daveberta.ca - Alberta Politics and Elections

Today’s Word of the Day

resile \rih-ZYLE\ verb

: recoil, retract; especially : to return to a prior position

Example sentence:
The politician said he was sorry that his comments had caused offense, but he stopped short of resiling from his position.

Did you know?

“Resile” is a resilient word; it’s been around in English since at least 1529. It’s also a cousin of “resilient” — both words derive from the Latin verb “resilire,” which means to “jump back” or “recoil.” (“Resilire” in turn comes from “salire,” meaning “to jump.”) “Resilient” focuses on the ability of something to “bounce back” from damage, whereas “resile” generally applies to someone or something that withdraws from an agreement or “jumps back” from a stated position. “Resile” is a word that shows up only occasionally in U.S. sources; it is more common in British and especially Australian English.

Not in my books.

I thought this was good for a laugh or two. It looks the like Conservative Party solution to their youth problem: Don’t give them any real power within the party, instead, give them a website.

Watch out! Here come the fiscally conservative radical youth of the CPC! 😛

More commentary on this soon.

D : )

hmmmmm. You’ve been awful quiet lately. Perhaps a little two quiet…

Me thinks treachery is afoot.

BBC has declared a Labour Majority victory. This is Tony Blair’s 3rd consecutive majority.

As of 9:30pm Edmonton Time:

Labour: 331 (-36 difference dissolution)
Conservative: 159 (+23)
Liberal Democrat: 52 (+10)
Scotish National Party: 6 (+2)
Plaid Cymru : 3 (-1)
Repect: 1 (+1)
Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern: 1
Independent: 1 (+1)

Check out the full scoreboard

Best Quote of the Night

George Galloway (Respect Party Leader and newly elected MP for Benthal Green & Bow) to Tony Blair: “I’ve come back to haunt you.”

UK ELECTION FULL SCOREBOARD

BBC is so entertainingly British. I’ve never heard any Canadian politician talk about how “delightful” it was to campaign in my constituency.

How would you like to the Member of Parliament for Southhampton Itch? What a name.

‘Edmonton’ has gone Labour. I’ll update when I find out the results.

8:28pm Edmonton time

Labour – 288
Conservative – 93
Liberal Democrat – 36
Other -11

Labour losses. Conservative gains (they won their 1st seat in Wales since 1997). Liberal Democrat gains and losses.

I’m quite enjoying Peter Snow’s election swingometer

Check out the live results page

I’m sitting here watching the UK Election live on BBC (over the internet).

Tony Blair’s Labour Party is looking for their 3 majority victory against a Conservative Party led by Michael Howard, and the Liberal Democrats led by Charles Kennedy.

So far, the results being reported (as of 5:55pm Edmonton time) are:

Labour – 32
Liberal Democrat – 2
Conservative – 1 (gained from Labour)

324 seats needed to form a majority government…

Well, for those of you who know what I’ve been up to lately, my little adventure has been called off.

THIS is where I was supposed to be going next week following my lovely London adventure. Getting blown up is not on my “to-do” list for this summer.

So, that means no London, Istanbul, Diyabakur, Irbil, or Athens for me this summer.

I was so looking forward to getting a good tan in the middle east. Quite seriously.

Vancouver Island sounds nice and safe to me right now.

Two smear campaigns from the opposite sides of the lovely BC Election

From the BC Liberals:

“NDP – THE REAL STORY”

From the BC NDP:

“The Amazing All-Purpose Fool-Proof Never-Fail LIBERAL TRUTH TRANSLATOR”

On another BC note – the picture of ND Leader Carole James on the pre-front page of the ND website has to be the scariest looking picture of her that I have ever seen. It’s like she has a dark side… Darth Carole?

Sidenote: check out this website for a good laugh.

Check it out: Progressive Bloggers. Way cooler than the Blogging Tories.

This is where I’m going to be in 12 days!

sweet.

a couple of days ago, it was +24C, today it’s -4C with a cold wind.

I really dislike the schizophrenic weather here.

Harper, Martin, Layton, and Duceppe ‘playing nice’ for the camera’s during the 2004 Leaders Debate

According to the Globe & Mail, Prime Minister Paul Martin and NDP Leader Jack Layton reached an “agreement in principle” meaning that the NDP will support the minority Liberal Government’s budget when voting time comes. The NDP support came in exchange for the Liberals cancellation of promised corporate taxcuts (but not the proposed taxcuts for small and medium sized businesses).

