And the bookies all adjust their odds...
So, moving back to some Canadian content, looks like the odds we're all a gonna be tripping over campaign signs again in a week or so went down a bit today. Seems one Belinda Stronach has switched parties.
This, too, has its ironies. But I'd have to write one helluva long post to go into that. The precis, I guess, would go something like: this is funny 'cos (i) much of the current political instability goes back to the fact that where there were once two viable national parties broadly seen as competent to govern, there is now only one, (ii) Ms. Stronach was (albeit somewhat peripherally, and well after the fact) kinda involved in the burial of the by-then-rather-dessicated remains of the other one, (iii) the remaining party has since, sans any serious national threats to its power, gone about as corrupt as its now deceased rival had gone by the time of the crushing defeat that eventually entirely broke its back (besides adopting, in de facto terms, many of the more unpopular policies its erstwhile rival championed prior to its fall)... But since the whole thing goes back, arguably, to that now deceased party doin' the mad Hayekian mambo back in the 80s, when that sorta thing was all the rage... and a woman with a closet fulla Guccis... and rumours of a shady arms deal... and this guy singing 'Irish Eyes' with Reagan... And let's not forget the separatistes in Quebec ('cos they hate that)...
Oh, forget it. It can't be done with any kinda concision. Suffice to say, it's a mess. The upshot is: we might get an election any day, 'cos it's a minority government, and two of the opposition parties think now's a pretty good time to try to improve their fortunes. But Canadians generally don't want to vote 'cos they know when they do they're gonna have to choose between (i) a buncha closet extremists whose last national leader thought the world was about 6,000 years old and (ii) the apparently (at best) sporadically corrupt centre-right party (which never, actually, calls itself that) currently in power. So I think we're probably all hoping the entire parliament will catch some really deadly disease over the summer or something, and we can just start over. An election, it just ain't gonna go where anyone wants it to, any time soon... If people really get the government (and electoral choices) they deserve, we musta done something really bad, not too long ago.
This, too, has its ironies. But I'd have to write one helluva long post to go into that. The precis, I guess, would go something like: this is funny 'cos (i) much of the current political instability goes back to the fact that where there were once two viable national parties broadly seen as competent to govern, there is now only one, (ii) Ms. Stronach was (albeit somewhat peripherally, and well after the fact) kinda involved in the burial of the by-then-rather-dessicated remains of the other one, (iii) the remaining party has since, sans any serious national threats to its power, gone about as corrupt as its now deceased rival had gone by the time of the crushing defeat that eventually entirely broke its back (besides adopting, in de facto terms, many of the more unpopular policies its erstwhile rival championed prior to its fall)... But since the whole thing goes back, arguably, to that now deceased party doin' the mad Hayekian mambo back in the 80s, when that sorta thing was all the rage... and a woman with a closet fulla Guccis... and rumours of a shady arms deal... and this guy singing 'Irish Eyes' with Reagan... And let's not forget the separatistes in Quebec ('cos they hate that)...
Oh, forget it. It can't be done with any kinda concision. Suffice to say, it's a mess. The upshot is: we might get an election any day, 'cos it's a minority government, and two of the opposition parties think now's a pretty good time to try to improve their fortunes. But Canadians generally don't want to vote 'cos they know when they do they're gonna have to choose between (i) a buncha closet extremists whose last national leader thought the world was about 6,000 years old and (ii) the apparently (at best) sporadically corrupt centre-right party (which never, actually, calls itself that) currently in power. So I think we're probably all hoping the entire parliament will catch some really deadly disease over the summer or something, and we can just start over. An election, it just ain't gonna go where anyone wants it to, any time soon... If people really get the government (and electoral choices) they deserve, we musta done something really bad, not too long ago.
posted by AJM at 4:24 p.m. (Permanent Link)
