It’s a Mad, Mad World

Any question that we are living in a mad, mad world need only look at the actions of political leaders in several countries.  Where would you like to look?

How about Great Britain, the country in which I was born.  The fight over Brexit and the actions of its leader, Theresa May is sheer folly.  What kind of foolishness and old-fashioned thinking was fed to the people to convince a small majority of them to vote for separation from the European Union can only be imagined from this distance.  None of the predictions that it would be an easy thing to do have been fulfilled.  Brexiters like Nigel Farage have said it would be a great thing for their country and that they should walk away with no deal or guarantee are ridiculous.  Statements like “you wouldn’t want this in Canada” hide the fact that the Canadian situation is nowhere near the same as Britain’s.  My prediction is that soon after Great Britain walks away from Europe, it will fall to being a third rate power.  By themselves they cannot hope to regain their status as a wold class power.  The world is too big for that now.

“The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.”
  - Edith Sitwell

In our country (Canada in case you’ve forgotten) leaders and hopeful leaders embarrass at every turn.  The current federal government doesn’t seem to know how to operate our armed forces.  They waffle on procurement of badly needed defence equipment while only promising to allocate money for Coast Guard vessels.  I wish the Coast Guard luck in getting that done.  With this and the last government having gutted all but two shipyards (one other yard has managed to hang on with innovative and successful projects despite the governments), there is no capacity to fulfill all these Navy and Coast Guard shipbuilding projects any time soon.  Add to that such fiascos as the Mark Norman case and the hidden Afghan Memorial (do you think the Afghan War will ever be recognized on the National War Memorial?) really must make you wonder.

“You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.”
  - John Kenneth Galbraith

On the other side of the political spectrum, the Conservative leader, Andrew Sheer, is making the most ridiculous promises.  He is a one trick pony whose only ideas revolve around how to exploit more oil from Alberta, the province he comes from.  Cancel carbon tax, build pipelines, develop an ‘energy corridor’.  Has anyone heard anything else from him that goes beyond this obsession?  I have no idea how he expects to put into practice his energy corridor.  The idea makes no practical engineering sense.  Where is it going to go?  How is he going to route it around Quebec?  More specifically, how is it going to route it around Montreal?  This is where the engineering part comes in.  The only way around Montreal is north, but there you run into the unyielding terrain of the Canadian Shield, some of the hardest and most impervious rock in the world.  Even if it can be done, the cost will be enormous. A rough estimate of $100 billion has been suggested. Only the federal government could consider spending that kind of money.  And whose pockets do you think that’s going to come from?

“A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.”
  - Alfred E. Wiggam

In Ontario, Doug Ford, the Premier of Toronto and leader of the Regressive Conservatives, is cutting everything in order to eliminate a deficit.  It doesn’t seem to matter what is being cut, or will be cut in the future, it’s got to go.  His pledge that no jobs would be eliminated now seems an obvious fraud.  Wages and salaries are THE largest component of any product or service.  Jobs must be sacrificed in order for costs to be cut.  Oh, but jobs will be eliminated through normal attrition and retirements as many apologists will tell you.  But it is not just the existing workers in these jobs that must be considered; it is the young workers who will no longer have these jobs to aspire to.  It seems to me that the only level of government that has guts enough to do the obvious thing and actually raise taxes is municipalities.  Annual tax increases in cities is expected.  As more and more things are expected of every level of government, it is obvious we must be prepared to pay for them.

“Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.”

  - Harry S Truman

And at this point, we won’t even consider what is going on in the United States.  It could be bad for our health.