Local elections were held in 181 local authorities in England, Wales and Scotland. The results for the Conservative government of PM David Cameron, and his coalition partners, the Lib-Dems, were severe: Britain’s governing conservatives took an electoral bruising Friday in local elections as voters punished them for biting austerity measures
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CuriosityCat: Why Canada will have a new government in 2015
Andrew Coyne has put his journalistic finger on the Achilles Heel of the ‘Harper Government’ – its inherent untrustworthiness: Stealth PM Harper But while the public might have been inclined to look indulgently on such behaviour when the dupe was the opposition, it is less likely to be so tolerant
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Harper Tory Government is a bad manager of our economy, says Auditor-General
Harper’sgovernment is responsible for the proper functioning of the civil service. Oneof their key jobs is to ensure that Canada’s affairs are run in a competentfashion, lest we slip into the banana republic kind of nonsense that Greece andItaly have. A keyresponsibility is for the government to collect taxes which
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Council of Canadians’ Magnificent Seven
Canada’s Woodward & Bernstein, Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor, of Postmedia News, today bring us news about The Council of Canadians’ Magnificent Seven. In the 1960 western The Magnificent Seven, based on the 1954 Japanese film Seven Samurai, seven gunmen are hired to protect a small village in Mexico from
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Bob Rae asks Liberals to do something stupid: Fight fire with fire
Stephen Harper, his coffers brimming with cash donated through skillful use of the expensive and effective CIMS voter contact database, tossed a few dollars into the hopper and came out with some nice black and white ads which talked about how big a failure Bob Rae had been as premier
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The C-word: Refreshing honesty from NDP’s Nathan Cullen
Remember when Michael Ignatieff turned himself into a pretzel while trying to respond to the simple question whether he would or would not enter into a coalition with other parties if the Tories did not get a majority? It seemed that every day he had another answer, with the latest
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Liberal Party should not pay for Bob Rae’s defence against Tory attack ads
Harper’s trademark politicking rears its head again, with the Tories using the admirable money-raising machine they have created with the use of their vaunted CIMS outreach computer database to fund ads reminding voters (and most importantly, the fickle media, who rush after any shiny thing that Harper waves in front
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Got Framing? Why Scientists Must Pay Attention to Communication Science, and Not Just as an Afterthought
dont_tread_on_me.jpg There was the Tweet, from Andy Revkin: “Scientists Call For Stronger Global Governance To Address Climate Change.” Revkin linked to a Forbes story, that, in turn, linked to a new paper in Science by the “Earth System Governance Project,” described as “the largest social science research network in the
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Robocalls: Let’s fund The Dirty Seven counter attack
Once more our democratic traditions and rights are under attack by people who would deprive Canadians of the rights that men and women have died to protect. Let us not take this meekly. Let us fight to defend our country, our Parliament, and the rights of our Canadian citizens to
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: The Uneasy Relationship Between Explaining Science to Conservatives…and Explaining Conservatives Scientifically
democrat_and_republican_symbols.jpg Over the past year or more, I’ve profited from a series of conversations and exchanges with Yale’s Dan Kahan, the NSF supported researcher who has made great waves studying how our cultural values predispose us to discount certain risks (like, say, climate change). Kahan’s schematic for approaching this question—dividing
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Litmus Test for selecting the new NDP and Liberal Leaders: What will remove Stephen Harper
Two leadership races of enormous consequence are taking place in Canada right now: the overt race to select a new leader to replace Jack Layton, and the covert race to select a permanent leader of the Liberal Party. The electoral cooperation Pandora’s Box While many pundits and party members are
Continue readingCuriosityCat: America will benefit if the Supercommittee deadlocks and November 23 passes
Unable to reach agreement on what to cut and by how much, the American governmental Troika (the House, the Senate and the President) struck a Supercommittee consisting of 12 members of Congress (half from each party).The Supercommittee’s mandate is to …
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Look to Framing Guru Lakoff for the differences between Harper’s new Tories & the Liberal Party
George Lakoff, who’s Nobel Prize is far overdue, is the master of framing for the progressive segement of America. He has the knack of putting his finger on the fault lines between the two competing ideologies that are in a titanic battle south of our …
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Harper Tory hypocrisy in full view re EU crisis
Harper’s new Tories finance minister todaywent on record to spur on steps to combat the sovereign debt crisis. Consider his words:Finance Minister Jim Flaherty on Sunday repeated his calls for European leaders to deal with an ongoing financial cr…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Mulcair Story trumps Topp Story in NDP Leadership Race
Mark these words: Underdog, Shoulder to Shoulder, and Winnability.They are the combination of images that most likely will propel feisty Thomas Mulcair to the leadership position of Canada’s federal NDP party.The Top Two Duke it out:Topp burst out of t…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Liberals, let’s make Steve Janke eat his words
National Post’s Steve Janke thinks we are doomed. He thinks we will shrivel up and die:I have to wonder, therefore, if there is a cure for what ails the Liberal Party. The same dynamic that pushed the NDP up and up is driving the Liberals down and down…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Why Hudak lost: Wedgies are not a Story
Tim Hudak – failed wedgerTim Hudak is now licking his wounds, and considering what he should do differently next time an election rolls around (which might be far sooner than many right now expect). Adam Radwanski in the Globe & Mail reports on the…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Powerful reason why Horwath should support PR now: her party is bleeding votes
The latest EKOS poll shows one dismaying finding that Andrea Horwath should respond to if she wants to end up on Friday in a position to influence the way the province is going to be governed for the next 4 years.The EKOS poll shows substantial bleedin…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Alberta PC leader Alison Redford & the New Politics
There’s an old Latin saying ex africa semper aliquid novi. Now that Alison Redford has become premier, it’s time to change that.The new saying for Canada is ex alberta semper aliquid novi.Alberta, nedneck province with the luck of Arab sheiks because o…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Greek PM frames it as a battle for the future
Here’s one politician who – rather belatedly – has managed to frame the issue in a way which will make it difficult for Germany to say No. He has shifted the focus to the future, to the reforms that Greece is determined to implement:Greek Prime Min…
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