Gods of the Copybook Headings

Maestro

Stephen Harper united the Right, out witted the seemingly inevitable Paul Martin and has governed the longest lived minority government in Canadian history, bar that of Lester Pearson. As someone who remembers the wilderness years of the 1990s, this should all be a dream come true. How often did I, and like minded associates, bemoan that the Canadian Right had the ideas but not the political skills to implement them? What we needed was someone with hard nosed practicality, matched with some good values about curbing government. Perhaps the really radical stuff would have to wait, like a more market based approach to health care, but the long gun registry, the CWB and slew of make work projects for left wing activists, surely all that could be smashed quickly and decisively. 

The odd stumble aside, Stephen Harper has demonstrated himself as the most skilled politician of the age. Dull and uninspiring, beneath the bad hair cut, however, the enormous brain has plotted and intrigued in his seven years as leader of first the Canadian Alliance, and then the reunited Conservative Party of Canada. He has seen off two Liberal leaders, and has every chance of sending Michael Ignatieff back to academia come the next election. Confronted by an intellectually incoherent Liberal Party, reeling from scandal and hobbled by a steady bleeding of its electoral base, Harper has presented himself as a sensible, boring centrist. A safe pair of hands in troubled times. 

In the context of other leading economic powers, Harper practically shines as an exemplar of common sense. Barack Obama is steadily, and quite openly, leading the United States toward socialism. Gordon Brown combines the unlikely traits of spendthrift and bore. Nicolas Sarkozy spends much of his time, in the old Gaullic tradition, haranguing anglo-saxon anything. Angela Merkel is another Harperesque safe pair of hands, despite an early reputation of being a radical reformer. Canada has weathered the economic storm, so far, very well indeed. Even from a libertarian / classical liberal perspective, government growth has been slow to moderate here, when compared to other G20 countries. In this light, the leadership of Stephen Harper has been a strong, albeit relative, success. The slow grumblings among the Conservative base, however, suggest anything but satisfaction. Hasn't the boy brought us the goods? 

Fear of a resurgent Liberal Party, as well as the ghost of the Grand Coalition, from almost exactly a year ago, keeps Tories loyal and relatively contented. Better the Harper we know, than the Iggy we don't. The few vocal critics on the Canadian Right are mostly libertarians and classical liberals. They were not amused, when earlier this year, Harper blamed the economic crisis on "greed" and admonished libertarians for being naive and foolish. 

This was covered here. Throwing this group under the political bus did not provoke the crisis of confidence in Harper's leadership, it merely confirmed a long running suspicion. The politically reasonable had accepted the Harper call for incrementalism. Canada is a centre-left country, gotta move slowly in the Right direction, and all that. After about three years, and a blockbuster deficit budget delivered at the beginning of 2009, many came to the conclusion that for incrementalism to work you kinda gotta be moving in the general direction of freer markets. 

The you-are-a-bunch-of-Free-Market-Nutbars speech back in March, also revealed Harper's tenuous grasp of market economics. Surely a chap with an MA in Economics, with a market minded bent, would have noted the pernicious influence of the Federal Reserve, the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie and Freddie and all the other Disney like family of statist agencies, that distraught and distort the economic engine of the world. Nope. The Prime Minister of Canada gave an economic analysis that might have barely passed muster at your local Tim's. 

Greed? Back in the old days there was no greed in Canada. No greed on Wall Street. No greed anywhere. Then it just kind of appeared out of nowhere, like an economic disease, sometime in the middle part of the current decade. Even as populist yarns goes, this one strains credulity. Stephen Harper channelling Brian Mulroney, or Mackenzie King, isn't really the galling bit. It's the pretence. The Stephen Harper who headed the National Citizens Coalition, is not the Stephen Harper who now governs Canada. Incrementalism doesn't just fail when you stop moving in the Right direction. It fails when people lose faith in the incrementalists.

Thursday Night - Welles

The Pol Pot of Architecture

The good doctor advises:

Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform. In one sense, he had less excuse for his activities than Pol Pot: for unlike the Cambodian, he possessed great talent, even genius. Unfortunately, he turned his gifts to destructive ends, and it is no coincidence that he willingly served both Stalin and Vichy. Like Pol Pot, he wanted to start from Year Zero: before me, nothing; after me, everything. By their very presence, the raw-concrete-clad rectangular towers that obsessed him canceled out centuries of architecture. Hardly any town or city in Britain (to take just one nation) has not had its composition wrecked by architects and planners inspired by his ideas.

