Evening Star

I rarely say that about any business, unless it's truly remarkable. (It's almost always a small business in that case, not a large corporation.) However, I've never really had a problem with Canada Post in the areas of customer service or employee work ethic.

Yeah, sorry, cybercoma: I actually largely agree with CPCFTW. MPs are elected to be responsible, not directly representative of a majority of their constituents' views on every issue. (Despite this - or because of it? - I still strongly believe that MPs should have greater autonomy to provide genuinely responsible leadership and not to simply be pylons for their party leader.) If the Opposition parties are really as similar as you claim, they could have easily co-operated during the election. They know how the system works. The fact that they didn't shows that either the parties are not actually that similar or that at least one of them put power ahead of principle (and also misread the public). Either way, that's not the system's fault, despite its many faults. Maybe in 1988, where the election was largely fought over the one issue of free trade, this sort of argument would have made sense - more people voted for the anti-FTA parties than for the FTA party. With this election, though, it's much harder to assume that e.g. the people who voted for Joe Volpe would have been just as happy with his NDP opponent - any more than they would have been with his Conservative opponent. Hardly anyone in the Liberal Party seems to describe themselves as a left-wing party, by the way. After the election, Alfred Apps and Rob Silver were very quick to state otherwise, for example, distinguishing themselves from the NDP as much as from the CPC. Incidentally, I know it's not exactly what you're saying, cybercoma, but I always hated it when Liberals accused the NDP of taking votes away from them/'splitting the vote'. I don't like it any better now that the NDP is stronger.

Is it not possible to allow a little more freedom for MPs while also restricting earmarks etc? Even the UK system allows MPs more autonomy. Don't necessarily agree. A majority may be - and often is - complacently content with the status quo. Just because they are not deeply impassioned about an issue to the point of writing an MP does not mean their views can or should be disregarded. They may still turn out to vote, for instance.

But receiving some emails doesn't necessarily prove that the majority of your constituents agree with the letter-writers.

Voters and candidates operate within a system though. Every candidate knows they are expected to vote on party lines or get kicked out of caucus. Should voters simply vote for independent candidates each time?

Between jobs... What can a man do?

I hear what you're saying, Tim, but what do you think of the fact that the rich in the First World are getting more and more extremely wealthy while the brunt of redistribution from First World to Third World is being borne by workers and the middle class?

I'd also like to see the post where bloodyminded expresses love for the Liberals!

Is there a source other than a talk radio station for the statement that the union is offering perks to teachers who will leave their classrooms for this purpose as opposed to just participating in a political campaign?

I actually agree that it was good that Canada got to host the summits. I also agree that we need to spend enough to be good hosts. I don't even have much of a problem with a $664M price tag. (See, I'm TOTALLY not a radical anarcho-syndicalist, whatever Political Compass might say!) NONE of this excuses Clement's shenanigans. (For that matter, I also support the idea of advertising to promote federalism in the aftermath of a close Quebec referendum. I think we should be willing to pay for it.) Also, I am drunk and am REALLY into using capital letters to make a point.

Like, you realize where the left actually is on this spectrum, right? -10 on economics means the absolute extreme of economic collectivism - no more private property, complete socialization of the banks and finance, complete collectivization of resources and industry...

But they are! This is one place where I agree with Political Compass. There's no reason - so far - why the CPC should be as top-right as Political Compass places them though. I'd put them way closer to the Clintons.

Yup.

Did you think of writing them to ask about the weightings?

Oh, here they rank the 2011 election platforms of Canadian political parties: http://www.politicalcompass.org/canada2011 You are actually left of Ignatieff's Liberals, CPCFTW. Perhaps you should see #4: http://www.politicalcompass.org/faq#faq4

Even by their own reckoning, the NDP isn't nearly as bottom-left as my score is: http://www.politicalcompass.org/canada2008 The 2008 Conservative platform was about twice as far to the economic right as your score was, CPCFTW. You're pretty close to Stephane Dion's Liberal Party. Time to change your user name!

The people at -10 on the economic scale advocated near-abolition of private property and collectivization of the means of production. There's no way the NDP is that close to that. Read the long FAQ that the creators of the test have included. My impression was that their agenda was to show that the world is moving in a strongly neoliberal direction while most people are well to the left of that.

The test is from the UK iirc. The point is that the test is not supposed to measure where you stand in relation to the current mainstream of political thought in a given country. It more or less claims to place everyone on a grid relative to every political ideology in at least the past century. (Look at the reference points they provide: Lenin, Hitler, Gandhi, Mugabe, ...) In fact they spell this out here: (#23 at http://www.politicalcompass.org/faq#faq4) I'm way more in favour of top-down hierarchy and large bureaucracies than Gandhi for example. (And Gandhi wasn't really that socially liberal on a number of issues, tbh!)

It's not like it's an objective or scientific measurement or anything. You'd agree that Friedman or von Hayek are pretty close to +10 on economics and, I dunno, Marx or Kropotkin are -10? Why would a Liberal/NDP swing voter place below -6 on that scale? Btw, I think the numbers are biased in favour of the left.

You self-identify as a libertarian or at least strongly neoliberal on economics, though, right? This is what I'm saying: Everyone should probably add about 5 to their economic score and 2 or 3 to their social score.

Seriously, if there really were as many people in the bottom-left as this questionnaire always seems to conclude, we'd probably be much closer to an anarcho-syndicalist world by now. -- Despite my reservations, though, I do greatly prefer the two-axis model to a left-right spectrum when it comes to classifying political ideologies.

These were my scores the last two times I took this test: Economic Left/Right: -6.38 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.69 Economic Left/Right: -6.75 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.64 These numbers seem really dubious to me. If completely unregulated capitalism is +10 on the economic scale and absolute collectivism is -10, I would think that social democracy and a mixed economy (the model towards which I tend to lean - and not even that aggressively) should be about dead centre.

If I'm ever in Winnipeg, remind me that I owe you a drink, Smallc!

Yeah, I have a great deal of respect for Alexander too. I wish I heard more from him and less from Deepak Obhrai.

Yeah, looking over a table of cost comparisons, my impression was that the Canadian summits were a little on the high side but not ludicrously so. Misleading Parliament, or at least fudging things with Parliament, in order to funnel a large sum of money into projects in a minister's ridings, when they seem to have little connection either to the summits or to border congestion issues (the ostensible purpose of that fund), does bother me, however.