Oh you naughty Belgians!
I have a new favourite European politician.
Step forward Elio di Rupo, red bow tie-wearing new prime minister of Belgium! Bow ties are cool.
Yes, Belgium has finally formed a government after the general election back in June. Rather puts our British concerns at the week it took to negotiate the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition in to perspective. Oh, did I mention? The general election was not in June this year, but in June 2010. It took them 541 days. Smashing the world record! Go Belgium.
(A quiet bit of advice to the 26 (or is it 17? or two?) countries currently negotiating how to hand further constraints on their fiscal policies to Brussels: I've said before that I don't think this is going to work, but if your heart is set on it, do make sure you hand control to the right bit of Brussels.)
As long-term readers will know, I do love Belgium, and Brussels is my second-favourite city after London. I think the political situation is quite fascinating - no fewer than twelve different parties got at least one of the 150 seats. In addition to the usual left/right social/economic splits, they have a profound and nasty split between Flemish (Dutch-speaking) and Walloon (French-speaking) areas. If they weren't slap in the middle of Western Europe, and actually fairly small, I'm pretty sure there'd have been a nasty breakup of the country.
But anyway, Elio di Rupo has cut through all that and is the Belgian hero of the hour.
He's a Walloon, which I find amusing with my appalling British habit of finding foreign names funny. Also, while I'm insulting a serious politician by making childish fun with names, I keep reading his name as 'di Lupo', Italian for 'Lupine', which I find entertainingly incongruous because he seem as un-wolflike as it is possible for a modern politician to be.
He wears a red bow tie! How cool is that? People should wear more bow ties. Long ties are stupid - I get that a bit of an accent can lift an otherwise dull suit-based outfit (but why not wear more interesting shirts?). But a long tie gets in your soup, catches fire on candles, and flaps around in the wind in an undignified manner. Bow ties are much more practical if you really must have something round your neck.
Alas, he can't actually speak Dutch terribly well, which is a bit of a problem. I mean, he speaks it way better than me - mine is limited to 'Good morning, can I have a waffle?' and 'Good evening, can I have a beer?' - but I'm not trying to be a unifying leader of a country where about 60% of the population speak Dutch.
He is a Friend of Dorothy, which gets a mention in a sentence at the end of all the profiles of him, and there is a strong consensus that it's not a big issue.
It's not a big issue, it's a huge issue! "Gay bloke becomes leader of a country and the fact he's gay is almost unremarkable" is fantastic news. We have come a long way in the last 42 years.
This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/232400.html, where there are
comment(s) not shown here.
Step forward Elio di Rupo, red bow tie-wearing new prime minister of Belgium! Bow ties are cool.
Yes, Belgium has finally formed a government after the general election back in June. Rather puts our British concerns at the week it took to negotiate the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition in to perspective. Oh, did I mention? The general election was not in June this year, but in June 2010. It took them 541 days. Smashing the world record! Go Belgium.
(A quiet bit of advice to the 26 (or is it 17? or two?) countries currently negotiating how to hand further constraints on their fiscal policies to Brussels: I've said before that I don't think this is going to work, but if your heart is set on it, do make sure you hand control to the right bit of Brussels.)
As long-term readers will know, I do love Belgium, and Brussels is my second-favourite city after London. I think the political situation is quite fascinating - no fewer than twelve different parties got at least one of the 150 seats. In addition to the usual left/right social/economic splits, they have a profound and nasty split between Flemish (Dutch-speaking) and Walloon (French-speaking) areas. If they weren't slap in the middle of Western Europe, and actually fairly small, I'm pretty sure there'd have been a nasty breakup of the country.
But anyway, Elio di Rupo has cut through all that and is the Belgian hero of the hour.
He's a Walloon, which I find amusing with my appalling British habit of finding foreign names funny. Also, while I'm insulting a serious politician by making childish fun with names, I keep reading his name as 'di Lupo', Italian for 'Lupine', which I find entertainingly incongruous because he seem as un-wolflike as it is possible for a modern politician to be.
He wears a red bow tie! How cool is that? People should wear more bow ties. Long ties are stupid - I get that a bit of an accent can lift an otherwise dull suit-based outfit (but why not wear more interesting shirts?). But a long tie gets in your soup, catches fire on candles, and flaps around in the wind in an undignified manner. Bow ties are much more practical if you really must have something round your neck.
Alas, he can't actually speak Dutch terribly well, which is a bit of a problem. I mean, he speaks it way better than me - mine is limited to 'Good morning, can I have a waffle?' and 'Good evening, can I have a beer?' - but I'm not trying to be a unifying leader of a country where about 60% of the population speak Dutch.
He is a Friend of Dorothy, which gets a mention in a sentence at the end of all the profiles of him, and there is a strong consensus that it's not a big issue.
It's not a big issue, it's a huge issue! "Gay bloke becomes leader of a country and the fact he's gay is almost unremarkable" is fantastic news. We have come a long way in the last 42 years.
This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/232400.html, where there are
comment(s) not shown here.