Tuesday 1 November 2011

Something the EU is really quite good at.

Stylised cartography:


I do not think that either Italy, Portugal or Turkey lend themselves to being rendered as spheres, but it works quite well for France and Poland, inter alia.  I rather like our subsidiary blob for Ulster, but do wonder why Iceland - less than half the size of the UK - is the size it is.  There's also something a bit dodgy about the colour allocations for the countries with - yawnola - three equal stripes.  A bit of rooting around has not turned up any amusing symbolic meanings for the colours in the flags of our nearest neighbours bar the RoI, which from memory is green for Celtic / Catholic Ireland, Orange for - oh go on, guess - and white for a desire for peace between the two.  There's an awful lot of orange on the Irish blob, so maybe the designer is a Unionist.

Here's another one from a few years back:




10 comments:

  1. I'm struggling to see the point of it.

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  2. True enough, but it is rather pretty. And in one of my parallel lives I have a twisted obsession with maps.

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  3. what's the mighty red-&-white blob to the east of Greece then, eh ?

    am I being dumb ... or naive ?

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  4. Well, it could be read as a hazard warning, Highway Code fans, but I imagine it is our Turkish chums.

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  5. yup, that's what I thought

    getting a bit ahead of themselves, hmmm ?

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  6. Having checked, it could mean 'no vehicles'. Just as well I have not driven in a while.

    A propos Turkey, the EU keeps spinning the line that Turkey will be allowed in one of these days, and that their membership application has been received.

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  7. It is very pretty but that's not a map of the EU member states.

    They miss off Switzerland and Norway but include Iceland and Turkey and all the Balkan states (none of these are EU member states).

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  8. Except maybe Slovenia, that's a member state (I think)

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  9. Mark, I should have said - it is EU members plus accession candidates, hence Turkey, Iceland, Western Balkans etc.

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  10. Yup, Slovenia's in. In the euro too, poor blighters.

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