On the move!
Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.
Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.
Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!
—Ian King, December 13, 2004
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Day 10: Trail Mix
- Hidden agendas revisited? Conservative health critic Rob Merrifield suggests that women contemplating abortion should be referred to third-party counsellors. Merrifield's statements might reignite the abortion debate, which was always a minefield for the former Reform/Alliance party. How will Stephen Harper handle this one? Officially liberal in order to play to the centre, or admittedly conservative?
- There's one rightwing policy that Stephen Harper isn't running away from: good old fashioned noose swinging "law and order" rhetoric. That's because "tough on crime" rhetoric does sell among fretful folks in the suburbs, unlike, oh, I don't know, talk of referring women seeking abortion to some unspecified counsellor.
- Imagine that! A free-market think tank commissions a poll to find that most Canadians want 2-tier health care! Next thing you know, the Canadian Centre for Policy alternatives will commission a poll showing that most Canadians want a single-payer public system...
- The various parties begin backroon megotiations in the event of a minority government.
- The Martinites call in a crew that knows how to win elections -- Jean Chretien's old crew.
- New Liberal ads in BC feature ex-NDPers; meanwhile, NDP leader Jack Layton slags off the BC Liberals. Gordon Campbell snipes at Layton, saying that Layton doesn't know how to run an economy. Then again, Gordo's no whiz at that sort of stuff, either.
- Speaking of Campbells consumed by ideology, Vancouver Sun "business columnist" Michael Campbell, as always pushing tax cuts as a panacea, suggests that cutting taxes would reduce government scandal because there would be less money to spend. He might want to check with his brother, B.C. Premier El Gordo, about folks like Doug Walls. Not that a coherent argument was ever at the heart of a Campbell column, mind you.
- Globe and Mail typist John Ibbitson contemplates the possibilities of a Conservative government and an unstable Parliament. In the same paper, Jeffrey Simpson places a pin in Jack Layton's balloon.
- The Star's Jim Travers says that the election call was a mistake -- for Paul Martin. Tom Walkom points out that Stephen Harper can now expect far more scrutiny now that here is a real possibility of him becoming Prime Minister, which could really screw up Harper's strategy of avoiding contentious issues in the hopes that nobosy expects him to be in power.
- Finally, Jack Layton and Paul Martin are both in the Lower Mainland today trying to work over those famously volatile voters. Neither leader will venture east of Surrey into the Fraser Valley, though...
See you later on today.
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