The principle of Democracy Fan

Most people I know are football fans. I don't really care about football; I'm not interested in making predictions and agonising when my team loses. It can be frustrating when you're the only one in the office who likes your particular sport. Just ask any cricket fan who's had to explain the distinction between a tie and a draw to explain why he's red-eyed and hoarse.

Me? I like democracy. I didn't really get into it before 2008, but back then it was easy. For every person keen to talk about whether Wilkinson would be fit in time for the away leg, there was someone willing to discuss the electoral college, or superdelegates, or the Bradley affect (mythical, as it turned out). Our own election revived that for a while, but generally people look glazed when I talk about Single Transferable Vote or Oscar Arias' Nobel prize.


The other thing I like, as anyone unfortunate enough to have met me a party will know, is expounding. What I want to do with this blog, basically, is expound to you, and use that expounding as an excuse to indulge in my deep-seated desire to read the whole of wikipedia.


There's an election somewhere in the world every few weeks, and some of them have nuggets of pure gold in them. Did you know that the last Hungarian election was won by the last party to self-destruct, leaving the public so disenchanted with the competition that there is effectively no opposition party anymore? Did you know that in 2008 Italy elected a man as Prime Minister who is best described as falling somewhere in a triangle described by the villains from Tom Clancy, Dan Brown and late-nineties Bond films?  Did you know that in 2010, Costa Rica elected it's first female president, and that she is named Laura Chinchilla?


Political theatre is, in my opinion, the best spectator sport there is. Allow me to be your sports-news-commentator.