The British lower classes, like those elsewhere, have for a very long time expressed their grievances with riot against the established order, going back to the Poor riot of 1196, and including the Spitalfield and Gordon riots of the 18th century, the …
Continue readingAuthor: Bill Longstaff
Peter MacKay, "royal" privilege, and the unelected Senate
Canadians can hardly escape the “royal” connection. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the Royal Canadian Mint, the Royal Ontario Museum … the list is endless. To say nothing of the royal visage staring out at us from our…
Continue readingDavid Cameron, former Bullingdon bully, criticizes rioters
It is always such a challenge to divorce the class angle from British affairs. Two of the most vociferous critics of the recent rioters in London and other cities have been Prime Minister David Cameron and London mayor Boris Johnson. As it turns out, t…
Continue readingA lesson in hypocrisy from King Abdullah
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has condemned Syria’s Assad regime for its suppression of pro-democracy dissenters and withdrawn his ambassador. This is a very civilized thing to do in the face of the brutality taking place in that country.Coming from Abd…
Continue readingCoca Cola sponsors the Pope
What would Jesus do? Would he take a trip to Spain that cost the Spanish taxpayers, in the midst of a severe economic crisis, $80 million while accepting sponsorship from over 100 corporations, including Coca Cola?Apparently 100 Spanish priests don’t t…
Continue readingStability in South Asia?
Suspended because of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in 2008, peace talks between India and Pakistan are back on. Foreign ministers of the two countries have held a formal meeting in New Delhi that brought effusive comments from both parties.The Indian…
Continue readingWealth gap in the U.S.—100 years of progress lost
A lost century—inequality in the U.S. is more extreme than it has been in almost 100 years. The gap between the ultra-rich and the poor and middle class has widened dramatically over the last 30 years. The richest one per cent of Americans…
Continue readingFormer Iranian Guard commander to become OPEC boss
Now this is interesting. Brigadier General Rostam Ghasemi, a senior commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, has been approved by Iran’s parliament as the country’s next oil minister. This automatically makes him head of OPEC as Iran assumed the…
Continue readingThe "most Catholic country" slips away
Pope Paul VI once referred to Ireland as “the most Catholic country in the world.” Now it seems the Irish are slipping the Vatican’s leash. Abortion on demand remains illegal and most citizens describe themselves as Catholic, but the Irish people are …
Continue readingCrime—the declining problem
Down, down, down it goes. According to Stats Can’s latest report, our crime rate has dropped again, down five per cent from 2009 to 2010, now in decline for 20 years. Particularly impressive was the 10 per cent drop in the murder rate, and perhaps even…
Continue readingThe energy ministers’ Orwellian statement
The news release and action plan issued by the provincial energy ministers following their recent conference in Kananaskis stepped rather lightly over environmental concerns. Perhaps this is not unexpected at a meeting paid for in part by oil companies…
Continue readingCanada’s growing income gap: It isn’t the size of the pie, it’s the size of the pieces
According to the Conference Board of Canada’s report How Canada Performs, we are becoming a more unequal society. Although, in the period 1976 to 2009, all Canadians were better off in real dollars, the poor and the middle class have gained only margin…
Continue readingIt all began with Maggie and Ron
The modern march to free market supremacy is often thought to have begun with the ascendancy of the conservative regimes of Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. and the Ronald Reagan in the U.S. One of its ultimate—and inevitable—outcomes was the recent c…
Continue readingChina leads spending on green energy
“Global investment in renewable energy jumped 32 per cent in 2010, to a record $211 billion,” reads the Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2011 report. The report, commissioned by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), revealed that f…
Continue readingUK media mess—once again self-regulation fails
UK Prime Minister David Cameron has admitted it. He recently declared that press self-regulation in Britain had failed and a new body, independent of the media and the government, is needed to properly enforce standards. Quite an admission for a cons…
Continue readingWhy we should not hold a referendum on proportional representation
It seems that every time the subject of changing the voting system comes up, we automatically assume that a change must be sanctioned by a referendum. I increasingly feel this is a mistake.We have experienced three referendums on the voting system in t…
Continue readingCanada’s not entirely harmless romance with "Will & Kate"
Calgarians, indeed Albertans, will often tell you that this is a place where you are judged by what you do, not by who you are. I doubt this was ever true. I’ve lived across Canada and I’ve never found Calgarians any less susceptible to the prestige of…
Continue readingBritish Columbians love their carbon tax … so far
As British Columbia’s carbon tax celebrates its third birthday, the province’s residents seem to have grown rather fond of it. According to a Pembina Institute report, 69 percent of British Columbians are concerned about global warming and 70 per cent …
Continue readingThe Arab spring—seeking a deeper democracy than ours?
Catherine Ashton, high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy, recently stated that the EU called for “deep democracy” in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt as they liberated themselves from dictators. She emphasi…
Continue readingPetraeus’s imaginary Taliban
In Nikolai Gogol’s novel Dead Souls, his protagonist Chichikov seeks to purchase serfs who have died but are still registered against their owners as taxable assets. By relieving the owners of the tax burden, Chichikov obtains ownership of the dead ser…
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