Here is an exert of the “Agreement in Principle” from Jack Layton:

“It appears likely that we will have an agreement in principle reached with the government. Families will pay less for their kids’ education. Workers will get better training. We’ll reduce pollution. Build affordable housing. Protect pensions – and have a place in the world that makes us proud.

This likely agreement in principle also gives real hope that the child care money and first installment of the gas tax can start to flow back to communities. It also lets the investment in the Kyoto plan move ahead. The Liberal plan doesn’t keep our Kyoto promise. It has major flaws. But it is vital we move ahead and ensure even the most basic first steps are protected…from year one to year five.”

As a Liberal with NDP tendencies, I like it! I like the idea of a Liberal-NDP Agreement and I like the idea of scrapping the corporate taxcuts.

But, if you take a look at the numbers in the House of Commons, it may not make a difference in the face of a Conservative/Bloc non-confidence vote. So far, what we know is that if the Conservative/Bloc Quebecois alliance pushed a No vote on the Liberal Budget, two of the Independent MP’s (former Reform/Alliance/Tory MP Chuck Cadman, and former Tory/Liberal MP David Kilgour would also vote No.

A Liberal/NDP coalition (which would support the budget) would receive the support of Independent MP Carolyn Parrish.

So, according to the numbers, here is how things work out…

Will vote for the budget
Liberal – 132
NDP – 19
Independent – 1
TOTAL – 152

Will vote against the budget
Conservative – 99
Bloc Quebecois – 54
Independent – 2
TOTAL – 155

So, an Liberal/NDP Agreement may not be enough… depending on who shows up for the budget vote… interesting times ahead.

: ) I’m not a nerd! : )

Thanks to Robert at Five of Five for the nerdlicious link.

BC Party Leaders

BC Liberal Leader Gordon Campbell

BC NDP Leader Carole James

BC Green Leader Adrienne Carr

The British Columbia election is on and the parties and their leaders are on their way to May 17.

In the 2001 BC Provincial election, Gordon Campbell‘s BC Liberals crushed the NDP government of Premier Ujjal Dosanjh (now the Federal Health Minister and Liberal MP for Vancouver South), taking all but 2 of the 79 seats in the BC Legislature. Much of this was due to the unpopularity of former NDP Premier Glen Clark and his equally unpopular government. The 2001 election also saw a massive rise in support for the BC Green Party. Since then, the NDP have changed leaders (twice) and elected a third MLA in a by-election, a couple of BC Liberals have became Independent MLA’s, and one former BC Liberal joined the Democratic Reform Party.

The weird part about BC politics is that the BC Liberals are closer policy-wise to the Federal Conservatives than to the Federal Liberals. From what I can tell, BC politics tends to be pretty polorized, swinging from the left to the right (between the left-wing NDP and the right-wing Socreds/Liberals) and generally skipping the middle-ground.

Also, in this election, the BC electorate will be voting on whether to accept or reject a new form of electoral system known as STV (Single Tranferable Vote). I know how STV works, but unfortunately, I can’t explain it in a reasonable amount of space, so… here are a couple of STV links:

BC Citizen’s Assembly

BC STV

STV for BC

Know STV

Good coverage of the BC Election can be found at the CBC BC Votes 2005 website. Also, check out the BC Election Prediction Project for some interesting riding predictions. If anyone has anymore good links, feel free to post them in the comments section.

If I lived and voted in BC: I would most likely vote either NDP or Green depending on the riding and candidate, the BC Liberals are far too right-wing for my liking. I also would vote FOR the STV preposal.

My BC Election Prediction: A reduced BC Liberal majority (40-50 seats), an increased BC NDP Opposition (20-30 seats), and perhaps some suprise upsets on the way from the smaller parties (1-3 seats). I also predict that the STV system will be rejected due to the simple fact that it’s nearly impossible to explain it to the average person in less than 20 seconds (this is the advantage of First-Past-The-Post, it only takes 5 seconds to explain: “The candidate with the most votes wins”). This is unfortunate, because I do believe that a move to STV would be a good one for Canadian Electoral Politics.