-TSS-

From our European point of view we have often been wondering which has more say over its own matters: A state(or a Canadian province) or a member-state of the EU. As I am somewhat eurosceptic in more than one things I'm often declined to view the former as a more powerful than the latter in that comparison. Of course, things are not as simple and straightforward as that but in the EU countries which are supposed to be nominally independent really have unbelievably little leeway.

I know this is an old definition of US presidents who get elected for two terms, total eight years, but still so true: Year 1 Total novice, doesn't know what to do with his job! Year 2 Mid-term elections restrict your movements Year 3 A year of real decisions Year 4 A year of election-campaigning for a second term. You can't really upset anyone Year 5 A year of real decisions Year 6 Mid-term elections rerstrict your movements Year 7 A year of real decisions Year 8 You are soon gone, everyone is talking about who's gonna come after you

The Slovak election was interesting from our European point of view as the defeated coalition was against bailing out Greece and refused to participate even though Slovakia belongs to the euro-zone. The future government has a more positive attitude towards the rescue-efort of the common currency.

It may not have been his intention or motive but that guy surely precipitated the US pull out from Afghanistan by many months.

Surely the vast majority of those 1232 had a snowball's chance in hell to be elected? I mean, there must be safe seats for different parties therefore from the other parties only juniors are sent to compete in those ridings. Or does the canadian election-law stipulate that you must be a resident in the riding you are a candidate in?

I think Björk is cool but this clip is weird to say the least:

Santorum has now one ace in that he can claim to be campaigning against all odds as Romney with his much larger campaigning budget should have finished the race off by now but hasn't been able to do so. People instinctly start sympathising underdogs.

Do you think France would assist an independent Quebec? de Gaulle is dead and his successors have taken a lower profile on Quebec but I wonder have many Canadians still forgotten about how he insulted his hosts on his state-visit to Canada by expressing support for an independent Quebec. Wasn't he sent packing straight away after that and told never to show his face in canada again?

This talk about the Icelandic currency being worthless brings to mind that shouldn't Zimbabwe adopt South African Rand as their currency. To call Zimbabwe dollar as worthless is an understatement.

Kaupthing and Landisbanki, two major Icelandic banks, opened branches elsewhere in Europe, in the UK and the Netherlands in particular, and promised very favourable interest rates on deposits and people in those countries indeed deposited millions in those banks and when the banks went bust those people lost everything. The Uk and the Netherlands demanded the Icelandic government to compensate for the saving-losses suffered by those British and Dutch people but the Icelandic government held a referendum in which people, surprise surprise, rejected the idea of the idea of an ordinary Icelandic tax-payer to pick up the bill for the frauds of the banks. That decision effectively closed the door to EU-membership which has been considered as the only option for the country to rise from the ashes. However, the recent news has it that they are getting back on their feet. Their economy is heavily dependant on fishing. It has been only recently that the service-sector and tourism has started to bring revenue to Iceland.

I thought their economy was slowly picking up following the banking crisis 4 years ago when two or three of their largest banks were bailed out. The banks lent money overseas creating a situation whereby the banks caused a debt about 800% of the entire country's GDP. Such dramatic figures make sense as we remember the size of the country and its economy.

I was surprised to find out that Obama also has to go through primaries even though it will be an easy task for him to win nomination. In fact, all incumbent Presidents seeking re-election have faced a challenge from within their party. However, almost every time the challengers have been attention-seeking lunatics rather than serious challengers. The President's party usually takes a very dim view of such challengers. The only time in a living memory when the President faced a serious challenge from his own party must have been in 1980 when Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter.

Is it even theoretically possible for Romney to get past the 50%-mark in the delgate count and therefore make sure of his nomination?

As a certain poster bumped this thread I can as well ask about another thing regarding weights and measures. Namely shoe-sizes. Do you in Canada have the UK system of shoe sizes, 10,11,12 etc? we in Europe have 40,41,42, etc. My shoe size is 47 and it's extremely difficult to find shoes that size from stores. They always end at 46.

Russian presidential elections today. It is so exciting, I wonder who is going to win, no-one can tell for sure!

I think Canada is a reasonably well-functioning society. It always ranks very high on the list of countries with good quality of life and low levels of corruption. After all, given that Canada is the second largest country in the world by area, its sheer vastness makes it difficult to govern and if it were not a well governed country it would have disintegrated long time ago.

There is absolutely no way of guaranteeing that your vote is secret if electronic voting is brought in. There is nothing wrong with the current system of casting a ballot. I don't think that even in Canada a lot of people live somewhere so remote that the nearest polling-station would be so far away that it is just not worth the bothering.

How often are the ridings-boundaries redrawn to match the changes in population? Do the redrawings always go undisputed or is there a lot of complaints of unfair boundaries or even gerrymandering?

Now you are really turning corners, aren't you? Canada may be the best country in the world to live in but that has little or nothing to do with its electoral system.

The Vatican may be small but it is one hell of a snake's nest.

We are straying off-topic here but I must say that didn't Canada use to be the best country in the world according to the UN HDI-index? Only recently Norway has overtaken Canada in that field. As for the topic, is there any agreement among those people who dislike the present electoral system as to what should replace it? Of course there isn't! That's why things never change.

The usual excuse for the FPTP-system is that it provides a strong majority-governments. However, you had three consecutive elections with the largest party getting less than half of the seats. FPTP-system would be fair if there was a run-off in constituencies, or ridings as you call them, where no one candidate receives more than 50% of the votes. Otherwise it becomes just plain lottery.

Votes can be wasted so to speak. I know that in Canada the voters are much more floating, so to speak, than in the UK where the same electoral system is in use but surely even in Canada there must be strong bastions of one party always getting the seat and therefore the supporters of the minority parties not bothering to turn up at all. That minority party may be a majority party somewhere else, even in the same city.

I'm sure all of you who are interested in Canadian politics have read this before but I'll link it nevertheless as it is very interesting reading: http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/reform.html Namely, is there a widespread dissatisfaction in Canada how the electoral system works? As we know, at the moment the system works perfectly to the advantage of the Conservatives as the Liberals and the NDP are eating each other's votes in their competition which party is the main opposition-party. The electoral system used in the UK, Canada, the US and a number of other countries works well as long as the two largest parties gain about 95% of the total vote. If there is a strong third party or even a fourth party then elections under the FPTP(first-past-the-post as the British call the system) become very capricious. I understand that the Green Party in your country recently made some world record as to how many votes a party can get nationally and yet no representatives in the legislature.

Didn't John Turner remain as Liberal-leader and opposition-leader after the devastating election defeat in 1984 only to lose again four years later. Even though he was PM only for a couple of months he was still PM.