Le Corbusier, whose real name was Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, is often haled as one of the great modernist architects. Modernism in architecture is a catch-all term that includes many early twentieth century styles. The main theme is an inessential one, the minimal use, or complete lack, of ornamentation. Thus a master stylist like Frank Lloyd Wright is mixed up with a designer of concrete boxes, like Le Corbusier. What is shocking is Anthony Daniels' shock. 

Look at the above building, which he designed in the 1920s. Ho hum, right? Seen it or something like it a thousand times? It's a building whose mediocrity is perfectly platonic. In the world of architectural forms, it is the perfect concrete block, badly stylized, from which all other concrete blocks are merely imperfect copies. How many suburban offices look just like the above? A classic work of art deco, or a building by FLW, arrests the viewer. Even a mediocre piece of pseudo-Georgian architecture, can still project if not exactly grandeur, at least a sort of loveliness. Even if the whole thing is the building equivalent of painting by numbers, the pseudo-Georgian might be something you'd feel comfortable living in. 

Nothing to inspire. Few buildings do that. But something vaguely human. I have to admit that Le Corbusier's influence is so pervasive I wondered why Daniels was getting all hot and bothered. Surely, we've seen this all before, many, many times. The Sixties spawned this stuff on a vast scale. The new visitor to the University of Toronto's downtown campus, can get the full impact of how jarring the change over was. Beside some old Neo-Gothic gem is a Le Corbusier inspired block of concrete. You spend enough time there, you forget to notice it. Testament to the human capacity to adapt. While adaptation is key to survival, the moral question remains, survival as what? As a society that puts genuine - if perhaps derivative - products of human talent right next to architectural abortions? While putting the label "art" on both of them?

Scenes from the Imperial Capital

Hello Mullah, Hello Faddah

Birth control in Afghanistan:

The message was simple. Babies are good, but not too many; wait two years before having another to give your wife’s body a chance to recover. Nothing in Islam expressly forbids birth control. But it does emphasize procreation, and mullahs, like leaders of other faiths, consider children to be blessings from God, and are usually the most determined opponents of having fewer of them.

It is an attitude that Afghanistan can no longer afford, in the view of the employees of the nonprofit group that runs the seminars, Marie Stopes International. The high birthrate places a heavy weight on a society where average per capita earnings are about $700 a year. It is also a risk to mothers. Afghanistan is second only to Sierra Leone in maternal mortality rates, which run as high as 8 percent in some areas.

This, however, is the money quote:

In Mazar-i-Sharif, it is one mullah at a time.

Mr. Massoom, the mullah trainer, put it most directly. “This is an Islamic country,” he said. “If the clerics support this, no one will oppose it.”

There, in a nutshell, have you the problem with the Islamic world. To some this would be proof enough to leave Afghanistan to its fate. When you've left the Middle Ages, give us a call. That would be the wrong approach. As we've seen within the last decade, letting the primitive fanaticism fester is no longer an option. Back in the days of the British Empire, we could let a small expeditionary force keep the medievalists at bay. A whiff of grapeshot and the civilized world could be left in peace. 

The Mad Mullah who terrorized Somalia a century ago, had a limited remit. He was a nuisance to the British, Italian and Ethiopian governments, but it was unlikely he or his followers could show up in London within a few hours, causing havoc. A globalized world means globalized pathologies. The simple thing would be to shut the door. Muslim fanaticism a problem? Just keep out the Muslim. Leaving aside that this would entail trapping civilized and decent people in the living nightmare of theocracy - whichever version - it would also fail. 

Short of closing down the modern world's economy, there is no keeping out the determined and the ingenious. It also fails in the light of simple military strategy. You can win a defensive war only against a larger power, one that becomes exhausted in hurling resources at a seemingly immovable target. A small and nimble enemy wins by keeping up the fight against a larger opponent. To win, the Islamists simply have to keep fighting. For the West to win, it needs to destroys its enemies. While Iran is of far greater immediate danger, the battle for Afghanistan is Exhibit A in the longer term battle against Islamic fanaticism. It needs to become a place where if clerics support something, people will feel comfortable in opposing it. Until that happens, Afghanistan will remain the graveyard of empires, and a destabilizing force in Central Asia, and by extension the world.

Wednesday Night - Trek

Scenes from the Imperial Capital

Kelo and After

Well, well. The corporate welfare junkie moved on. 

