A Waste of Time and Money – time for a real change

Well, yesterday’s general election was certainly a waste of time and money for the Canadian people. Basically, it was an election that just shouldn’t have happened. It was called by Stephen Harper, against his own fixed elections bill, because he believed that he had the opportunity to get the majority needed to be the party in full power. He also claimed he called the election because the present government just wasn’t working. He made some gains and there were some surprising shifts in power in some ridings, but the real losers are the Canadian people, because the big picture is still a minority govenrment that, unless there is willing participation for cooperaton from the other parties, will end up being just as dysfunctional as before.

One thing the final results from yesterday show is that it is time for a real change in the area of electoral reform. Some form of proportional representation really needs to be looked at. There is something wrong when a party that gets just less than 10% of the vote ends up with 50 seats, whilst a party with close to 7% of the vote ends up with none. With proportional representation the former would have had about 30 seats, whilst the latter would have had 20.

The shame of the whole thing, not counting the waste of taxpayers money, is that we could be back at this within a couple of years again, which also means that I really need to get on with processing my Canadian citizenship.

Re-ignition required

Over the past few years I have been getting more and more disheartened with the direction of the church/organization that I work for. We are told time and time again about the ‘branding’ or image being important and how this needs to be at the forefront of all that we do. Pretentious slogans come and go, yet there are so many times that we don’t live up to the image or slogans that are portrayed. I feel strongly that the marketing of the church or Christianity is very offensive. It’s not some product that needs to be sold. In my opinion it is a sell-out.

What has happened that we are being taken over by marketeers? Why has image taken precedence over substance? We have reached a point where passion of conviction seems to have been sent to the back of the line. It is vey worrying. We seem more obsessed with looking good than actually being willing to step up and do something, no matter how controversial, about the ills of our society. We seem worried about speaking up against many of the things that affect people in their daily lives. How can that passion be re-ignited?

I’m off to a holiness seminar in a couple of weeks time and have started into some required reading for this. This reading consists of reading a collection of essays on the historical background of holiness teaching from the late 1970’s. One of the essays I read today, ‘References to Holiness Teaching in the Patristic Writings’, by Roger J. Green, contained the following quote, which I believe can give us a starting off point towards a re-ignition of our passion:

“The Salvation Army has too long been silent about events which would have enraged the holy, moral indignation of Polycarp and Booth, of Ignatius and Railton…

“We pay for our silence by attrition. We pay for our silence by passing the moral and ethical leadership of nations to deceivers, and to evil men. It is time once again to step within our tradition properly, as historical perspective gives us warrant…We must become the moral and ethical leaders of our political and social order. We have followed too long.”

Re-ignition anyone?

What are they scared of?

So, the Bloc Quebecois party leader, with a party that runs in only one province, is allowed to speak on the nationally televised leader’s debate, but the Green party leader, with candidates in over 300 ridings cannot. What are the others scared of? I, for one, am more interested in hearing what Elizabeth May has to say than what Gilles Duceppe, leader of a sovereignist party, has to offer.

Story here.

Petition here.

UPDATE: Wednesday – they changed their mind, click here. Good news!

MLK

Can’t have the best of both worlds…

…but I guess they are going to try.

There will be no end to the crappy toys, dangerous pet food, and so on. Do we make anything in our country any more? I’d be willing to pay more for toys that were actually built to last more than a day or two, or wouldn’t be subject to some kind of recall.

Destroy or enhance?

“If we can produce in such abundance in order to wage wars and kill people we see as our enemies, surely we can produce in equal abundance to provide needed food, clothing and shelter. If we can keep people employed for the purpose of destroying life, surely we can keep them employed for the purpose of enriching and enhancing human life.”

(Tommy Douglas)