Newsflash: Reallifethailand is liberal!!!!

You wouldn't think so from reading the other Thai political blogs. Bangkok Pundit, Thailandjumpedtheshark and Jotman all champion Thaksin Shiniwat for supposedly helping the poor. All the above denounce the PAD (People's Alliance for Democracy, the mainly middle class protest groups who took to the streets to oppose Thaksin) while I strongly supported them. I'm often chastised for happening to have views contradictory to Thailand's poorest demographics.

I voted Labour in the last two UK elections but I'll be switching this time.



I'm a strong believer in universal healthcare, free education, regulation of large corporations, religious tolerance (not to be confused with acceptance of extremely violent religious ideologies) and gay rights. However, I am also strongly in favour of strict law enforcement and punishment, tight immigration controls, zero tolerance of vote buyers and sellers and privilege cuts for able non workers.

Does that sound like a Conservative set of values to you?

So where do I stand politically? And where do the other political bloggers stand?
To find out , I took the politics test at okcupid. The answers are in the "agree/disagree" format with four choices. The test does have some questions relevant only to Americans, but others such as "Only literate people should be able to vote" and "Most people are too stupid to know what's go for them" and "Protest groups only create disunity" are relevant for any nation.

The test results classed me as:

Social liberal (60% permissive) Economic Liberal (26% permissive)
Democrat (26e/60s).

Perhaps scariest of all, my closest famous person in political terms is Hilary "How two faced and fake can one person be?" Clinton!!!!

I was sceptical of these results. So I took another test. This time I went for the politicalcompass.org test. The questions are in the same format, but these ones were longer and had more frequent "stop and think carefully" questions. The results are presented on a four way axis with a careful explanation of the layout. My results were:



So it's official, I'm centre left. This feels strange, as I've always considered myself mildly Conservative.


Perhaps I've always believed far left liberals when they label anyone who opposes them as "Conservative" or "intolerant". Here's the evidence showing you are wrong.

I'd love to hear from anyone else - especially the other political bloggers - who took these tests. Let me know your score!

(If you're short on time the 'world's smallest political quiz' is here. I scored the same again).


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Burma

I am keeping well abreast of the situation in Burma. It's constant front page news in Thailand due to the closeness of the countries in geographical, racial and cultural terms. Thailand has been slow to support the pro democracy groups and General Sonthi finally eroded any last remaining shreds of credibility that survived his "Mao" quote by suggesting that the Burmese junta were "defending themselves" from those evil, unarmed, peaceful protesters asking for democracy. What state of mind was Sonthi reflecting in his words? "We dictators all have to back each other up"?

The reason I have not blogged much on this issue is not because I am uninformed or uncaring, but simply that bloggers like Jotman and others have done such a prolific job. Jotman links to a Burmese blogger who suggests a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. I think it's a powerful and viable idea.