-TSS-

You must be older than I thought you were. I don't think listening to the Queen's Christmas-speeches is very common any more even in the UK not to mention other countries the head of state she is.

This is really ridiculous but when the Middle-East is concerned things get easily out of all proportion. If any country declared that they regard Toronto as the capital of Canada and move their embassy there the reaction would probably be something like suit yourselves.

Canada is the third or fourth most wanted destination for the immigrants to enter into. The USA and the UK are easily the top two and then either Australia or Canada is the third. You may feel that if 200000 people enter into your country every year that your immigration-policy is very soft but when you consider that perhaps 20 million people would just die for the chance to move to Canada then the ratio is very low. We in the Nordic countries only attract useless parasites because our welfare-system guarantees a cheap life for the asylum-shoppers but that will soon come to an end as our countries, especially Finland and Sweden, will go bust and there will be no longer free money to go round. It is different for you English-speaking countries. You will never stop being wanted destinations for the world's surplus population.

Kind of ironic that countries which are based on stolen land such as the USA, Canada, Australia these days have the strictest immigration-policies.

"We grew here, you flew here" is what Australians tell immigrants who think they can have anything they want, especially the backward customs of their old homeland.

Unless I'm mistaken the special election in Alabama was only for the remainder of the original term- not full senator's six years- therefore a perfect opportunity to smack at an incumbent president. I don't doubt for a second that the Hollywood film-moguls are pigs and guilty as charged concerning the allegations against them. As for Moore, one would actually hope that the allegations were true as the allegations against him was the only reason why he lost.

Happy Christmas and merry new year!

^True enough and especially in a two-party system in a huge country.

I was looking at the recent election-history and to my surprise I found out that even though people regard Obama as a more competent President than GW Bush that didn't seem to reflect in the Congress-elections; Both Bush and Obama won a total control of Congress in 2000 and 2008 respectively. Obama became a lame-duck as early as the 2010 mid-term elections and remained so until the end of his two terms. Bush lasted until the mid-term elections of his second term in 2006 when he lost the control of Congress. People will say of course that Presidential elections and Congress-elections are different elections but it is a common assumption that especially in mid-term elections people vent their anger at an unpopular President by voting for the other party. I was going to say that Trump also started with having a control of both houses of Congress but then I realised that is not a right analysis as many of the Republicans hate him even more than many Democrats do.

India and China are not going to get above 2bn. Chinese population is ageing fast and in 2+30 years time they have a pensions-problem that is hard to imagine when there will be around 400m pensioners. India has just overtaken China as the world's most populous country but long term-predictions indicate that their population-growth will also become under control. The problem is Africa which today has a total population of slightly over 1bn and that is predicted to increase to 4bn by the year 2100. I don't believe in such a huge growth but their population will certainly keep on growing at an unsustainable pace.

The whole issue of Jerusalem is unsolvable and therefore the whole Middle-East conflict. All sides of the argument claim that Jerusalem is theirs and theirs only and none of them will listen to any West-Jerusalem/East-Jerusalem-nonsense. By the way, a couple of days ago there was an arson-attack in the synagogue in the Swedish city of Gothenburg. Luckily no-one got hurt but it could have been far worse. It appears that the motive for the attack was this Jerusalem-thing. The President of the United States says that his country will move its embassy to another city in Israel then there is a violent backlash in Sweden. Perhaps there is some logic to it.

Yes, you're right. They have been careful enough not to have been caught. Surely nobody thinks that anyone is "clean"? Otherwise I wouldn't care about the Russians being banned but it further reduces the hockey-tournament into insignificance. First no NHL-players and now no Russians.

By the way, when you have elections in Canada is it common that the candidates go around ringing people's doorbells and disturb them? In Britain that is most certainly the case and people complain about it. I'm glad we in Finland don't have such nuisance. The campaigning is done mostly at public places. I guess disturbing people at their homes is against some law here. In fact, unlike some years ago, there haven't been any Jehowas witnesses or other religious loonies ringing the doorbell either, which is a good thing.

Perhaps the right decision. I have no pity for the cheating Russians. However, the IOC would never in a million years dare to make the same decision with the USA.

I don't think Trump himself has the faintest idea of what is going on in the Middle-East or that he even cares about it. It was his son-in-law who wanted this.

He is a jackass but he is successful. Morons don't get where he is now or where he has been. At least people should have learned by now to stop underestimating him.

Today December 6th marks the 100th anniversary of the Finnish declaration of independence in 1917. A lot of parties and other festivities here today. For me it is just a nice day-off as otherwise the whole idea of Finnish independence is just pretending. In reality we are a province of the EU-superstate. Appropriate video:

Apartheid was wrong and it had to go. However, it does not change the fact that South-Africa today has become a hell-hole going the way of Zimbabwe and those white people foolish enough to have stayed in SA have too often found out the hard way that they are not wanted there any more.

Unfortunately, even in our much-vaunted Nordic nations the health care is fast going the way of yours in North-America. Pay or die! If you are over 65 then you are useless unless you've got money.

Kennedy would probably have somehow get out of the Vietnam-war much earlier. LBJ didn't even want to.

No, I don't think having judges elected by the general electorate would be a good idea. However, unfortunately even though judges are appointed by their professional merit it doesn't mean that they wouldn't be corrupt.

In New Zealand they switched over to PR because their electoral-system was clearly dysfunctional as it produced results whereby one of the two main parties was clearly ahead in votes nationally while the other won a vast majority of the seats. However, I was looking at the election-history in your country and found out that there have been several occasions when none of the Canadian parties has won an overall majority and there has been a minority-government. Given that it is the most used argument in favour of FPTP that it "always" produces a stable strong government there wouldn't be very much support for keeping the system as experience with the system has proved to the contrary.

When there is a total stalemate in trying to form a majority-government the most obvious and sensible solution is to have new elections but they won't do that in Germany because they fear that if there is a repeat-election the much-hated AfD would get even more support than two months ago. Perhaps they are right in their fear. My guess is that the German president who is a social democrat will talk his former party to change its promise not to go to another coalition with Merkel's party.

If Canada adopted PR it would probably mean that the Greens get 10% of the votes at the expense of the Liberals and the NDP.

For people who want to campaign against changing your current system of FPTP the best campaign-material is to refer to the currently ongoing total stalemate in Germany where the government-formation talks broke down and now they are pondering whether to have new elections or try some new combination of government. In Spain they had a total of 314 days of a caretaker-government following two inconclusive elections.