsuki, asked her if she had something in her mouth. She explained that she was sucking a lozenge because she was suffering from a cold and did not want to disrupt proceedings by coughing repeatedly.

The session was suspended while assembly members voted in favour of forming an ad hoc committee to decide how to discipline her. It composed an apology and demanded that she read it out. When Ogata refused, the committee reconvened and the chamber voted to suspend her for the rest of the day. The incident held up council business for eight hours.

"It is unacceptable for a responsible adult to ask questions with a cough drop in their mouth," the Kumamoto mayor Kazufumi Onishi said, according to Kyodo News. "She needs to admit that she was at fault."

Ogata took her infant son to a session of the assembly last year to highlight the difficulties many parents in Japan – particularly women – face trying to juggle work with raising children amid a shortage of nursery places.

"I saw it as my best chance to move forward with the policies I have devoted myself to ever since I became a councillor in my home city: to improve childcare provision and make Japan's working environment more family-friendly," she wrote in the Guardian.

The number of children on waiting lists for state-funded daycare increased for the third year in a row last year, raising doubts over government plans to provide a place for every child by April 2020.

[celedhring]

It seems that the Macedonian government is going to keep forward with the name change despite the low turnout (35%). 91% of those who voted did so for the "Yes" option.

Was it "I don't give a fuck" low turnout or "boycott!" turnout?

Doesn't look like a strong mandate, anyhow.

[The Larch]

It seems that the Macedonian government is going to keep forward with the name change despite the low turnout (35%). 91% of those who voted did so for the "Yes" option.

Was it "I don't give a fuck" low turnout or "boycott!" turnout?

Doesn't look like a strong mandate, anyhow.

Combination of various issues. The country's president, of the main opposition party to the PM, called for a boycott. The main minority of the country, Albanians, didn't vote much either, and they're 1/4 of the population. And to make matters worse, one third of the people with the right to vote live abroad.

Now it all depends on the main opposition party supporting the name change in parliament or not.

[Josquius]

I read they typically have awful turn outs and would have considered a 1/3 turnout to be OK.

[Tamas]

It seems that the Macedonian government is going to keep forward with the name change despite the low turnout (35%). 91% of those who voted did so for the "Yes" option.

Was it "I don't give a fuck" low turnout or "boycott!" turnout?

Doesn't look like a strong mandate, anyhow.

Combination of various issues. The country's president, of the main opposition party to the PM, called for a boycott. The main minority of the country, Albanians, didn't vote much either, and they're 1/4 of the population. And to make matters worse, one third of the people with the right to vote live abroad.

Now it all depends on the main opposition party supporting the name change in parliament or not.

What a ridiculous mess of a country. But IIRC they have Alexander the Great statues etc., fully claiming credit for him and his empire. Oh, tha Balkans.

[The Larch]

I read they typically have awful turn outs and would have considered a 1/3 turnout to be OK.

The turnout for the latest parlamentary elections was 66%, and for the latest presidential ones it was around 50%.

[The Larch]

It seems that the Macedonian government is going to keep forward with the name change despite the low turnout (35%). 91% of those who voted did so for the "Yes" option.

Was it "I don't give a fuck" low turnout or "boycott!" turnout?

Doesn't look like a strong mandate, anyhow.

Combination of various issues. The country's president, of the main opposition party to the PM, called for a boycott. The main minority of the country, Albanians, didn't vote much either, and they're 1/4 of the population. And to make matters worse, one third of the people with the right to vote live abroad.

Now it all depends on the main opposition party supporting the name change in parliament or not.

What a ridiculous mess of a country. But IIRC they have Alexander the Great statues etc., fully claiming credit for him and his empire. Oh, tha Balkans.

The current government (social democrats), elected in 2016, stopped the whole campaign reclaiming the old Macedonian symbols that had been launched by the previous government (right wing nationalists). They renamed all the "Alexander the Great" stuff in order to mend ties with Greece.

After the Zaev-Tsipras meeting in Davos, Zaev announced that streets and locations such as the Alexander the Great airport in Skopje which were named by the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE after Ancient Macedonian heroes and figures such as Alexander the Great, could be renamed as a sign of goodwill towards Greece. Specifically, Zaev declared that the Alexander the Great Highway, the E-75 motorway that connects Skopje to Greece, could be renamed to "Friendship Highway". In exchange, the Greek PM announced that Greece could consent to Macedonia's bid to the Adriatic-Ionian Cooperation Agreement and the Greek Parliament could ratify the second phase of the European Union Association Agreement with Macedonia as part of the accession of Macedonia to the European Union which was blocked in 2009 by Greece owing to the name dispute.

In late February 2018, the government and institutions of the Republic of Macedonia announced the halt of the Skopje 2014 program, which aimed to make Macedonia's capital have a "more classical appeal" and begun removing its controversial monuments and statues.

[grumbler]

What a ridiculous mess of a country. But IIRC they have Alexander the Great statues etc., fully claiming credit for him and his empire. Oh, tha Balkans.

Yeah, that's pretty typical of the Balkans.  The Greeks do the same with not just Alexander, but Homer and Pericles as well.

[Syt]

[Malthus]

Paint the map red!