Gimbol's diatribe and screed

New Year, some things will not change

Lets start on the federal level.
-Harper will still be PM, leading a majority government, to enact legislation in line with conservative policy.
-The NDP will choose a new leader that will be either an ex-union operative, a GBLT activist, or an ex-lib working to merge the NDP with the liberals. They choose the ex-lib from Quebec, they can cement their Quebec base. But lets see which tail wags that dog.
- The liberals may finally decide when to have a leadership contest, but my guess as to why they want to delay that decision is so that their next annointed one won't get defined by the conservatives. What does that imply? It implies that none of the usual leadership aspirants in the party have a clean background, and all have weaknesses that can and will be exploited. Put another way, all the potential leadership hopefulls cannot do as past leaders have done, which is to say different things to different parts of the country. It means they still have not advanced out of the 60's when it comes to strategy. But its deeper than that, they have a bigger problem with the selection process. That problem is that they don't trust their own membership. But looking at the current membership, I can understand why they don't. That does in no way excuse them, but I do understand that they feel this way because they know the current membership will not provide them the result they want for a new leader.
It explains why the party executive have for the last three contests, manipulated the outcome to avoid the one-member-one-vote selection process.
The factions in the membership also don't want to follow through on the OMOV due to the observation that there are some unwritten LPC rules that would die an unceremonious death in a convention that would see the selection process yanked away from the delegates hands into the hands of the riding associations.
All moot of course.
Here's the real reason, which I'm not afraid of posting as no one, especially a liberal operative will ever see.
The real problem the liberals are going to have is the next leader. They can go ahead and do the annointing, but if they do the jig will be up quicker than call girl rates during sailor's leave. The membership will push a merger and bolt for the NDP (those on the left of the party) and the blu-libs will grudgingly start accepting the conservative party as a reasonable alternative. What will be left in the liberal party will be the die-hard partisans (Kinsella) and legacy partisans (ie: Justin Trudeau).

Provincially, McGuinty will be having to adjust with the ongoing campaign mode and try to manage a minority government at the same time. His biggest problem, and Hudak's biggest asset, is that Dalton cannot sit on the fence anymore and present himself as a blu-lib. Sorry Dalton, if you don't want to see the NDP vote grow, you have to shift left, leave the middle ground open, and watch the PC vote in Ontario grow....he may want to consider a career change.

Local (city of London)
-Fontana better keep his promise to maintain that zero tax increase, no introducing a levy, or other kind of trickery. If it comes down to it, cuts need to be made, end of story.
-The OWS needs to be mindful that when the weather turns nice, Londoner's don't want to see any overnight campsites setup in public areas. You got read the riot act last fall, don't think for a minute the public is ready for a repeat. Expect your butts to be incarcerated the first night you try this crap. Frankly what you want to hope is that the police are the ones that remove you instead of some civic minded citizens tired of footing the bill for this crap. Also a thought, that if the native warriors start showing up at your protests, it doesn't really help in light of the nonsense that went on in Caledonia.

Happy New Year all.

Labels: 2012 predictions

posted by gimbol @ 8:34 PM