Of wilted wild roses and elbows to the back of the head
Alberta, it turns out, isn’t the out and out redneck haven that some of us easterners might have thought it was. And it looks like Alberta’s Progressive Conservative dynasty will live to fight another day. I was going to write about how Premier Alison Redford and...
It looks like Rob Ford will never learn
When Rob Ford ran for mayor of Toronto in 2010, after other more moderate and polished conservatives declined to throw their hats in the ring, there was a lot of hyperventilation on the part of lefties and progressives. After all, here was a guy who as a...
Attacking public sector workers is a bad idea
During economic downturns, people have a tendency to turn on one another. We blame victims and eat our own. I’ve been alive long enough to have seen it more than once before. It’s wrong, but I get it. The urge to help one’s fellow human during...
Generation X gets shafted – again
A recent study by PwC Canada of the Canadian banking sector found that Generation X – roughly defined as people born between 1961 and 1981, after the Baby Boom – are being squeezed in the financial industry by Boomers who aren’t retiring and by Boomers’ “Generation Y” offspring, who...
Why Thomas Mulcair gets it when it comes to Israel
Not surprisingly, Thomas Mulcair won the NDP leadership last month, replacing Saint Jack Layton as the man social democrats hope can rally left-of-centre voters to defeat Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. Here’s hoping he’s successful, but as I argued in an earlier post, it seems unlikely that...
Things that make me go arghhhh! Part 1
I figure that this wouldn’t be a true blog without random kvetching about nothing in particular. So in that spirit, I present semi-aimless carping about disconnected aspects of modern life, or, with apologies to Arsenio Hall, what I like to call “Things that make me go...
Even with a new leader, the NDP can’t defeat the Tories alone
I just can’t get excited about the NDP leadership race, which ends March 24 in Toronto, because irrespective of who wins, it’s hard to see it leading to a positive outcome for progressive politics in this country. Will Thomas Mulcair, the party outsider who reportedly flirted...