velvetpage (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
velvetpage) wrote2005-04-13 07:21 am
velvetpage) wrote2005-04-13 07:21 am
Here we go round the mulberry bush. . .
For the second time in twelve months, Canadians will have a general election. The exact date is uncertain as yet, but the political pundits who report on such things for newspapers are predicting the end of June.
The signs are clear for all to see. The Liberal government is embroiled in a scandal that has cost billions. Quebec is likely to go entirely Bloc Quebecois as a result. Dalton McGuinty, Ontario's Liberal premier, is distancing himself from Ottawa - or rather, continuing to do so. He has found an issue to blether about in the media, something that he can manufacture worry and outrage over and something that will show him up as a good guy for Ontario in the face of the mean federal government. It's working, too. He's even got Stephen Harper, Conservative Leader, on his side: the mock in parliament yesterday was that Harper understands why Martin would be distancing himself from certain Liberals right now, but surely the Premier of Ontario isn't asking for sponsorship money!
Closer to home (for me) is the riding nomination news. My current MP is Tony Valeri, a Liberal cabinet minister who won the nomination primarily because his supporters stayed in line to vote longer than the competition's. The Tories are courting Brad Clark, a former provincial Conservative cabinet minister. He's a good choice. I have never heard anything bad about him personally, and I was involving the the campaign that saw him voted out of office. The line we were told to use (that I was using anyway) was that Brad Clark was a good guy who happened to be on the wrong side of politics.
Now, in Hamilton, there are really two choices: Liberal, or NDP. (The NDP is the far-left socialist party.) I don't like the NDP; they don't seem to have a good grasp of a balance sheet, and I'm paying too much taxes now. I can't afford them. The Liberals are worse; they pay lip service to balanced budgets, but they get those balanced budgets by cutting services while the size of government continues to grow. NOT ACCEPTABLE. The Conservatives would aim for a balanced budget, but they'd do it by cutting both the size of government (good thing) and services that are needed (bad thing.) Classic example: any pretense of a socialized daycare system will be gone very quickly upon the election of a Conservative government. Can't handle that.
So I'm stuck with a bunch of bad choices. This narrows it down to three, really: suck it up and vote Conservative, on the grounds that any change is a good change at this point and they have the best chance of actually forming a government; suck it up and vote NDP strategically because there's a good chance they could win in this riding and that would rob the Liberals of a key seat; or place a protest vote with the Green Party, who have a snowball's chance in Stelco's furnace of actually winning a seat around here.
Last spring, I went with the protest vote. This spring, I just don't know yet. We'll see.
The signs are clear for all to see. The Liberal government is embroiled in a scandal that has cost billions. Quebec is likely to go entirely Bloc Quebecois as a result. Dalton McGuinty, Ontario's Liberal premier, is distancing himself from Ottawa - or rather, continuing to do so. He has found an issue to blether about in the media, something that he can manufacture worry and outrage over and something that will show him up as a good guy for Ontario in the face of the mean federal government. It's working, too. He's even got Stephen Harper, Conservative Leader, on his side: the mock in parliament yesterday was that Harper understands why Martin would be distancing himself from certain Liberals right now, but surely the Premier of Ontario isn't asking for sponsorship money!
Closer to home (for me) is the riding nomination news. My current MP is Tony Valeri, a Liberal cabinet minister who won the nomination primarily because his supporters stayed in line to vote longer than the competition's. The Tories are courting Brad Clark, a former provincial Conservative cabinet minister. He's a good choice. I have never heard anything bad about him personally, and I was involving the the campaign that saw him voted out of office. The line we were told to use (that I was using anyway) was that Brad Clark was a good guy who happened to be on the wrong side of politics.
Now, in Hamilton, there are really two choices: Liberal, or NDP. (The NDP is the far-left socialist party.) I don't like the NDP; they don't seem to have a good grasp of a balance sheet, and I'm paying too much taxes now. I can't afford them. The Liberals are worse; they pay lip service to balanced budgets, but they get those balanced budgets by cutting services while the size of government continues to grow. NOT ACCEPTABLE. The Conservatives would aim for a balanced budget, but they'd do it by cutting both the size of government (good thing) and services that are needed (bad thing.) Classic example: any pretense of a socialized daycare system will be gone very quickly upon the election of a Conservative government. Can't handle that.
So I'm stuck with a bunch of bad choices. This narrows it down to three, really: suck it up and vote Conservative, on the grounds that any change is a good change at this point and they have the best chance of actually forming a government; suck it up and vote NDP strategically because there's a good chance they could win in this riding and that would rob the Liberals of a key seat; or place a protest vote with the Green Party, who have a snowball's chance in Stelco's furnace of actually winning a seat around here.
Last spring, I went with the protest vote. This spring, I just don't know yet. We'll see.
no subject
Concerning religion, I believe it is possible to form full political and moral stances not based on religion. The gay marriage debate shouldn't be a debate on whether or not it's against the Christian definition of marriage (or sin!), rather it should be a debate about whether or not government-recognised marriage is a basic human right or not. That debate shouldn't have anything to do with religion, rather it's about what's best for our society.
no subject
We've had the debate about the role of religion in forming political/moral stances, but we got sidetracked in the middle of it. I think you and I are operating with competing definitions: I define a worldview - any worldview, including an atheistic one - as a religious viewpoint, and you don't. If you have a faith and it doesn't inform how you view the world, then I would argue you're not practising that faith, whatever it may be.