I’ve heard many people say good things about the book, but I’ve never opened it. Do you like it ?

Back in 2022 before the first round the highest LFI got in the polls was 18.6%, and they got 21.95% in the actual election, so that’s an underestimate by at least 3%. First round was April 10th, and before April, most polls were giving LFI around 14-15%. Only one pollster (Cluster 17) had given LFI 16% once (so it seemed plausible that this was just an outlier on the high side of things). Have a look for yourself, and look at the numbers at the end of March: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_de_sondages_sur_l’élection_présidentielle_française_de_2022

Pollsters want to demoralize us. It would be foolish of us to believe them.

In France, the prime minister has handed in his resignation something like 12 hours after nominating the new government.

There have now been four prime ministers (Attal, Barnier, Bayrou, Lecornu) since Macron refused to recognize the result of the parliamentary snap election he called in summer 2024. Macron has stayed true to his original motto since 2017, which is not to compromise on anything ever, even with potential allies.

Polls in France systematically disadvantage the main left-wing party LFI and its probable presidential candidate for 2027, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Even so, he is currently polling at 15%, indicating that the coming presidential election will very likely be a contest between the left and the far right.

That makes approximatively 10% growth a year, which is strong but not too surprising when compared with typical USSR (under Stalin) or chinese growth figures. Also the reference year is a covid year, in which I expect production was slightly lower, which could make for slightly stronger growth figures (but still very impressive).

It’s really great to see the DPRK growing this fast, especially when compared with the failing economy of the south.

BTW do you have official DPRK sources on what their GDP for 2023 or 2024 is ? All I can find are Bank of Korea (i.e. South Korea) estimates and I have absolutely no reason to trust these.