leadership fitness

[Beef Oven!]

crap headphones
not convinced

Cometh the hour, cometh the van (albeit with shite headphones).

[MrGongGong]

Cometh the hour, cometh the van (albeit with shite headphones).

Is that Don Van ?

[Beef Oven!]

Is that Don Van ?

Don't even bring the great man's name into this rumpy-rumpoy shambles.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Are beautiful politicians more likely to be elected? To test this, we use evidence fromAustralia, a country in which voting is compulsory, and in whichvoters are given ‘How
to Vote’ cards depicting photos of the major party candidates as they arrive to vote. Using raters chosen to be representative of the electorate, we assess the beauty of political
candidates from major political parties, and then estimate the effect of beauty on voteshare for candidates in the 2004 federal election. Beautiful candidates are indeed more likely to be elected, with a one standard deviation increase in beauty associated with a 1½ – 2 percentage point increase in voteshare. Our results are robust to several specification checks: adding party fixed effects,
dropping well-known politicians, using a non-Australian beauty rater, omitting candidates of non-Anglo Saxon appearance, controlling for age, and analyzing the ‘beauty gap’ between candidates running in the same electorate. The marginal effect of beauty is larger for male candidates than for female candidates, and appears to be approximately linear. Consistent with the theory that returns to beauty reflect discrimination, we find suggestive evidence that beauty matters more in electorates with a higher share of apathetic voters.
full paper

and in Oz

[Serial_Apologist]

well ...
Clegg strikes me as a bit of an oik, all odd angles and disconnected head and body so not very 'fit' at all

Cameron looks ok but that is not just the chest pushing the jacket out; jowls and tum look a bit the worse for all those Bullingdon dinners and he looks to be breathing in rather fiercely

Ed looks menacing; something pugilist and well shaped about the torso and the suit fits the best of the three ...

Note Cameron's lower arms - slightly forward, hands facing backwards: the Neanderthal GW Bush and Tony Bliar posture when standing or advancing into our future.

Oh, and one of them's got a gammy clegg...

[french frank]

Interesting ... Advisers .....

[Serial_Apologist]

Interesting ... Advisers .....

Mindfulness - hmmm: but can it be achieved under capitalism?

[amateur51]

Mindfulness - hmmm: but can it be achieved under capitalism?

Mindfulness is the latest Big Idea in the treatment of chronic mental distress.

Just thought I'd mention that.

[Flosshilde]

You think Clegg might benefit?

[french frank]

You think Clegg might benefit?

With Roger W advising him?