Japan Swings Left

[ZenGum]

I don't know if anyone cares, but The Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed Japan for all but ten months of the last 50 years, just got totally slung out and replaced by the Democratic Party of Japan.

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) victory was largely as expected, taking 308 seats in the 480-seat Diet. However, the DPJ does not have two-thirds majority (320), and thus will need coalition partners in order to ensure smooth passage of laws through the still-divided Upper House.

Morgan Stanley

Japan's opposition party won an overwhelming victory at the polls on Sunday pledging to increase social welfare, better protect workers and do away with American-style, pro-market reforms to lead the country out of its long slump.

SNIP

“The recent economic crisis resulted from a way of thinking based on the idea that American-style free-market economics represents a universal and ideal economic order,” Mr. Hatoyama wrote ...

NYT


The global political pendulum had been swinging to the right for at least a few decades - since the early seventies, I would say. It now seems to be getting into a significant backswing.

[DanaC]

Well I wish that backswing would hit the UK *depressed*

[Sundae]

Blimey.
Talk about out of step - Japan is so fundamentally Conservative it's kind of a miracle.
Then again I spose I think the same (to a lesser degree) about the States. Your left is our centre after all.

But Europe is swinging to the right, thanks to the recession.
This time next year [retch] Cameron will be PM [retch].
Ah well, at least he won't be on the telly-box spewing hatred and lies about the current Govt.
Just hatred and lies about this country.

And maybe I'll be able to read the 'rents right wing newspaper without gurning.

[classicman]

So the UK is the only country who's got it right?

[Sundae]

Nope, we're following the rest of Europe to the right, which is wrong :p
YMMV!

[ZenGum]

Japan's next prime minister might be nicknamed "The Alien", but it is his wife who claims to have had a close encounter with another world.

"While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus," Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama, wrote in a book published last year.

"It was a very beautiful place and it was really green."

Yukio Hatoyama is due to be voted in as premier on September 16 following his party's crushing election victory over the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Sunday.

Ms Miyuki, 66, described the extraterrestrial experience, which she said took place some 20 years ago, in a book entitled "Very Strange Things I've Encountered".

When she awoke, Japan's next first lady wrote, she told her now ex-husband that she had just been to Venus. He advised her that it was probably just a dream.

"My current husband has a different way of thinking," she wrote. "He would surely say 'Oh, that's great'."

Yukio Hatoyama, 62, the rich grandson of a former prime minister, was once nicknamed "The Alien" for his prominent eyes.

Ms Miyuki, also known for her culinary skills, spent six years acting in the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female musical theatre group. She met the US-educated Yukio while living in America.

Oh dear.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

Oh dear.

Sounds familiar.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Sounds familiar.

close, but you are confusing that with "yes dear."