Sometimes we wish too fervently for the return of warm weather. With all the great memories we build, involving youth and beaches and sun, we forget that our brains are not wired correctly for such things. As proof, I offer up our local politicians.
posted in politics | Comments Off on Further proof that the weather is responsible for madness | 283 words
The 400th Birthday Club is at it again.
Sometime in the next two hundred and twenty-odd days, a birthday cake will be loaded on a big truck (with at least two flat tires) and the cry will go out to light the candles. I fear there won’t be a lucifer to be found. No lights, no show. You see, the celebration for Quebec City’s Four Hundredth Anniversary (in capitals, if you please) just seems to hit one bump after another.
posted in politics | Comments Off on Something about prophets and their home | 314 words
This has been the weekend of the race that wasn’t in Quebec. After a demotion to the far back benches, the PQ ate another leader and started the process of convincing another one to step up to the guillotine. As someone at work put it, there are two jobs in Quebec that no ordinary person ever wants: leader of the PQ and coach of the Habs.
posted in politics | Comments Off on Should he stay or should he go | 347 words
The wheels of change turn very, very slowly when it comes to anything involving political systems. Bear witness, we still have a monarch. But more important, we might someday have a Super Monday. There’s change in the rare air around the Parliament Hill.
posted in politics | Comments Off on Someday we might have a Super Monday | 250 words
I have completed the most thankless task that I face each year. My tax returns are “on the net”. All four of them, because in this schizophrenic political system I must report to two sets of masters, for my better half and me. Four sets of forms that reassure my choice of profession: anything other than financial affairs. I hate dealing with numbers.
posted in politics | Comments Off on Permission to scream | 251 words
No wonder people have a hard time with the “political class”; if you give them a chance the polit will do the stupid pet trick routine every time. Watch our latest minister of the environment. Here is a man that will save the world with some lightbulbs. In keeping with the pet tricks, my youngest refers to the man as the hampster from Ottawa. My own feeling is that with one of those wheels that are synonomous with the species, we could light a dim bulb.
posted in politics | Comments Off on More inconvenient truth | 327 words
The gang at the office came together today. Any time you offer free coffee, donuts and assorted other tasties, the office comes together – it’s a rule. And following the rules of management science, we had a meeting with an agenda, goals and boss monologues. For what it’s worth, there was a rational reason. It was time to discuss emergency measures.
posted in politics | Comments Off on The secret is in the planning (again) | 332 words
Part of my time spent “running” a videoconference is also spent in observation. Not of the visual content, although the framing of each shot is important, but rather of the verbal content. I like to think that each of the participants is framing their own verbal shot.
posted in politics | Comments Off on Framing verbal shots | 272 words
That wasn’t said, but then some things don’t have to be. The “Town Hall” meeting did its daylong seminar, with about the expected numbers, and the search for consensus was the rule of the day. No shouting or shaking of fists in this group hug. We’re all in this boat together, so please don’t rock things would have been a great banner logo.
posted in politics | Comments Off on Now discuss politely | 251 words
In one of those twists of fate, I’m involved for the next couple of days as the technical delegate to a gathering of like minds. Now, they would never admit to such homogeniety, but if you take a group of sixty people who all have similar goals and come from the same sector, you don’t get a smorgasbord.
posted in politics | Comments Off on The secret is in the planning | 337 words