Pfizer said it would pull 1,400 jobs out of New London within two years and move most of them a few miles away to a campus it owns in Groton, Conn., as a cost-cutting measure. It would leave behind the city’s biggest office complex and an adjacent swath of barren land that was cleared of dozens of homes to make room for a hotel, stores and condominiums that were never built.

The announcement stirred up resentment and bitterness among some local residents. They see Pfizer as a corporate carpetbagger that took public money, in the form of big tax breaks, and now wants to run.

“I’m not surprised that they’re gone,” said Susette Kelo, who moved to Groton from New London after the city took her home near Pfizer’s property. “They didn’t get what they wanted: their development, their big plan.”

The Kelo Decision, one of the most infamous in recent US Supreme Court history, affirmed the power of local governments to use eminent domain to seize private property for reasons of economic development. Historically, eminent domain was a power exercised in the construction of infrastructure. It was, however, an intellectual short step from arguing that roads and sewers were in the public interest, to arguing that urban renewal was in the public interest. Another very slippery slope. The up shot of Kelo was that it spurred a property rights movement across the United States, forcing through laws restricting the power of eminent domain in 43 states. Though not Connecticut. Susette Kelo is still angry. I don't blame her one bit.

Tuesday Night - Thatcher

Revolt of the Ontarians

In boring and sensible Ontario, the masses are getting angry:

Premier Dalton McGuinty has certainly come up with a novel way of selling his 13% Harmonized Sales Tax to Ontarians, coming everywhere July 1.

His messaging appears to be: "You're too stupid to know this tax is good for you, so I'm going to impose it on you for your own good."

It's an arrogance typical of second-term majority governments, similar to the mistakes McGuinty's predecessors, former Conservative premier Mike Harris, followed by Ernie Eves, made during their second terms in power before they were defeated by McGuinty.

While the Conservatives came into office in 1995 claiming to be common sense revolutionaries who would "fix" the problems created by the previous NDP government, by 2003 they were the problem -- adrift in scandals and political patronage and disconnected from the public they claimed to represent.

I'm not sure it's arrogance exactly. There is a kind of resignation in the whole HST business. The Dalt seems to have reached the conclusion that he is not going to win the next election, so might as well go out with a bang. His victory in 2007 had very little to do with his own virtues. By all rights John Tory should have utterly thumped the Liberal leader. As with Dion and Harper, one looked like a leader, and the other clearly was not. 

There was not much policy difference between Dion and Harper, or Tory and McGuinty, except on that one issue that sealed the election: religious schools. Images of public funds going to Mississauga Madrasahs, and Christian Academies for evangelical rednecks, were enough to destroy the idea in the public's imagination. Catholic Schools were introduced in Ontario over bitter opposition a century and a half ago. They are tolerated today as a historic exception, allowed on political grounds, and on the condition that the Catholicism taught stays within the confines of PC fluffiness.  

It's unlikely that Tim Hudak will display the remarkable tin ear of his predecessor. The game plan is simple. Being as righteous as possible on the HST, but also as vague as possible. There is nothing Hudak, or anyone outside of cabinet, can do about the HST. It's coming and when it's here it's gonna stay. Too complicated and expensive to replace, a Hudak government will offer some cosmetic mitigation, declare mission accomplished and move on. He can't do anything else. But he can make political hay on this disguised tax grab. Hudak needs to show himself as the clean, sensible and reasonable alternative to the Dalt. If he can successfully signal competence to the middle class 905 voter, the Dalt is toast. It's two years before the next provincial election, which gives the premier about six to nine months to decide whether he will run again. A decision to spend more time with his family will not augur well for the Grits.

Scenes from the Imperial Capital

Beyond Satire

In one of my favourite movies, the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, the Denis Leary character dismisses the art world as a bunch of very silly rich people, worried about swirls of paint. Leary is a master at portraying everyman characters, helped no doubt by his Boston Irish background. The everyman has no understanding of modern art. This is not simply that they fail to appreciate it, they regard it as a preposterous hoax. This is an example of what Ayn Rand called the uncommon common man. Rather than defer to the intellectual elite, they note that this emperor has no clothes. The Renaissance Masters, or the Academics, elicit widespread admiration, even if the man in the street would prefer other things than spend an afternoon at an art gallery. The admiration comes from a respect for the effort and skill involved. Any cad can produce what Andy Warhol passed off as art, though few could have made their lives into a piece of performance art as Warhol did. The mystique of modern art, its alleged incomprehensibility, is a perfect excuse for elitism. Only an elect few are educated, and sophisticated, enough to appreciate the beauty of soup can labels. The parable of the emperor's new clothes writ large. So large it now reaches well into the eight digits.

