talktooloose

You seem to have a job but nothing to wear at it.

I'm still catching up.

Being home is good. The puppy is receiving more hugs than he knows what to do with.

From:

ayumie.livejournal.com

Yes!! I mean, we care. I mean, welcome back. I hope you had a great time in India.

From:

But it's such a hard chapter to write! It's full of ACTION and a million characters. I want to get back into a sweaty dorm with two characters again.

From:

ayumie.livejournal.com

But it's got Magneto in it. That's gotta count for something.
Btw, the commenting fuction of the last chapter isn't working properly. All I get is 'Error. No such entry'. Just in case you're wondering why you didn't get so many comments.

From:

Shit. Thanks for letting me know that! I'll check it out.

Yes, Magneto counts for a lot. It's funny when I'm writing his dialogue... I just know so clearly when I have it right or not.

I'm finding him to be a little more unstable than I had thought. He improvises more, too, but always pretends things are just as he planned. heh.

From:

Heh heh. Totally.

From:

Fixed, thank you.

From:

And yet, I seem to thrive on those chapters... lol.

From:

We'll co-write a novel. You do the car chases.

From:

toodamnloud.livejournal.com

The Tories got absolutely destroyed in your provincial election.

From:

The final results are disappointing only because the Liberals got an even more entrenched majority. The Liberal party, given no opposition, tends to be smug, slow to make change and generally unhelpful.

That being said, the spectacular miscalculation of the Tories was awesome to behold. They thought they would win ground by promising public funding of faith-based schools and instead, they lost the election (and their leader lost his seat) on that issue.

My riding remains one of the few NDP strongholds in the province.

There was also a poorly understood referendum on bringing a form of proportional representation to Ontario. I wasn't suprised to see it lose. Canadians don't like change and especially one they don't understand or see the need for. I, for one, would love to see that come to pass. Maybe I can help the cause for the next election.

From:

toodamnloud.livejournal.com

As a proud Democrat, I feel your pain, but remember, it's generally a choice between a mediocre party that makes incremental positive change, or a well disciplined, evil party that brings about horrific, sweeping changes that will utterly destroy human decency.

From:

Single transferrable vote would have my vote. MMP sounds too much like "let's trust the political parties" for me to be comfortable with it.

From:

Explain to me how MMP is any worse than the current system, and I'll give you a cookie. A pretend one. Yeah.

From:

I love it when friends who don't know each other start talking. Yes, Randy, do answer Michael. I'll introduce you guys next time M is in Toronto. You're both all smart and stuff.

From:

Cool.

From:

It comes down to parsimony for me. While I am wary about shrinking the number of territory-based ridings by nearly a fifth and creating nearly 40 MPPs with a responsibility to the community at large, I'm prepared to agree that MMP is neither significantly better nor worse than first past the post. That's the problem: If we're going to go to all the problem of installing a brand-new electoral system, I want one that works significantly better.

From:

I don't personally see how giving the 'community at large' more proportional representation doesn't give MMP at least a nose over first-past-the-post. Maybe it's because I have a disconnect between municipal/geographic representation and *core values* represented (to some effect...) by political parties. To me, it's those core principles that matter more: they are what (supposedly) guide all the decision making that's happening in government, so why shouldn't the legislature more accurately represent the spread of values of it's citizens at large?

I'm not saying that geographic representation is not important. I lived in Chatham-Kent for 3/4th of my life, one of those ruralish areas that most often feel marginalized and poorly represented. I *know* it is important. I guess I'm just willing to make a hypothetical short-term sacrifice of geographic representation in favour of a (likely) more long-term gain in value-representation. The number of seats in the house and riding size are a heck of a lot easier to respectively increase and decrease than it is to change the entire electoral system. People worry about who/what those 'members at large' are responsible to, but it's right there: they are responsible to all of us. If we think the job their party did sucked in one term, then they lose seats in the next election, same as they do now. Perhaps there should have been a stipulation on the number of terms someone can sit as an 'incumbent' in a seat-at-large, but again that's something that likely could have been changed in parliament after-the-fact.

A more rhetorical issue I have with the loss of this referendum is that it sets back the process of electoral reform (IMO). If one makes make a change, it is easier to continue to fix the system until it matches what we require. Making a change, any sort of change, sets a precedent for the people: it makes change not so imposing.

Because Ontario voters rejected MMP now, it makes the process of starting things up again that much harder; is the government *really* going to spend *more* money on putting another panel together? Not any time in the near future. If I'm wrong about this, great, but meh... I'm not optimistic. Electoral reform is going to be relegated to the shadows of political discourse for another while.

From:

I don't personally see how giving the 'community at large' more proportional representation doesn't give MMP at least a nose over first-past-the-post. Maybe it's because I have a disconnect between municipal/geographic representation and *core values* represented (to some effect...) by political parties. To me, it's those core principles that matter more: they are what (supposedly) guide all the decision making that's happening in government, so why shouldn't the legislature more accurately represent the spread of values of it's citizens at large?

I'm not sure that it would be capable of this.

1. Ridings reflect established communities of shared interest and common discourse. Under the reform, one-third of MPPs would be assigned to what would be, in effect, province-wide ridings of unprecedented size. How would they cohere?

2. Who would be picked for the second tier of MPPs? Leaving aside my reluctance to cede more power to the political parties without radical reform on that front, I'm not sure what dynamics would get politicians with established political careers to shift to the ranks of non-territorial MPPs without having them suffer defeats or other signs of relative unpopularity.

Because Ontario voters rejected MMP now, it makes the process of starting things up again that much harder; is the government *really* going to spend *more* money on putting another panel together? Not any time in the near future. If I'm wrong about this, great, but meh... I'm not optimistic. Electoral reform is going to be relegated to the shadows of political discourse for another while.

Is there anything wrong with this? A proposal was drafted and put to the electorate, which then proceeded to reject it by exactly the same sort of supermajority which would have been needed in order for the original proposal to pass. In the absence of other options, the Ontario electorate seems broadly happy with first past the post.

From:

Oh, and I do like STV. It wasn't an option here, though. I'm of the opinion that it woudl have been better to try MMP and see if it works, rather than just stick to the same old unsound path. MMP might not have been the meadow at the end of the woods, but at least we would have been able to see sky above our heads.

From:

(This is the second time I've come back after LJ ate my comment, so I'll be briefer than I intended.)

1. STV might well be more popular in Ontario than MMP--in the 2005 referendum in British Columbia, a STV proposal got the support of 58% of voters versus 38% for MMP in Ontario.

2. Change for change's sake, especially without any clear evidence that the change will be a net good, is something that doesn't appeal to me at all.

From:

philos-arbiter.livejournal.com

Welcome back, I'm looking forward to 15 with great anticipation. I hope you had a great vacation in India...

From:

It was "great" in the sense of large and weighty, for sure.

I'm editing, editing...

From:

Welcome back! Long time no see!

From:

Did you get my email from Udaipur? We must meet up, monsieur.

From:

Again, welcome back. :-D

From:

Again, thanks. I need your mailing address so I can mail you the boyfriend I mentioned in my email.

From: