Abby's weather report on the Canadian political storm

I know you've all been waiting with baited breath for my next post about the Canadian constitutional conundrum, so I thought I'd at least get a post out before the PM and the GG get jiggy with it. (This new job is taking huge chunks of time out of my aimless internet surfing and blog posting.) Since my skewed, totally pointless opinions seem to amuse you, here's how I see recent events:

The original Conservative motion

The original so-called economic update didn't really update the economic situation or the current economic climate at all. Why? Because Harper wants to wait until our big, friendly, newly led neighbours to the south sort out what the heck they are going to do about their own economy.

Makes sense, right? Why should we spend money to stimulate our economy when it is totally reliant on the US? I thought it was a good idea for the government to keep my tax money in its pocket instead of handing it out to doomed manufacturers. It's called capitalism. What goes up can come down with a really big bang.

That's fine. What really stunk about the motion was the bald political manoeuvring that was tacked on to pigeonhole the opposition parties, civil servants, and women in the workforce.

Most people now know that the Conservatives were going to cancel party subsidy funding to save the government money. Thirty million? That's a drop in the bucket. It's less than Harper's security staff budget, in fact. Peanuts. However, it would cripple the opposition and allow them to possibly gain a majority in the next election.

Sneaky enough, but the sneaky part of me admires a good political handcuffing. The opposition wouldn't dare force another election, right? So they have to say yes.

The Straw that Seized the Zamboni

But the Conservatives tipped their hand. They decided to tie a little more pesky policy to the motion white they were at it. What did that include? Taking away civil servants' rights to strike for 3 years, and a woman's right to sue for pay equity.

That's right. We females don't need the right to demand fair and equal pay. We should be barefoot, in the kitchen, looking after our children. After all, it's not like the measly childcare subsidy the Conservatives hand out would actually pay for childcare and allow us to work anyway. So much for the word "progressive".

Infringing on worker's rights and women's rights is a sure fire way to rile up the NDP and the Bloc. Rile them up so much that they'd consider having a sleepover with the Liberals. They've all decided they hate the Conservatives more than they hate each other. Isn't that sweet?

Clearing up the air

I don' t particularly care for the Liberals, and I don't think Dion would make an effective leader, particularly in this situation.

Having said that, Stephen Harper continues to anger me with his patriotic bullshit attacks so much that I'd just like to point out the following:

1. Harper repeatedly states that the public hasn't voted for Dion as PM. They never voted for Harper, either. WE DO NOT ELECT A PRIME MINISTER. Ask Kim Campbell about that. You don't even need to be a member of the House to be PM.

2. Harper also says that his party was elected to govern. It wasn't. It is a minority. This coalition could have been formed and given power immediately after the election, if the Governor General approved.

3. The attacks for working with separatists are hypocritical. The Alliance and the Conservatives have both worked with the Bloc in the past to bring down the Liberals. It's called politics. Someone has to work with someone else, or minorities don't work. Obviously.

4. The opposition parties were elected to represent the people in the same way the conservatives were. Saying they weren't chosen to govern isn't correct; they were voted to govern, but no single party collected enough seats to form a majority.

So that's my two cents on all of that.

Now, it's very likely that the GG will either put the brakes on all this until January or call an election. I don't want to see another election. I dislike hugely Harper's style of governing, his secrecy, and his dictator-like control of his party.

Most importantly, I don't want to see a coalition take power which is, essentially, controlled by the Bloc.

Gilles Duceppe is an intelligent, forceful man. The NDP think they are gaining power through cabinet posts and such, but the real power lies in the ability to push a bill through the House, and that rests entirely on the Bloc.

Allowing the coalition to come to power means that, yes, the three parties that supported Kyoto and other environmental measures will be able to push through important legislation. But it also means that control of the House will lie entirely with a regional party with very specific interests.

Do you think Duceppe is going to be concerned about BC? About Newfoundland and its equalization disputes? (We all know how Quebec loves Newfie natural resources.) No.

I don't particularly care that they're separatists. I care that they don't have the country's best interests at heart.

So that's where I stand on this whole issue. Take from it what you will.

The Left calls Harper's bluff

On Thursday, I was tempted to post a blog about Harper's economic update, which included the elimination of party funding. There was so much fodder for the cannon--the sneaky backhandness brilliance of it (vote against it, and it looks like you don't support the economy, vote for it and you lose most of your political funding) and how it was inevitable.

Why? Because I didn't dream the Liberals and NDP would stop shouting at each other long enough to join forces and do what they're really in Parliament to do--oppose and criticize the ruling party.

The reason I didn't write my post on a coalition was because I didn't see it actually happening. Jack Layton is too full of himself, Stephane Dion doesn't even have the support of his own party, and making concessions to the Bloc just doesn't sit well outside of Quebec. I thought Harper was fairly safe with this move.