The price rose at breakneck speed as five collectors vied for the classic image, “200 One Dollar Bills.” It ended up selling for $43.7 million (including fees to Sotheby’s), more than three times its high estimate of $12 million. The buyer, whom Sotheby’s refused to identify, bid by telephone through Bruno Vinciguerra, the company’s chief operating officer. Sotheby’s would also not identify the seller, although people familiar with the collection said it was Pauline Karpidas, a London-based collector.

The purchaser, whomever he is, might not care much for Warhol. He might simply be a speculator, profiting from the irrationality of the western upper classes. When this age has mercifully passed, a diligent future historian may very well come across this news item, and judge it as proof of the madness of our modernity.

Monday Night - Brazil

"Judge tosses stunt-driving charge as unconstitutional"

Interesting. Very interesting.

Justice Peter West, a provincial court judge in Newmarket, found that a potential penalty of up to six months in jail violates the Charter of Rights because the law does not permit an accused any defence.

[…]

An absolute liability offence means someone may not argue they took precautions and did not realize how fast they were driving. More than 20 years ago the Supreme Court of Canada stated that potential jail terms for offences that do not permit a defence breaches the Charter.

In other words, the law comes perilously close to making police officers judge, jury and executioner. Note the corruption of the language. The law was marketed as going after street racers, but it's real intention is targeting high end speeders. An interesting figures is that 10,000 drivers have been charged with "stunt driving." If driving 50 km/h over the limit is so dangerous, why do so many do it? If 10,000 have been caught, how many do so on a regular basis undetected? Where, then, is the mass carnage? How many people actually die, or are injured, each year because of those driving at such speeds? 

Saying one is too many is an evasive answer. Road fatalities could be virtually eliminated tomorrow if cars were banned from going faster than 40 km/h. Speed limits are not about some platonic conception of safety, but cost vs. benefits. It should be noted that the overwhelming majority of European countries have highway speed limits in the 120 km/h to 130 km/h range. A friend of mine visited China this summer. Aside from designated areas - where photo radar stations are clearly visible - the police pay little attention to speeding, the average cruising speed being about 130 km/h. Ontario's 400 series highways were designed nearly half a century ago for speeds of about 130 km/h. That was in an age without anti-lock brakes, air bags, seat belts and modern tire technology. 

In other words, how much is this law, and speeding laws in general, based on genuine public policy concerns? How much is this law based on making the McGuinty government look tough on something - a hard thing for the Dalt to do - and lining the pockets of municipal governments? The point isn't that reckless speeding isn't dangerous, and that there should no be laws against it - the roads being publicly owned, there is little alternative - but that the laws are drafted with things other than public safety in mind.

While the Ontario government hunts down speeders, owners of pit bulls and other such threats to the general peace, Caledonia remains occupied. Far easier to target ordinary Ontarians going about their way, rather than those who might fight back. Governments, like water, follow the path of least resistance.

Before the Deluge

On the days before the Revolution:

 "Mad Men" is a problem drama, but of a very particular kind, as suggested by that word "revolution." The show does as one suspects it was intended to do, which is to reinforce our sense of being, as President Obama calls it, "on the right side of history." Whether or not he is a socialist, he appears to be, like other progressives at least as far back as Karl Marx, a historicist, convinced that a particular political agenda is, as it were, divinely ordained, since it has the sanction of "history" — history, that is, conceived of as the only measure of right and wrong, just as God was once supposed to be. That’s revolutionary talk, and of a kind that also shows the relationship between revolution and publicity, a.k.a. propaganda. After a revolution with so many baleful consequences, people have to be continually assured that they are, at least, on the right side of history — if nothing else, as a prophylactic against nostalgia. And in the case of "Mad Men," the nostalgia is harnessed for revolutionary purposes. Brilliant!

Dangerous Liaisons was written before 1789, but it came to be viewed as part of the Jacobin case against the ancien regime. Look at all those decadent aristos! They deserved what they got! No matter how bad the revolution gets, and how bloody, we must never forget the horrors of the ancien regime. The past is never as good, or bad, as you remember it. Especially for the professional historicist.

Scenes from the Imperial Capital

"Cop Tasers 10-Year-Old Girl"

I doubt very much that all the facts are in on this.

