Assorted Links: December 8, 2007

I Spoke Too Soon

Here I was, less than a week ago, praising the provincial Tories for their professionalism in handling John Tory's defeat.  Now a coup is in the works, organized by members of the Harrisite faction of the party.  The dwindling number of regular readers of this blog will recall that our sympathies lie with this faction, though not their approach.  The gentle reader will also recall that we have been less than enthusiastic about Mr. Tory's leadership.  An able man but not a man of the times.  The decision to elect Tory over Flaherty in 2004, a repeat in many ways of the election of Ernie Eves to the leadership two years earlier, was a victory of the Red over the Blue section of the party.  However unpleasant that fact, it remains. 

John A observed that he wanted a man who would stand by him when he was wrong, not just when he was right.  That's loyalty.  Why should loyalty trump principle?  Because a party that keeps overthrowing its leaders when they lose, after proclaiming them their saviour less than a year earlier, is a party that can't win.  A party obsessed with its own internal battle can't win either.  Previously, in this space, the suggestion had been advanced that John Tory should be allowed to exit provincial politics and into the federal cabinet, preferably at the time of the next federal election.  It would be an honourable exit for Tory and put his considerable talents to good use as a federal minister for cities or infrastructure.  The danger of removing Tory in so direct away is that the Reds will seek revenge the next time around, weakening the new leader's authority.  Federally both Robert Stansfield and Joe Clark suffered by Dief's overthrow in 1967.  Only an unusually talented caucus manager, Brian Mulroney, was then able to "herd the cats" toward victory.  It is unlikely any of the potential replacements for John Tory has those skills.  Either Mr. Tory needs to bring more Blues into his inner circle or the Blues need to find a graceful way for him to leave the leadership. 

Joe Clark Punched

Of all the Prime Ministers in Canadian history, Joe Clarks seems the least likely to attract this kind of visceral hatred.  I mean seriously, what did Joe Clark ever do to you?  He wasn't in power long enough to create any real enemies outside of caucus.  Oddly, Pierre Trudeau spent years walking through the streets of Montreal unmolested.  There's a cosmic irony in that.

Joe Clark was assaulted on a downtown Montreal street last month by a man who asked if he was the past prime minister before punching him in the face and leaving him with a bloody nose.

Clark says he was walking down Sherbrooke St. on the evening of Nov. 20 on his way to a speech by former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright when he heard someone call out to him.

"A fellow called my name and said: 'Are you Joe Clark, the former prime minister?'" Clark told CanWest News Service Friday. "My initial response was to say: 'Hi' and off I went. He then came along beside me and repeated it. And I said: 'Yes.' And he then hit me once on the face. He then swiveled and was away quickly."

If I was Kim Campbell or John Turner right now, I'd be very nervous.

High Taxes Lead to Labour Shortage...

...in Denmark.  Someone please pass this article along to Lord Layton of York.

Young Danes, often schooled abroad and inevitably fluent in English, are primed to quit Denmark for greener pastures. One reason is the income tax rate, which can reach 63 percent.

"Our young people are by nature international," said Poul Arne Jensen, chief executive of Dantherm, a maker of climate-control technology. "They are used to traveling and have studied abroad."

"They are no longer 'Danes' in that sense - they are global people who have possibilities around the world," he said.

Denmark is the home of "flexicurity," the catchy name given to a system that pays ample unemployment and welfare benefits but, unusually in Europe, imposes almost no restrictions on hiring and firing by employers. The mixture has served Denmark well, and its economy barreled ahead in 2006 by 3.5 percent, one of the best performances in western Europe. The country is effectively at full employment.

But success has given rise to an anxious search for talent among Danish companies, and focused attention on émigrés like Sorensen. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is based in Paris, projects that Denmark's growth rate will fall to an annual rate of slightly more than 1 percent for the five years beginning in 2009, reflecting a dwindling supply of a vital input for any economy: labor.

Jack Layton Caught Attending Gay Pride Parade

Where he saw many things more "objectifying" than pictures of James Moore's girlfriend.

In an abrupt about-face, New Democrat MP Irene Mathyssen issued a formal and "unqualified" apology to a Conservative MP yesterday after falsely accusing him of surfing "soft porn" in the Commons.

Mathyssen interrupted scheduled events in her London-Fanshawe riding to hightail it back to Ottawa and read a prepared statement in the House of Commons.

The rookie MP apologized for standing in the House this week to complain B.C. MP James Moore had been viewing images of a "scantily clad woman" on his laptop computer in the chamber.

The images on Moore's computer were actually of his dog and his girlfriend on vacation.

Thursday, Mathyssen told The Free Press she stood by her complaint -- and that she intended to apologize Monday, but only for not talking to the MP before raising the issue.

But yesterday's apology came without qualification.

"The member has explained what those images were and I have accepted his explanation," she said.

"I recognize in hindsight that I should have approached the member and sought the explanation before I rose in this House. For that I am truly sorry. I fully and without qualification apologize to the honourable member, to his family and all members of the House."

When it comes to sexual prudery, in many ways, the Victorians ain't got nothin' on the modern feminist Left.  As long as the sex is straight.

Trudeau the Militarist?

Lies, damn lies and Liberal statistics.

Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau may still be widely reviled in the military community as a "pinko" who slashed the budget of the Canadian Forces in the 1970s, but a new analysis done by Parliament's research branch ranks him as the top spender on defence in the last 37 years.