We all underestimated how much that loonie and change per vote means to politicians. It was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. Oh, they may say it's about the economy or the civil servants' right to strike, but we know the truth.

The best part of it all is they don't have enough seats without the Bloc, and they don't have anyone to be Prime Minister. The Liberals have clearly had enough of Dion. So how would this crazy common-law partnership work?

Okay, I lied. The best part of all this is that it wasn't Dion and Layton who managed to pull the talks together, it was Chretien and Broadbent. It's like Daddy suddenly decided the kids had had long enough to get their shit together and stepped in to get some real work done.

I'll be watching next week to see what happens!

Behold the mighty arms of the Authority

The more I read about my alma mater today, the angrier I became.

The wire hummed today with the news that Queen's principal has suspended Homecoming festivities for the next two years. Why?

Well, let's see. I'll try to describe Queen's Homecoming weekend to those of you who have never been. It used to go something like this:
Friday afternoon: Begin drinking at Clark Hall as soon as possible (until the University closed it down. Hmm.) with the objective of getting as much free beer as possible (students) or getting young attractive students as drunk as possible (alumni). Repeat at Queen's Pub and Alfie's.
Eat pizza or poutine, stumble around drunk to various house parties, and eventually find someplace to sleep.
Saturday: Wake up hungover. Shower, eat greasy leftover pizza, and don representative faculty gear to attend football game. For engineers, this means kilts and purple skin, most other faculties their overalls, face paint, and jackets. Start drinking.
Eat an apple from the store on the way to the stadium. If you have any money when you get there, buy more booze or maybe even a Beavertail. Yell at the alumni across the field, or yell old cheers and jeers from the stands if you're an alumni. Get mooned by the Queen's Band, watch cheerleaders strip, pay no attention to the football game except to hurl the occasional insult at the opponents.
Watch alumni attempt to crowd surf at halftime. Rush the field for a giant Oil Thigh (singing the school song and dancing) before heading somewhere else to drink.
Saturday night/Sunday morning: It's been said the alumni have a lovely dinner to attend, but I've never been. We usually found a house party or gave one, drank way too much, and stumbled home. I remember giant keggers at the Mansion, and my former housemate's soirees at Beaver Lodge on Aberdeen Street, which have apparently now grown to monstrous proportions.

Anyway, I digress. The main point is that too many people show up for the party, get drunk, and wreak havoc, so the Principal cancelled the party. Knowing how wily and stubborn students can be, and that most of the attendants aren't alumni (or are ones who still have friends there) I'm predicting that a large party will still occur next fall on campus, regardless of the lack of formal campus events.

The idea of cancelling an event to change behaviour irked me for a moment, but not for long. There's even a facebook group encouraging alumni to suspend all financial support of the university until Homecoming is reinstated. If there is one thing a Queen's student knows, it's the effectiveness of a strike to the pocketbook. Perhaps it will make a difference, perhaps not. It's just another incident in a long line of disturbing behaviour by the university, attempting to control or suppress the action of its students.

What really upset me today was an article about peer monitoring for political correctness. The university is going to train students that live in the dorms to eavesdrop for "questionable" talk amongst their peers, and then intervene with more correct suggestions.

I don't remember Queen's as a hotbed of racism and sexism. I do remember it as a stifling place of political over-correctness, though. Monitors? Not necessary. The other students do it already.

Why stop at suggesting politically correct alternatives? Why not train student spies to suggest everyone wear the latest Gap fashions, or to bathe on a daily basis, or to eat their vegetables? Any idea supported by Barbara Hall (the paragon of free speech) I immediately count as suspicious.

I'm not saying that anyone has the right to demean or debase another person or group. I am saying, however, that we all have the right to a personal opinion, and a right to express that opinion. I believe it's written down somewhere...oh yes, in the Charter of Rights! I also believe that every person has the intelligence to discern what may or may not be appropriate all by themselves.

How is it okay to send students to spy on their peers? It's not. You might as well just openly bug everyone's rooms. Sending in monitors doesn't create the atmosphere of openness and understanding that is needed to destroy racism. It feeds it. It feeds secrecy, and hiding, and all the things that nurture hatred. Let the Magisterium takeover begin.

When I was at Queen's, I learned two things very quickly. The first is that the school does its best into brainwashing you with its school "spirit" from the very beginning, which creates both loyalty and delusion. The second is that the school's image is more important than anything else. It's more important than its students or faculty excelling in their fields. And it's worth anything to protect that image.

Well, I've been inside, and I've seen how tarnished that image actually is. I have no illusions about the university I attended. My education was great, if impersonal and unfocused. I could have received the same education at most other Canadian institutions.

It's time the alumni association and the administration took the school off a pedestal and back into reality. Spend your energy and efforts into making your school into an institution worthy of my loyalty, instead of creating a false image that I don't really care about anyway.