Bradshaw added that, "Her mother told me to tase her if I needed to." After Kiara continued to refuse her mother's instructions, the cop concluded that "there was not going to be a peaceful resolution of the issue." Bradshaw warned the girl that she was "going to jail," but the child continued kicking and crying and resisted his attempt to handcuff her. During the tussle, Kiara "struck me with her legs and feet in the groin, reported Bradshaw, who countered with a brief "stun to her back" with his Taser. The child, not surprisingly, "immediately stopped resisting and was placed into handcuffs. She would not walk on her own and I had to carry her to my police car." 

I'll leave the obvious comments about modern parenting to others. Years ago I had clients in Tennessee, many in Memphis. The other side of the Mississippi is Arkansas. Whenever I'd remark that I had clients in Arkansas the people in Memphis would always say "God help you." They'd never say that about my clients in Texas or even Louisiana. One woman told me she'd lived her whole life in Memphis and would only drive through Arkansas. "It's a weird place," she'd say, " I don't want to walk around."

None So Blind

From the NYT:

Intelligence agencies intercepted communications last year and this year between the military psychiatrist accused of shooting to death 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., and a radical cleric in Yemen known for his incendiary anti-American teachings.

But the federal authorities dropped an inquiry into the matter after deciding that the messages from the psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, did not suggest any threat of violence and concluding that no further action was warranted, government officials said Monday.

Major Hasan’s 10 to 20 messages to Anwar al-Awlaki, once a spiritual leader at a mosque in suburban Virginia where Major Hasan worshiped, indicate that the troubled military psychiatrist came to the attention of the authorities long before last Thursday’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood, but that the authorities left him in his post.

To those who doubt the power of ideas, here is a classic example of how belief over powers evidence. The most obvious reason given for the authorities evasion of Hasan's beliefs is reverse racism. Army brass were too afraid of being called bigots if they transferred or discharged Hasan. If you were Hasan's CO, would you risk the media circus that would been provoked by following the correct and obvious course of action? Driving a man, a highly trained doctor no less, from the service because he expressed some controversial beliefs? Beliefs that can be heard from the mouths of countless university professors in modern America? 

The left-leaning lynch mob would have followed the officers responsible to the end of their days. The international media would make hay for years to come, hailing Hasan as a martyr for his beliefs. A comfortable living on the lecture circuit for Hasan would have been a strong possibility. Doing the right thing, perhaps a year back, would not in all likelihood have saved those who died at Fort Hood. A few brave officers trying to force an obvious traitor out of their ranks, and in an extremely sensitive position no less, would probably have failed to do so. The most likely result would have been their own disgrace and embarrassment, while making Hasan even more invulnerable to discharge or even criticism. Islam is the new third rail of American politics. Touch it, and you die. Not a literal death, but a political one. Above the rank of Brigadier, an officer becomes a part-time politician. No politician is going to take a chance of being accused of racism, however frivolously the charge, however grave the circumstances that compelled the necessary action.

The false choice that underpins the actions of the anti-racism inquisitors, ranging from the Canadian Human Rights Commissioners to the Diversity Co-ordinators that infect North American campuses, is that either you hunt down every slightly disagreeable thought on race, ethnic or religious, or the Klan will emerged from darkened embers of the past. To borrow a phrase from the previous American President, either you are with us, or you are with the racists. 

Between the sunshine and the darkness, there is no middle ground. It has been one of my running observations, over the last few years, that when Christianity was marginalized as an intellectual force in the twentieth century, many of its less pleasant tendencies resurfaced in secular garb. Only a tiny minority of North American Christians would countenance a return to enforcing blasphemy laws, yet in effect the secularized establishment thinks nothing of establishing anti-racism commissions - whatever their official labels - to root out people who fail obeisance to the modern gods. Their success is so profound and widespread, that an obvious traitor to his country, and to the free world at large, was allowed not simply free rein at one of America's great military bases, but honour. The great honour of being an officer of the Army of United States of America. An armed force that has liberated millions from exactly the sort of tyranny that Major Hasan would have wanted to flourish.

Sunday Night - Lord Clark

Friday Night - Roger Moore

Send it to Overlord

The Telegraph and the Web:

In the summer of 1999, when the web was nine years old, the Telegraph's website was almost five and I arrived at Canary Wharf for my first shift. Newcomers were paired with someone with more experience to learn the ropes.

Check the text, paste some tags in here and here, add links to the bottom of the page, then send it off, I was told. 'Send it off where,' I asked. 'To Overlord,' was the ominous reply. Overlord was the batch process built by Tim Brown, architect of the early online Telegraph efforts. Tim was usually to be found cropping photographs in the corner on night shifts, but two years before I arrived he had built the newspaper's first web content management system in his spare time. Overlord took the stories that had been worked on throughout the evening and turned them into web pages to be published on a server sitting in a cupboard a few doors down.

