Strange maps.

On the subject of The Mainly Fail they've got an article about a series of maps that distort the size of countries so as to weight them by population. I'm sure they're behind on this because I seem to recall seeing something similar in one of the broadsheets a couple or three years ago, but it's interesting all the same. Here's a Australia superimposed on Europe similar to at least one postcard available in just about every gift shop and post office here.

But on the population adjusted map the UK becomes a large lilac splat much bigger than the funny little squiggle with a few yellow lobes for the cities that represents Australia.

In close up it gets more interesting because you can really see how much of Australia is really made up of the main cities, and because what I presume to be our national capital looks a lot like a seam between a pair of bollocks. I'd be lying if I claimed that I didn't find that amusing.

But, and this is kind of the whole point of this post, most interesting of all is the UK. Let's just remind ourselves that the UK, like Australia, isn't quite a single country. We're half a dozen states and a couple of territories that make up the nation as a whole, and while it's not quite the same as states the UK is two countries, a principality and a province. And let's also remind ourselves that the principality, the province and one of the two countries all have some form of limited government and an elected legislature that deals only with it's own issues, and that the remaining country does not. And that elected members to the UK's national parliament who represent seats in those areas still have a say in the affairs of that Cinderella country. Let's think about that when we look at the last map.

Democracy. So wonderful it just makes you want to shit, doesn't it? Still, no matter. The grinning mutation will probably be in charge of all of fucking Europe in time for Hallowe'en. How's that for fucking irony?