I leave you with the (somewhat altered) words of the song so lovingly taught to us by our university-sanctioned frosh leaders and screaming alumni...

So put on your old Queen's sweater
the dirtier the better
and we'll all have another drink of beer (more beer!)
'cause it's not for the knowledge
that we come to this college
but to raise hell all the year

Oh they took away our party
and they banished privacy
and they took away that year song too (right Sci '02?)
but thank the dark matter above us
we still have brains among us
and our old Queen's sweater too...

Skating on thin ice in the UK

I like that headline. It makes this post sound interesting, like I'm going to blast a politician or public figure, or bemoan the economic gong show that's been in the media for months.

I'm not. I'm going to talk about ice skating!

Yes, London, the throbbing heart of ice skating worldwide. Sense sarcasm?

Type "ice skating London" into your favourite search engine and you may just be surprised. The English like their ice skating. They even have public rinks that are open year round (indoors, of course.)

When Brian suggested we go ice skating on a Sunday afternoon, I was all for it. Like many rural Canadians, I grew up skating on homemade rinks in the yard, or hanging out on weekends at the local outdoor rink. Remember standing around the converted oil barrel stove, throwing snowballs on it, steaming our mittens, eating greasy rink shack food? That's what skating brings to mind for me.

The British, however, like to do things their way. Ice surfaces are smaller, so they schedule hourly times in order to accommodate the crowds. You purchase your ticket online for a certain time, go and pick it up at the box office when you arrive. After waiting in an orderly queue, of course.

While waiting for your turn, you can watch others stumble precariously around and sip fancy Italian coffee, or the ever-present beer.

We chose the ice rink at the Natural History Museum for our Sunday icecapades. The international photography exhibit had opened, so we were going to make it a double header. The mild November weather was lovely, and the square in front of the museum was dotted with golden maples leaves.

So was the ice surface, incidentally. Luckily, the previous day's rain and mild temperatures had left several inches of water atop the ice so the leaves weren't quite embedded. Two of the skating wardens were darting around fishing shredded leaves from the sludge. If you've ever skated into a leaf, or gravel, or snow, you know how hazardous such things can be to a novice skater.

We sipped our fancy coffees and watched the masses circle in their rented blue plastic skates. I quickly realized Brian wasn't joking when he had said we would be the best skaters there. Woe to the beginner that day, because an unexpected tumble also meant a chilly bath.

The Zamboni driver attempted to clean the ice between groups, but only succeeded in creating a giant pile of leafy, icy slush. The wardens came out with scrapers, gave up, and switched to giant squeegees. Hilarious.

Brian, Kate, and I retrieved our rental skates (ugh, toe picks-where are my hockey skates? Apparently Somerset House has hockey skates at their rink.) and set out on the ice. We then started two new games. The first was dodging and weaving among the skaters without checking anyone. I made it through the entire hour without hip checking anyone, or even spraying water into the crowd with a sudden stop. I was sorely tempted, though. The second game was "spot the Canadians (or other people from countries with ice)."

What are the odds that, out of the dozens of ice rinks in the London area, with their hourly schedules, you would end up with several groups of Canadians in the same place at the same time? Quite good, actually.

The best thing about English ice skaters is that they aren't used to it. So you get lots of falls and near misses to entertain you, and they all tire quickly. After forty minutes I actually had room to take three full strides. I only took three because that was the length of the ice surface, basically. And, once I reached about 50% of my speed, the odds of being struck by a bobbly beginner increased significantly.

People would ooh and aah if you crossed over on the corners. They might just ask for an autograph if you do so while skating backwards.

If you're a Canadian abroad, I highly recommend an hour on English ice. Not only is it a little piece of home, it's a few minutes in an imaginary world where you can be better than everyone else.

Random acts of pity

My eyes are rimmed with that blackened, swollen look that identifies drug addicts and cold suffers. Luckily, I fall into the latter category.

Exhausted from a sleepless night of coughing, sniffling, and feeling sorry for myself, I boarded a bendy bus (at risk of losing my immortal soul) and headed straight for the pharmacy. I needed medication, and I didn't particularly care what flavour.

On the fifteen minute ride, I was seized by several fits of coughing/choking that caused fellow passengers to give me the evil eye and shuffle away slowly. Not that I blame them. I probably looked just as bad as I sounded.

An elderly gentleman was standing across from me in the bendy section, patiently waiting for his stop. Sensing my agony, he pulled out a package of extra strength cough drops and wordlessly passed them to me. I gratefully accepted one, and tried to return the package, but he indicated I should keep them.

To this gentleman, I'd like to say thank you. That was the first real act of kindness (or pity) that I'd witnessed from a stranger in this city reputed for rudeness. Well, by my small town Canadian standards, anyway.