Scenes from the Imperial Capital

Not For Sale

The Island for the Islanders.

An American who broke P.E.I.'s non-resident land ownership rules has been fined close to $29,000, with a further fine expected.

This is only the second time the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission — which administers a number of laws for the province, including the Lands Protection Act — has held hearings on an individual's property ownership.

The case dates back to 2003, when Melvin Griffin of Florida was visiting the Island and a 76-hectare piece of land in Pleasant Grove, north of Charlottetown, caught his eye. It had almost two kilometres of shore frontage along the Winter River.

P.E.I. has strict laws regarding non-resident land ownership under the Lands Protection Act. Anything more than two hectares needs to be approved by cabinet, and in this case cabinet said no.

A wee eccentric, as property laws go, isn't it? There is a historical angle to all this:

But when she arrived on the Island in 1867 to inspect her estate (Lots 9, 16, 22 and 61) the P.E.I. legislature was making moves to end absentee landlordism for good. 

In order to protect her interests, she started working with the Prince Edward Island Association, a London-based lobby group that promoted landed interests. 

But after P.E.I. became a Canadian province in 1873, the government enacted a Land Purchase Act in 1875 that forced landlords to sell their estates to the provincial commissioner of public lands. 

In her quest to hold onto the land that her father had given her, Sulivan took her case to the Supreme Court of Canada. 

That's the history. Naturally it has pleasant side effects for the locals. By limiting the pool of potential purchasers, it keeps housing affordable for the locals. It also holds back the province's economic development. Less capital flowing into the island. That may not make much economic sense, but perhaps they're not interested in making money. Maybe they like PEI the way they remember it growing up. Few strangers from "away." Not much traffic. Picturesque cottages and only modest resort developments. PEI today looks more like Anne of Green Gables than a modern tourist destination. Using government to preserve the past.

Thursday Night - Bond

I Think We've Seen This One Before

Like a bad penny, this guy:

The current PQ leader, Pauline Marois, was asked the other day if she's worried about what Parizeau will have to say in his book, La souveraineté du Québec: Hier, aujourd'hui et demain, which hits stores a week before a PQ national council meeting in Montreal to be attended by péquistes from across Quebec.

"I do not fear Mr. Parizeau's book," Marois told reporters. "It's about sovereignty. We need people to continue to reflect and feed us ideas on sovereignty. I work closely with Mr. Parizeau. We speak regularly and I have a very positive relationship with one of the particularly great leaders of our political party."

Traitors betraying each other. Bleak comfort, yet comfort.

Scenes from the Imperial Capital

The Profiteers

Keeping you safe: HT

At Manchester Avenue and Figueroa Street, accidents more than tripled from five before the cameras were installed to 16 afterwards. Westwood Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard tripled from three to nine. At Rodeo Road and La Brea Avenue, collisions nearly tripled from seven in the six months before the cameras were installed to 20 in the same period afterwards. 

The reason? 

"People see the light flash and they slam on their brakes," Ellison said. "That's just human nature. As a result, more accidents, more rear end accidents." 

That's what happened to Dale Stephens, who knew the yellow light up ahead had a camera.

"Because I had that in the back of my mind I knew I had to stop. And it's so expensive to get a ticket I knew I had to stop. Well they had no inclination to stop," Stephens said. 

"They" are the two cars that hit him from behind. 

Wednesday Night - Henry V

Keeping Their Stick on The Ice

Quebec. Tories. Hockey arenas. The three most expensive words in the Canadian lexicon.

Consider the linkage between two recent news items flowing out of the Quebec City mayoralty race. During that campaign, the eventual winner Regis Labeaume talked openly about constructing a new NHLsized hockey rink and working to bring a team back to Quebec City. 

It then emerged that the provincial government was going to undertake a feasibility study to determine whether the city should launch a bid for the Olympic Games. A new arena would be part of such a plan.

When the federal government undoubtedly jumps on this bandwagon, voters in the Quebec City region will get stars in their eyes about all of the world attention, and fancy new things that will be built in and around the city.

The Olympics are a notorious boondoggle. Sports arenas are notorious boondoggles. The Tories are desperate for a breakthrough in Quebec - which thanks to a by-election victory last week - now looks plausible. Reach for your wallets people.

Scenes from the Imperial Capital