(no subject)
May. 5th, 2007 07:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharus"Stories are equipment for living."
This is my new favourite quote, gleaned from CBC today. I looked up the quotee, and discovered it was a literary theorist I'd never heard of named Kenneth Burke -- and by coincidence, today would've been 110th birthday if he were still alive.
Listening to CBC for a full day on a Saturday -- as I did today at work -- is an experience in the ridiculous and the sublime. CBC is still this country's best news source, but in between the news are very strange things.
Brent Bambury's sense of humour, for instance, falls into the ridiculous category -- it makes one reflect on the banality of evil.
Politics
Among the sublime, there was a brilliant argument by a senator as to the stupidity of fixed election dates in Canada. Not just is it a numbed emulation of the American system for no reason, he argued, but it also means that we've made it illegal to call and early election.
The senate once forced Mulrouney to shelve free trade unless he got a new mandate from the people in the form of an election -- they felt that he'd sprung a major change on the public by surprise, without consulting us. We can no longer do that -- a policy either has to be shelves until the fixed date, or allowed through, and the senate may be reluctant to stonewall something that long.
It also means that that Harper can pretend he's doing something about election reform, when he isn't tackling the real problem -- the lack of proportional representation, which helps the right-wing party win elections even when most Canadians vote to the centre or to the left.
Language
On a very different note, I learned of a new punctuation mark thanks to CBC today -- the interrobang. It's meant to replace the "?!" you get at the end of loud questions -- as in "What the fuck?!". Unfortunately, I can't get it to display on my browser, even with the code.
Looking it up, I discovered the irony mark -- a backwards question mark (؟) -- for ironic statements. No doubt it'll be of great use to Alanis Morrisette؟
This is my new favourite quote, gleaned from CBC today. I looked up the quotee, and discovered it was a literary theorist I'd never heard of named Kenneth Burke -- and by coincidence, today would've been 110th birthday if he were still alive.
Listening to CBC for a full day on a Saturday -- as I did today at work -- is an experience in the ridiculous and the sublime. CBC is still this country's best news source, but in between the news are very strange things.
Brent Bambury's sense of humour, for instance, falls into the ridiculous category -- it makes one reflect on the banality of evil.
Politics
Among the sublime, there was a brilliant argument by a senator as to the stupidity of fixed election dates in Canada. Not just is it a numbed emulation of the American system for no reason, he argued, but it also means that we've made it illegal to call and early election.
The senate once forced Mulrouney to shelve free trade unless he got a new mandate from the people in the form of an election -- they felt that he'd sprung a major change on the public by surprise, without consulting us. We can no longer do that -- a policy either has to be shelves until the fixed date, or allowed through, and the senate may be reluctant to stonewall something that long.
It also means that that Harper can pretend he's doing something about election reform, when he isn't tackling the real problem -- the lack of proportional representation, which helps the right-wing party win elections even when most Canadians vote to the centre or to the left.
Language
On a very different note, I learned of a new punctuation mark thanks to CBC today -- the interrobang. It's meant to replace the "?!" you get at the end of loud questions -- as in "What the fuck?!". Unfortunately, I can't get it to display on my browser, even with the code.
Looking it up, I discovered the irony mark -- a backwards question mark (؟) -- for ironic statements. No doubt it'll be of great use to Alanis Morrisette؟
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-10 01:59 am (UTC)If it were really an honest attempt at election reform, it wouldn't come from the man who put Michael Fortier in the Senate after years of criticizing the Senate.
He also accepted whassisname crossing the floor immediately after the election.
But those two instances of hypocrisy (or giving the Liberals a taste of their own medicine) don't automatically mean that any reform proposed by the Conservatives is necessarily insincere.
Harper was also at the forefront of the unite-the-right movement, which aimed to manipulate a flaw in our system of democracy (the first past-the-post system of voting) to get his party into power.
Oh, come now. There's nothing inherently sinister, or evil, or manipulative, or underhanded about tryng to get all parties right of center under one umbrella. Under our current system, it was in fact politically necessary (or so the party leaders said).
Didn't somebody in the NDP suggest a similar 'unite-the-left' drive not so long ago?
Not into another region-based body, since the House of Commons already does that.
Actually, it doesn't. Under some of Mulroney's last legislation (which I would argue very strongly is illegal), the number of seats in Parliament is limited, and Quebec automatically gets a quarter of them even if the proportion of Quebec's population relative to the whole country goes down. So Quebec always gets 75.
Under the Constitution PEI also has a guaranteed four, regardless of its population. And all provinces are guaranteed to have no fewer than the number of seats they held at the time of the patriation.
So the House of Commons is not currently representative of the population: some provinces count more than others.
And of course, there's the whole idea of a triple-E Senate. In a large country like ours, it isn't democracy when 4 million votes in Toronto dictate what happens in BC or Alberta.
The same philosopher pointed out that referendums reduce complex questions to simple a "yes" versus "no,"
Isn't that what it comes down to in Parliament? Yea or nay?
when most people have a more complex and nuanced idea of what should happen. To this end, they elect public officials.
Actually, I think most people are blissfully ignorant of governmental concerns. They don't have a 'complex and nuanced' view; they barely know what's going on unless they go out of their way to find out. And few do.
I also don't think you can claim that public officials are elected to resolve just one issue, unless you want to have an election every time a new issue comes up.
Also, I should note that a true referendum is not legal in Canada.
? Of course it's legal. I think what you mean to say is that it isn't legally binding. I'm not sure even that's true any longer; several provinces now require a referendum before approving or vetoing changes to the Constitution, for example.
Anyway, the political cost of ignoring a referendum result on an important question is something that shouldn't be brushed aside casually by any politician who wants power. As they all do.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-11 05:43 pm (UTC)