Our Fair Country: The Commonwealth of New England
- Thread starter CosmicAsh
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Hard to see, but Brooklyn is actually in Eastern Standard Time. The rest of Long Island remains in NEST.
The Australian federal election, 2018 was held on 11 August 2018 to determine the composition of the Australian Parliament. All 150 seats of the House of Representatives and 76 seats in the Senate were up for election. Jason Clare of the Labor Party achieved a landslide victory over the government of Warren Truss and the National Party. The Nationals suffered the second largest landslide defeat in the nation's history, with their primary vote collapsing nearly thirty per cent. The election also marked the end of the shift in the right-wing towards the Nationals, with the Liberal Party under Malcolm Turnbull achieving their largest primary vote and seat count since the collapse of the coalition in the 1976 election. The Nationals also registered their lowest seat count since contesting federal elections in 1919. Their primary vote is also the lowest since 1937, and the first time since 1976 that the Nationals would not be the first or second largest party in Parliament.
The poor performance of the National Government, which was plagued by scandals under both Prime Ministers Hanson and Truss was a major factor in their defeat. Several senior members of the party had declared their support for Turnbull, and retiring cabinet minister Tony Abbott announced he would support the Liberals in the upcoming election, and that the party's continued support for former Prime Minister Pauline Hanson was worrying. Only a few days before the election, the former Prime Minister had been arrested for physically assaulting an aboriginal elder at Uluru, in an altercation over the name of the rock formation. With the party refusing to condemn the action, both Clare and Turnbull gave a joint press conference stating that such an action had no place in modern Australian society, and that both parties strongly condemned these actions.
In the last days of the election, momentum began to shift away from Labor towards the Liberals, who offered a more moderate platform over both the Nationals and Labor, with a focus on economic growth and lowering taxes responsibly when possible, much unlike the Labor platform of increased spending and higher taxes on the wealthy. This effect was attributed to Warren Truss suspending the Nationals campaign a week before the election, effectively ceding their ability to seriously contest the election. While most polls showed Labor would win a majority of the primary vote, this last minute shift in the electorate saw their primary vote held to forty-five per cent, and the Liberals up to thirty five per cent. Other parties captured almost eight per cent of the vote, but were unable to win a single seat.
Git rekt Nats. Anyway not sure if its already been asked but can we get a backstory as to the coalition split (if you've worked that far). Since as you can see we're all trying to get our heads around potentially how it has ended like this.
Also a bit of the 1992 Canadian election influencing you here?
depends where you're mailing it from and what kind of food and accommodation (i.e. not cramped and can breathe) its getting on the trip.
Nazi Space Spy
Banned
Flora MacDonald was a New England politician and community activist. Born the daughter of a telegraph operator, MacDonald's interest in politics dated back to her youth when she assisted her father at his work. A talented athlete with an unbridled drive, Flora's outspokenness and penchant for adventure often got her into trouble. Academically gifted as well, Flora spent her teenage years assisting her father, where she eagerly awaited for the latest news dispatches describing the German-Soviet War and regularly read the papers. It was here that Flora developed an interest in foreign affairs that would come to define her career.
Though MacDonald applied to a number of universities, she was forced to forgo further education due to her family's financial situation. After a brief stint working as a bank teller, Flora decided to make up for her lack of university education by travelling Europe. After a motorcycle trip through France and war ravaged Germany, she found herself in London, where she joined a radical gaggle of Scottish Nationalists. Loosely involved with their failed effort to steal the Stone of Scone almost resulted in her imprisonment, and she returned to Cape Breton island in the aftermath of the incident.
The Scottish Nationalists she had dealt with resulted in the reawakening of her dormant interest in politics; she took a job in Boston as secretary to the leader of the opposition Prescott Bush, and formed a close personal friendship with his son George that would serve her well in her later career. In the early sixties, she found her way into Bush's successor's inner-circle. Her years in the Kennedy government, which began with her serving as his personal secretary and ending with her overseeing the Conservative Party's failed 1969 reelection campaign.
After her time in the Kennedy government, she took up work as a Poli-Sci professor at Harvard for a few years before announcing her candidacy in the constituency of Cape Breton. In 1973, she narrowly defeated Allan MacEachen, a high ranking Labour MP, propelling her into the national spotlight. In Question Time. she regularly took Prime Minister Muskie to task on a number of issues important to her and soon became known as one of the House of Common's most outspoken feminists. She was subsequently reelected in 1976 by a wide margin thanks to her diligence and activism on behalf of the island's residents. She was rewarded by her longtime friend George Bush with an appointment to the shadow cabinet as the Shadow Minister of Commerce and Science. When the Conservatives won the 1980 Federal Election, she took up the mantle for nearly six years. A "Red Tory," MacDonald's strong working relationship with the Prime Minister resulted in her at last achieving the most coveted slot in the cabinet - that of Foreign Minister. In her final three years in the Bush government, she advocated for "a kinder, gentler world" and campaigned for the rights of women and girls across the globe.
In 1990, Prime Minister Bush took the party down the road of defeat after refusing to step down. In the wake of his resignation as party leader, it appeared that Flora MacDonald was the frontrunner. However, the entrance of Gordon Humphrey and Lowell Weicker into the race complicated things. At the Conservative Party leadership convention, she placed in a stunning third behind her two rivals. She would go on to blame sexism for her loss, and the media dubbed the event "Flora Syndrome." Dejected and exhausted, she retired in 1993.
In retirement, MacDonald would continue to advocate for policies that advanced women's rights and broadened opportunities for youth. She likewise became a popular figure in her native Cape Breton island for her decades long history of environmental advocacy. She remained politically involved until just weeks before her death, but became increasingly disillusioned with the party's slow drift to the right. In 2005, she endorsed the Reform Party and was courted to run in a Cape Breton seat one again, but declined due to her advanced age. MacDonald passed away in 2015 from natural causes, over two decades after her defeat. In her latter years, she worked to promote refugee resettlement and made regular appearances on New England television up until early 2015, when her health began to fail.
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(Please let me know if any of my ideas here contradict the narrative already established. Flora MacDonald was the most interesting Canadian politician of the seventies in my opinion. Thanks for opening this up a bit @Kanan!)
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Now, just imagine if that was a map of the world, the borders would be interesting.
Nope. Ireland has a set amount of time to adopt CET (10 years since ascension) so by 2023 it needs to adopt CET.
Someone needs to develop teleportation quicker, then we can send Kanan many cats.
Zollverein
With the Fall of Communism in Central Europe and the End of the Cold War, the Zollverein rapidly expanded into former Soviet-dominated territories. Poland and Slovakia joined in 2007, while the three Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia joined in 2011. Ireland, the most recent addition to the union in 2013, is the first member state outside of Central Europe and a sign that the organisation is interested in expanding beyond its current borders. Presently, there are ongoing talks with France and the Latin Monetary Union over a proposed merger of the two unions and the formation of political union, similar to the Bundesversammlung. Should a proposed merger take place, the organisation would remain the second largest economy in the world.
In 2018 Belgium triggered articles in the Treaty of Pressburg which will led to its exit from the Zollverein. If successful, it will be the first country to leave the union without having been subsumed by another country. The previous German states which once composed the union were annexed into Germany to form the German Empire, thus maintaining their membership but not their sovereignty. The move was declared as a measure against increased German desires for further political unity, with seven member states having ratified the Kaunas Accords to establish a formal Parliament of Central Europe and to open membership to other central European nations.
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I'm amazed Charles Michel is still Chancellor with his homecountry in the proces of leaving 
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