Mr. Ignatieff said: “What (this party) will not do under my leadership,
Is merge with anybody.” So, you finally showed us some leadership.
________________________________________________
Comment for today.
Whether you call it football or soccer, it’s a beautiful game,
And winning the title leads the players to world-wide fame.
___________________________________________
#49 – Merging the Liberals and NDP: Whose decision is it anyway?
Hold on a minute. Now we have former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien supposedly arguing with current Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff over the proposal to merge with the NDP. Why? They, of course, have the right to an opinion but it is not their decision to make. The question of merging of two political parties has to be decided by the parties involved. It is not for present or past leaders to decide.
Stephen Harper’s manoeuvring the takeover of the Conservative Party by the Reform party was so obvious a move that people who understood the situation wondered why it took so long. The two parties had become locked into regional positions and it was an easy process to put them together.
A Liberal-NDP merger is a far more complex situation. The Liberal Party of Canada has always been a centrist party. It was lucky over the years to have some key centre-left thinkers working within the party that gave it moral character. People such as parliamentarians and cabinet ministers Herb Gray and Lloyd Axworthy contributed much of the humanitarian appeal of the party over their years of service.
But they had to do their work amid colleagues from the right of the political spectrum. There was little they could do in the 90’s when Chrétien gave then Finance Minister Paul Martin the green light to gut programs such as unemployment insurance and transfer payments to try to balance the books in Ottawa. It also left little choice for the voters in 2004 between Stephen Harper’s new Conservative Party and Paul Martin’s right of centre Liberals. The Liberal Party might have chosen Stéphane Dion next as leader but the right-of-centre parliamentarians left him to blow in the wind of ugly attacks by Stephen Harper in 2008.
When the Liberal Party next gathered in convention in Vancouver, the parliamentary rump had Michael Ignatieff firmly settled into the leadership role. The party, expecting a fast election, felt there was no other choice and the selection was confirmed.
But what the party really got was a pig in a poke. The party had no idea where Ignatieff sat on the right or left but gave him control of party policy. So far, there has been no policy and no election. Is it any wonder that the news media report that the natives are getting restless?
The one thing that is very clear is that if the Liberals do not carve out a different space in the political spectrum than Mr. Harper, they might as well surrender early. A merger with the NDP can solve that problem.
While people think of the NDP as a socialist party, it is nowhere near as socialist today as it was in its inception. Today, the NDP is more of a socially conscious party and that is what the Liberals desperately need. The NDP no longer needs the unions to hold it up as a party. It no longer needs the socialist rants of past centuries. Today, it needs to become more forward thinking, more environmentally tuned in, more humanitarian in its outlook. It can do that within the Liberal Party.
And the Liberal Party desperately needs that.
– 30 –
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]
Comment for today.
Who said Chrétien and Ignatieff should argue about the NDP?
The question should go to the two parties and then we’ll see.
_____________________________________________
#48 – English: A Dying language murdered by e-mails and texts.
In writing about communication and sex, it would be very remiss to ignore the impact on language of those damned Blackberries. One of the few useful skills that used to be taught to young people in typing class is that while humans are endowed with opposable thumbs, they were never meant to be used for typing. At most, the thumb was engaged only for the purpose of leaving a space. On a proper size Qwerty keyboard, you can use either thumb to move your cursor along to the next word.
But Blackberries have changed the proper order of things. Would you believe they actually have competitions to see which kid can type faster with their thumbs? They are causing serious cases of carpal thumb syndrome!
The reality is that they are not really using their thumbs but their thumb nails. People with a decent manicure can greatly improve their Blackberry skills. What it does not do is improve their use of the English language. Blackberries are doing the English language irreparable harm.
Can you imagine the idiot who sends a Blackberry message to a nubile young lady inviting her for a romantic evening of dining, dancing, sweet nothings, great sex and then has the effrontery of adding a smirking happy face? She should respond by saying, “Sorry, I have to go to the funeral for the last idiot who used a happy face in an e-mail.”
This rant is not about spelling. That battle was lost cause many years ago. Some nerd added spell check to word processing programs and the language has never recovered. Nobody today knows the difference between ‘there’ and ‘their’ and little do they care.
And then along came twitter with a limit of 140 characters and instead of challenging the skill of our youth at using the language, it allowed them to abbreviate. The first time I came across somebody using ‘2’ to represent ‘to, too and two,’ I bloody near had a stroke. Even worse some idiots resolved spelling big words by taking out all the vowels in the word, as well as the consonants they forgot. Messaging has become a contest in deciphering gobbledygook.
What is most frightening about this Blackberry craze is that people are spending hundreds of dollars a month to feel important. Executives sit in meetings staring down at their laps. They are neither praying nor playing with themselves. They are running their worlds with their thumbs. They dare not be out of touch.
It is important to me (probably no one else) that I point out that I have always been an early user of new technologies. I am not a dinosaur. I just think the Blackberry craze has gone too damn far! It is doing no good for our language.
– 30 –
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]
Comment for today.
In Babel, getting better wines in restaurants is a special job,
If you won’t drink the swill they serve, you’re called a snob.
___________________________________________
Comment for today.
PM Harper is on a spending spree, that we all agree,
The G8 – G20 doesn’t mean as much to you and me,
______________________________________
#46 – Public speaking and sex: The art of persuasion.
When you are in your teens, it is good to have a friend with whom you can discuss your growing curiosity about sex. Most of the time, it helps demystify the subject. Occasionally, it leads to confusion.
I had such a friend. He often added to the confusion. There was the time, for example, when he convinced me to take a public speaking course that was offered as an after-hours class. It was because we had purloined some books from behind an older brother’s bookshelf that promised to explain the deepest mysteries of something called ‘coitus.’ We were convinced that it was a deeply serious work and we compared notes as we went through the books a chapter at a time.
“We gotta find out more about this public area that women have,” my friend explained. His solution was that it since it might have a relationship to public speaking, we could learn more by attending that class.
Since it was now my turn to read that chapter, it was not until the first public speaking class that I had a chance to suggest to him that he might be confusing the word ‘public’ with ‘pubic.’
But by then, it was too late. The class had started. Instead of being out playing work-up baseball with the gang, we were stuck with an elderly English teacher trying to tell us how to speak in public.
To our surprise and delight, we found the public speaking class dealt mainly with the art of persuasion. For two randy young guys, this was going to be more useful than the teacher realized. We figured it was going to help us get laid.
The first lesson was to learn about your audience. That made sense. We found out that the better you know your audience, the easier it is to get them to go along with your objectives. That is why you start by identifying with them. Knowing about them makes it easier to make them comfortable with you.
We were taught that once a comfort level has been established, you can address the subject of your speech. The teacher made the vital point that a direct approach was not always the best route to your objective. Here we were shown that by laying the groundwork properly, you can get people to think your objective is their idea. This was a revelation.
The teacher showed us how to build our case through the speech and to use emotion to help our audience to feel the need. She showed us how to layer our case to encompass different attitudes and personal needs. She also taught us not to bore our audience with needless verbiage. We learned to end on a high note, with an audience that is sure you have more to give. We learned the secret of the standing ovation.
But did this effort pay off with the girls? It is hard to say. My friend got himself a girlfriend right after taking the public speaking class and said it was not a gentlemanly thing to discuss sex with me anymore. Convinced he was not getting any, I went back to playing work-up baseball. The gang had decided to let girls play with us.
– 30 –
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]
Comment for today.
The Liberals need to bring Chrétien back, the guys at the Star say,
It’s ideas like that that make you ask what’re they smoking today?
________________________________________________