SpankyMcFarland

I’ll be handing the torch over long before BC. The frequent posts create more drama, don’t you think?

Gain for the Tories in Western NL - Carol Anstey. Libs down two, getting anxious.

Madawaska Tory ahead.

You wild man, you. Seat change - one up for the Tories.

Clifford Small is projected to win in Central Newfoundland. He’s got a big margin there.

19:12 for the Libs. I wish the swingometer featured more prominently here.

2:2. I don’t know if these votes tend to come from smaller places with more remote workers in Alberta. If they’re representative it looks like a swing to the Tories.

Tories ahead 2:1 so far - in three seats I should mention.

Clifford Small is ahead for the Cons in Central Newfoundland. I believe he is the only sitting Tory in the province and it was a solid Liberal seat for decades before the last election.

Jason Kenney is encouraged by the number of new voters which he anticipates may have more of his supporters among them.

Better than the Liberals expected three months ago. I boldly predict they won’t be wiped out.

In Newfoundland we had less snow than usual with an early thaw. We’ve made virtually no preparations to slow down the progress of a massive fire in the centre of the island. I’ll be praying for lots of rain this summer.

The old asylum system is long gone and nobody wants to see it back. What we need is a lot more psychiatric beds. The question is, are we willing to pay for them?

I wouldn’t know enough to talk about what the policy should be but I’ve seen more active measures work with one person.

I would like to see some method of drug compliance-monitoring for potentially dangerous people, eg men under forty with paranoid schizophrenia and a history of violence. In most cases it wouldn’t have to be by the police.

Most offenders don’t have a treatable psychiatric illness. They’re more likely to suffer from poor impulse control than psychotic delusions.

My views on care for disturbed young adults are fairly paternalistic by modern standards. I would rate their safety (and the safety of others) as a major concern.

Many of the newer antipsychotic drugs are in tablet form which is fine for most patients but not for those who tend to stop taking them as they become more paranoid and violent. I know one person in another country whose life was changed for the better by going back to an injectable drug delivered by nurses at a clinic. If he didn’t turn up they came to the house.

The old asylums were horrible places and the arrival of effective antipsychotic medication in the Fifties brought a revolution in effective care, as disturbed patients suddenly required much less physical restraint. The first psychiatrist I can find that published his use of the French drug Largactil in Canada, and North America for that matter, was Heinz Lehmann in Montreal’s Verdun Protestant Hospital in 1954. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/archneurpsyc/article-abstract/651712?resultClick=1 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2655089/#b48-ndt-3-495 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Lehmann At the time there was understandable concern about the conditions in psychiatric hospitals and the rights of patients. Community care, combined with medication and appropriate counselling, was seen as a more humane alternative. Unfortunately, the cost of such care and who was responsible for it were less well defined than the mechanics of running large public institutions, giving governments in Canada and across the world - we were by no means alone in this - the opportunity to greatly reduce current budgets while making commitments for the future that they never fulfilled. Thus the number of psychiatric beds in Canada declined from 430 per 100,000 in 1959 to 70 per 100,000 in 2017, a grossly inadequate number. For too many, the worthy goal of deinstitutionalization became simply dehospitalization. https://madridge.org/journal-of-internal-and-emergency-medicine/mjiem-1000103.php With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see now that the goal should have been to improve institutional care, moving carefully selected patients to community care only when that was adequately funded. Looking back, the level of optimism about a new and completely untested system was absurdly high. There is a sociological element to this story that we should be honest about. People with chronic psychotic disorders are not politically powerful. They don’t have the advocates for their care that sick children or breast cancer patients have. Unless money for them is ring-fenced, politicians will inevitably respond to what the public calls more loudly for.

That sounds Mr. Blanchet on the subject of Canada. In truth, all counties, provinces and countries are arbitrary constructs. We invent them and in time they will disappear.

Like most Canadian provinces, NL consists of islands and part of the North American mainland. Labrador is vast. It is coastal but much more than a mere coast.

I never said he had. Who can say? But I am a little surprised about the way you talk about Progressive Conservatives. Their voters vote too.

Are the stories about tensions with Houston and Ford completely made up? They both could easily have dispelled such well-referenced rumours by making a bigger effort in this election. All parties have fissures but I’m seeing consistent Tory instability along geographic and political lines.

If it happens it will be marvellous news for NL. At the moment we are somehow a have province heading rapidly for ruin, bankruptcy and territorial status. Contemplating the current Churchill Falls deal under these circumstance is dangerous for any resident of the province as apoplexy is a clear risk. When I listened to the Quebec side making the announcement I thought I noticed some desire to right a wrong. It also means that HQ get a reliable and enlarging source of clean power to sell to the Americans for the rest of this century.

I feel Balsillie could couch his message more positively, maybe with a larger dose of humour and starting with some mega mea culpas. Lord knows he can still afford the help on the style side. Maybe he doesn’t realize he needs it, a common affliction of the moneybags class? I very much think he does. We all know Canada’s productivity is a problem and many of us are ready for suggestions.