SpankyMcFarland

Most of those countries have their own monarch who lives at home. When Britain itself needed new royals it had no qualms about finding foreign princes to do the business.

After QEII we should review this peculiar arrangement. This might keep monarchists happy - ignore the funeral and declare her head of state in perpetuity. A safer bet than giving Chuck the wheel.

This is the sort of thing Iran’s ayatollahs should be doing - following the good example of the guy next door:

Well, for now but they can see the way the wind is blowing: It’s curious that Erdogan has become much less concerned about the Uighurs of late.

When the inevitable cost overruns rear their ugly heads in these projects, foreign companies from allied nations are a lot easier to keep in line than local oligarchs with political connections everywhere. Having them built here is preferable in many ways but, again, it has the disadvantage that the government may have to demand cutbacks to the program, including job losses, in Canada itself, something politicians hate doing.

Vaccine and drug regulators usually err on the side of caution - primum non nocere, first do no harm - and they get absolutely hammered if they cut any corners. A pandemic where new products are appearing at an unusually rapid rate is not what they are set up to deal with. However, the evidence on the efficacy of the AZ vaccine in seniors seems solid enough now and the Germans are happy to move ahead with it.

Here’s another idea that was much talked about a few years ago:

Ever since the republics of Athens and Rome, the West has been a champion, albeit an imperfect one, of individual rights and freedom of thought. This has led to such things as the rule of law, democracy, capitalism and science - no mean feats by any yardstick. Disagreements over how to tackle our many environmental challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss etc. and the more trivial one of PC culture should be seen in a much longer context of extraordinary contributions to human advancement. Certain aspects of religion have been overtaken by events but it still has value as an expression of our culture and norms. The Western model continues to offer something worth emulating to the world.

Like every country in Asia, Iran is experiencing a new forcefield in international relations that must be considered in every decision: China. The religious conservatives who govern Iran are split not only along pro and anti-American lines but also on whether to ally more closely with Beijing. Some are already deeply sceptical of taking more money from the Chinese. Here’s the story of one ‘dissenter’: And his concerns are shared by others.

An academic manages to escape before being jailed. How nerdy of him to pack books and a laptop in his backpack ahead of a trek through mountains and 1.5 m snow! Back in the Eighties, a friend of mine made the trip the other way, from Iraq to Iran with Kurdish smugglers, and said it was far more frightening than the war he left or the POW camp he was soon in.

Staff complained to the CBC quite some time ago so it’s been in the public domain for months and I’m sure there were rumblings before that. Trudeau must have known and chose to ignore it all.

I don’t see any prospect for real change after Trudeau either. The de facto head of state should be chosen by the people or their representatives; which major party is interested in supporting reform like that?

The PM could ‘consider’ the result of a vote for the GG, either by the public or by parliament (in a secret ballot) and appoint the winner who would then serve a term of around seven years. Thus we could have an independent de facto head of state.

At the very least, the appointment of the GG should be completely independent of the PM, given that they may have to take decisions the PM might not like.

These countries have a foreign monarch because of historical reasons that are no longer relevant. When did our head of state last visit our country? It is an absurd situation which is about to become more absurd when we are saddled with Charles.

Indeed.

The American system is horrendously inefficient. No serious person wants to emulate that any more. In our national CIHI reports, Canada is compared with many other countries and is found wanting in multiple areas. The world is a small place now.

One big problem in Canada is how few spare beds we have in our hospitals. They are already stuffed to the gills with patients, along American lines, so any unexpected increase in admissions inundates them. Even ‘normal’ flu seasons are a big challenge in my local hospital. In this regard, Germany has more bed capacity than we do and is better prepared for the inevitable crises that arise from time to time. Any discussion about health care metrics in Canada should be benchmarked against countries like Germany and the Netherlands which seem to do a better job than us overall. Forget about the US - that’s too low a bar. At the very least, we should be doing better than Australia which has many of our geographic challenges. They were one of the first countries to have a national Covid plan.

You’re not comparing like with like there. The Nordic countries are a distinct group. That is where you should look for Sweden’s peers. Supporters of Sweden’s approach did that at first until it became untenable.

A very expensive lesson prolonged for years more than it needed to be.

Defeat in Indochina played no role in helping the US win the Cold War. It was a disaster from the start.

Chernenko was terminally ill when he got the top job, worse than Churchill in his second stint and about as bad as FDR when he started his final term. Like any man of that age, Biden could pop his clogs at any time but he’s in better shape right now than any of them were. However, I think head of government is an ordeal better suited to somebody under 60. We seem to be realizing that in Canada. And what’s all this dissing of Russia, one of the few countries that shares our love of ice hockey? Perhaps only Germany and Italy have produced a greater body of classical music, and in one century Russian literature grew to rival that of Britain and France. Many critics regard Vladimir Nabokov as the greatest 20’th century novelist in English, let alone Russian. The achievements of Russian mathematicians, scientists and engineers should be well known. Indeed, given the number of outstanding individuals they have produced compared to us, it’s clear their political system has been holding them back; under better management, I believe Russia could be as prosperous as Canada. Russians should be asking themselves why they aren’t. .

Geographical isolation helped the US avoid dictatorship. A violent change at the top was a frequent event in Europe following defeat in war.

By contemporary standards, I don’t remember much hatred for Mitt from the left and I never met anybody who disliked him intensely. Romney would have made an ideal candidate in earlier times - happy, wholesome, hypercompetent, Hollywood-handsome, a winner in every way - but his own party didn’t want that much sunshine any more, or a talent for compromise with the Libs. The biggest rap against him across the political spectrum was that, like windsurfer John Kerry, he appeared to be out of touch with modern America. Thus the binders, dressage horses, car elevators, 47% remarks etc. were merely confirming metaphors of what was already believed. A major challenge for all presidential candidates is how to make one’s elite status palatable to voters increasingly distrustful of the ruling class. One clever thing Dubya Bush did was take the time to create an Everyman narrative before he ran. Trump got round this problem by portraying himself as a self-made tough guy rather than the privileged heir to a fortune. IMO Romney should have got involved in some sort of community work for a year or two after the governorship and found out how the ordinary Joes were actually getting on.

No, just talking about Stalin and Hitler in that post.