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SpankyMcFarland

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Everything posted by SpankyMcFarland

  1. Surely STV is a type of preferential ballot? I would regard even a ranked ballot system as better than FPTP in that it reduces the possibility of the least popular of three candidates getting in through vote-splitting.
  2. Could you clarify what you mean there. In a simple system like FPTP, it is very difficult to discern what people want exactly, let alone want least. In the last election campaign, there was a pretty clear fault line between the Conservatives and the rest which I thought went well beyond mere incumbent-bashing.
  3. 1000 'sleeper cells' is probably wildly out. I doubt if ISIS has anything like that organizational capability. However, there may be many potential jihadis out there who don't even know they could be radicalized.
  4. What criticisms, if any, would you have of Harper? Did he really move as aggressively and cost-effectively on this issue as possible?
  5. This topic and the results of this poll tell me all I need to know about the sort of people on this website.
  6. The whole idea to build them in Canada has turned out to be an 'orrible mistake. I think we need to have something credible up there but a national debate should decide how much. I'd like to see more spending on the military myself.
  7. Israel has good relations with Russia which has good relations with Iran. Iran, Russia, Turkey and Israel are all relating with each other, despite the threat of imminent war between some of them, in ways that would greatly surprise some of us. It is surely not beyond our capacity a continent away to get on with all of them. Harper just got carried away with his desire to support Netanyahu unconditionally and that is not in our national interest to do. We don't need to make enemies unnecessarily.
  8. What? You don't need to travel far in Canada to meet Iranians.
  9. The area that Russia violate is a salient on a salient, a tiny finger of land jutting into Syria. The Turks must have been preparing for this. It's worrying that they weren't able to control their allies on the ground either. One PRESUMES they did want a Russian aviator killed in this fashion.
  10. Petrou has been so pro-Harper, I don't see why the new gov should listen to him at all.
  11. Flying over Syria has just gotten a lot more dangerous for everybody. There could be chaos.
  12. I think Trudeau got it right. The Turks are dodgy allies, to put it mildly.
  13. The skies over Syria may become a lot trickier to navigate given the recent events between Turkey and Russia. There's a serious possibility of more planes being shot down, perhaps by mistake.
  14. That is certainly my impression too.
  15. I suspect the anti-Conservative vote exceeded the anti-Liberal i.e. the Conservatives are the odd man out in terms of their views. With PR we could test that claim. Ideally, a govt should command the support of a majority of Canadian voters, which would probably mean coalitions, and then we would see who can play well with whom. Tasha Kheiriddin had a good article on what PR might mean for the Conservatives and why she hopes Trudeau won't follow through:http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/tasha-kheiriddin-why-proportional-representation-would-be-bad-for-the-conservatives
  16. The problem is long-term. We need to lessen our dependence on resource-based industries and save more when the price is high.
  17. With the benefit of hindsight, was it wise to build these ships in Canada?
  18. Most of us agree on what should be done. The question is how to get there. Anyone who wants an antibiotic badly enough can get it one way or the other, on the Net if all else fails. Many patients still expect antibiotics for what are probably viral illnesses and that expectation has to be changed. Doctors are getting better advice from labs these days about which drugs to use, partly to keep drugs effective. Such advice is by no means always followed. The biggest problem is that capitalism and human nature are fighting against what needs to be done. The current market model encourages maximum volume of drug use, which will increase resistance. What may benefit an individual may not be in the interests of the community.
  19. The challenge is how to change prescribing, which is a complex business. Patients expect antibiotics and will go to doctors who will give them out. There needs to be a cultural shift in expectations as well as various sticks and carrots to move doctors in the necessary direction. Doctors also need to be protected from lawsuits if a patient presents with signs of a viral illness, is refused antibiotics, and turns out to have a serious bacterial infection.I'm not sure how we can best move to a completely different way of behaving with antibiotics. Perhaps a country could negotiate a licence to use particularly important antibiotic for, say, three years and then try to restrict its use only to appropriate cases. One problem would be the black market. The debate about antibiotic usage in animals is something I have seen waged elsewhere. There are proponents for both sides. I would certainly prefer to see it minimized. Washing hands - certainly, a good idea.
  20. The market on its own cannot deal with this challenge. What should governments do? 1. Pay companies to develop and stockpile new antibiotics. 2. Change the profit model from sales volume to utility of the product. 3. Incentivise doctors to use antibiotics as judiciously as possible. Some serious infections will thereby go untreated but this is a necessary cost. 4. Monitor antibiotic resistance more closely at provincial, federal and international level. 5. Subsidize new technologies to make hospitals safer e.g. cleaning agents, robotic cleaners, paints, room design.
  21. A person can take a subject seriously without taking himself so seriously. That is where so many people fall down here. Posts could be considerably politer, in my view.
  22. The intrusiveness of the LFC is clear; by contrast, what CSIS gets up to is anybody's guess. Unless you are a senior person in that organization, your reassurances on that score don't count for very much. We'll have to wait for the next big leak, probably from the UK or US, to find out more of what is really going on.
  23. I hope he changes his mind too but I know the thanks he'll get from the Conservative attack machine.
  24. British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, was once asked what was the most difficult thing about his job. ‘Events, dear boy, events’ was his reply. (Guardian article) I think Harold Wilson is supposed to have said that 'a week is a long time in politics'. Sunni ways, my friends.
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