Putting Politics into Perspective

The elections in Bavaria, which were referred to in an earlier post took place nine days ago and ended with the "Christlich-Soziale Union" (CSU) losing an absolute majority, which they had held for decades, with their vote plummeting from just over 60% in the last election to just over 43% this time round. Alright 'shit' happens but this is a "real" disaster for a self-rightous, pompous political party in what is a parochial and provincial part of the planet. Being cocky, narrow-minded and conservative themselves though, the people of Bavaria, or at least, 60% of those who vote, don't normally have a problem casting their vote for the self-righteous, pompous CSU, so what happened to the 17% who went astray? Well, for the most part, they turned to the "Freie Waehler", not a political party as such but rather a group of people with mainly conservative views who addressed a number of issues such as; smaller classes, more teachers, less traffic in the town centres etc. etc. Important issues, no doubt, and there was me in a cafe listening to a conversation that harked back to why the CSU lost so many of their voters and that conversation was taking place nine days after the elections. One of the people talking attributed the "disaster" to Minister President, Beckstein's, Frankish roots,another to him having no personality, then someone chirped in that the CSU implementing a ban on smoking in public places lost the party votes and, and, ....... and nothing, perhaps, unusual in all of this but, well, the daft Georgian President having someone blow up some Russian soldiers in South Ossetein and a financial crisis that could wipe out all of our savings tomorrow are they not a little more important? That is just it; serious issues and I mean serious issues, were not mentioned by anyone in the run up to the Bavarian elections and they don't appear to be a topic of discussion now and in the meantime we really are heading for a financial crisis the likes of which none of us have ever experienced before. Of course, little provincial insignificant parliaments are not there to discuss big important issues. One of the reasons they are there is to make little insignificant provincial people feel important and here, at least, they are invariably successful.