The figures, detailing the defence budget as a percentage of the country's gross domestic product, indicates Trudeau even outspent Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who brought in a hawkish defence policy in the late 1980s.

The figures also show the Harper Conservatives, who have portrayed themselves as being strong on defence, have a long way to go to match Trudeau's levels.

The analysis was done for the Senate's committee on national defence, which is pushing the government to spend more on the Canadian Forces.

It covers spending from 1970, in the midst of the Cold War, to 2007 and the continuing war on terror.

Trudeau was not seen as a fan of the Canadian Forces.

But defence spending during his tenure in the early 1970s hovered at about two per cent of the gross domestic product and then started dropping as cuts were made. Under Trudeau, it climbed back up again to 1.9 per cent of GDP in 1983 and almost reached two per cent under Liberal Prime Minister John Turner.

The analysis of these figures has been disputed by a Conservative Senator:

A Tory senator is taking issue with how the head of the Senate's defence committee has portrayed records that detail current military spending as well below expenditures of the Trudeau era in the 1970s. Senator David Tkachuk says the records, produced by parliamentary researchers, and outlined in a Citizen story Tuesday, are not an "analysis" done for the Senate committee, but a collection of figures produced for Liberal Senator Colin Kenny, chairman of the committee. "This was a study commissioned for and asked for by Senator Kenny as an independent senator," said Mr. Tkachuk, who is the deputy chairman of the Senate defence committee. "The chair does not speak on this or any other issue for the committee unless explicitly specified," Mr. Tkachuk said yesterday in the Senate.

It matters not a whit.  All the figures suggest is that Trudeau inherited a sizable military establishment, which he then reduced for much of his time in office.  Very late in the day, sensing he had alienated the Reagan administration, he began to ramp up defense spending.  With the pressure of reducing the deficit, inherited from Trudeau, the Mulroney Conservatives cut defense spending, a process accelerated after collapse of communism and the withdrawal of Canadian forces from Germany.  The military is quite right to revile the memory of that "pinko," a man who considered World War II nothing more than Europeans "settling old scores."

Irrational at Any Speed

Bad driving kills, not speeding. 

By global standards, North American speed limits are absurdly low. In most European countries the highway speed limit is either 120 km/h or 130 km/h. Britain and Sweden have the strictest limits at 110 km/h. About three-quarters of the famous German Autobahnen have no speed limit at all. The "recommended velocity" is 130 km/h, but average speeds in unregulated areas are about 150 km/h. Nevertheless, the overall safety record on Autobahnen is comparable to that on controlled-access highways in European countries with speed limits. A 2005 study by the German Interior Ministry found sections with unrestricted speed had the same accident record as sections with speed limits.

The preponderance of evidence, as opposed to supposition, prejudice, hysteria and conventional wisdom, indicates speed, per se, doesn't "kill," that there are massive economic costs consequential to imposing unnecessarily low speed limits, and that there is a logical and legitimate case for raising - not lowering - speed limits on Canadian highways.

I'm confident we could bump the maximum speed limit to 120 or 130 km/h quite satisfactorily, in the mature understanding that any speed limit involves arbitrary compromise among fuel economy, safety and economics. We could save lives and gas by driving 50 km/h, but that would be silly, wouldn't it?

Yes, but politics is silly and it's the politicians who set the speed limits.  Besides if we didn't have cops catching speeders what else would they do?  Catch actual criminals?

The Royal Knockoff

Admittedly it is the Daily Express, still this is ridiculous.

PRINCE Philip’s closest aide is to be questioned about allegations that the Queen’s husband ordered the murder of Princess Diana, it was revealed yesterday.

Brigadier Sir Miles Hunt-Davis, the Duke of Edin­burgh’s private secretary, will be called to give evidence at the inquest into the Prin­cess’s death.

For the first time he will be asked to answer allegations that Philip wanted Diana dead because he feared the mother of the future king was about to marry Dodi Fayed, a Muslim.

A Scotland Yard inquiry, which cost taxpayers £3.69million, failed to deal with the central conspiracy allegations leveled by Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, who believes his son and Diana were murdered by British agents on Philip’s orders.

He claims that senior figures at Buckingham Palace were worried that Diana was pregnant by Dodi and about to announce her engagement to him.

The figures insist the allegations are nonsense but, until now, have advised Philip to avoid a public slanging match.
When detectives investigating Diana’s death tried to contact Philip last year, he declined to speak to them.

Whence do these fantasies emerge?  I hesitate to give added publicity, however small, to these ranting but the Royal Consort is being dragged into these muddy precincts.  Do the authors of these stories imagine that the Royal Family is composed of articulate and well attired gangsters?  Are there late night conversation in which courtiers gather 'round the monarch discussing whose next on the list?  "Well, mum, Prince Michael of Kent did use the wrong spoon during the State Dinner for the King Juan Carlos of Spain....."  I'm sure the Prince was rather irritated by Diana's indiscretions, as were many, many, many commoners of the Prince's generation.  Note the language.  Harlot is not part of the argot of any self respecting modern day yobo.  It's also extremely unlikely that British Intelligence takes its instructions from the Duke of Edinburgh, no matter much he does resemble in speech and character the M's of MI6 lore.  Not how a constitutional monarchy works.  It's also not how the British Royal Family works.  Having close relatives, if only by marriage, whacked was already passe with the later Tudors.  The Windsors, I suspect, lack the incivility, as well as the sang froid, to kill the mother of the second in line to the throne.