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Trudeau Popularity - or not (various polling, etc.)

And for those who were talking about Portugal, here is an article by Brian Dunning, over at Skeptoid.com that takes a deep dive into the Portuguese experiment.

20 Years of Data from Portugal: Drug Decriminalization

by Brian Dunning

Skeptoid Podcast #812
December 28, 2021

Listen:

It has indeed been more than 20 years since Portugal famously decriminalized all illicit drugs. Their reason had been a noble one: HIV infections from shared needles were rampant, and the country's existing policy which focused on criminalization and punishment had failed to make any dent in that. It was reasoned that if drug addiction was treated more like a disease and less like a crime, authorities would be more directly confronting the true underlying causes of the problem. So what's the verdict after 20 years? Some ups, some downs, a lot of praise and a fair share of criticism. Today we're going to have a look at the reasons for Portugal's big move, and whether it has accomplished them — according not to pundits, but to the data.

At the time, Portugal's drug problem was a relatively new and unique one. Since 1926, Portugal had been an isolated dictatorship with little tourism and almost no illegal drug problem. Then, with 1974's bloodless Carnation Revolution, the country was opened, and more significantly, all its soldiers were brought back from fighting colonial revolutions in Africa — and many of them brought back vast amounts of drugs and serious drug addictions. The whole country had a drug epidemic essentially dumped in their lap.
By 1999, only 25 years after the Carnation Revolution, Portugal had Europe's highest incidence of AIDS among intravenous drug users, accounting for nearly half of all AIDS cases in the nation. In addition, their prisons were filling fast, with over 40% of prison sentences handed out for drug-related offenses. They were throwing more and more drug users into jail, but it hadn't helped the AIDS problem. And so they launched their new drug strategy to decriminalize all illicit drugs, the first such program of its size and significance in the world. It's called the PDPM, the Portuguese Drug Policy Model.

It is important to note the difference between decriminalization and legalization. Legalization makes the product legal, and people can manufacture, sell, and use it. This is not what Portugal did. They decriminalized the use of all drugs; meaning there are no longer any criminal penalties for drug users, however those penalties remain for those convicted of manufacturing, importing, and selling drugs. Drug dealers are still subject to the same criminal penalties as before.

If this was a little bit of a misconception for you, well, that's the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot of misinformation about Portugal's decriminalization. If you're caught using, buying, or possessing drugs, the cop is not going to say "Hey, right on, enjoy! Have a good one," you are still in trouble. If you have more than 10 days of personal use worth, you're still going to jail. If you have less than that, your drugs are confiscated and you are issued a summons to appear before an administrative panel called a Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction. Nothing will go on your criminal record.

That commission consists of an attorney, a psychiatrist, a chemical dependency social worker, and sometimes a judge. They'll consider your history and your situation, and then render their decision. They may choose to let you go with no sanctions at all other than some advice to stop doing drugs, which is usually what happens to first time offenders whose cases are deemed low risk, and this is what the commissions do in the majority of cases. They can fine repeat offenders, but the fines are typically small and tailored to your ability to pay. They can sentence you to community service. They can suspend your professional licenses. They can ban you from going to certain places or associating with certain people. They can terminate any social assistance you may receive. They can confiscate personal property and cancel your firearms license. They can require you to report back to them. About the only thing they can't do is send you to prison. Getting caught using drugs in Portugal is no laughing matter; it is not a place where you can freely roll around doing drugs with no concern. They've simply restructured the punishments from those that are proven to prolong drug problems to ones that are intended to reduce them.

The primary architect of the PDPM was João Castel-Branco Goulão, a physician and currently the Director-General of the Service for Intervention on Addictive Behaviors and Dependencies. In designing the program, Goulão's central idea was that drug abusers are not criminals, they are ill, and should be treated as such. Goulão's commission recognized three principles around which the program was designed. The first was to not differentiate between soft drugs and hard drugs. It doesn't matter what the drug is; what matters is whether the user has a healthy or an unhealthy relationship with it. Second was to recognize that an unhealthy relationship with drugs is often a symptom of an underlying cause, which could be any stressful chronic challenge a person can face in life. Third was to note that an all-out war on drugs, to get all drugs off the street, is impossible and quixotic, and thus a losing strategy that would not be a part of the solution.

So, all that background brings us to the moment of truth, which is to turn to the data and answer our big question: Has it worked?

The most honest answer to this begins with an anticlimactic disclaimer, which is that any such statement like "Drug use has declined by xx%" or "New cases of AIDS are down by xx%" is incomplete and misleading. Implementation of the PDPM was not an overnight panacea for recreational and dependent drug users, it was a complex process fraught with conflicting policies and passionate differences among public attitudes toward it. Keep in mind that Portugal is heavily Roman Catholic, and the belief that there should be zero tolerance for drug use of any kind is predominant. Consequently, ever since the PDPM was put into action, public sentiment has been a mixture of deep moral repugnance toward it, and approval by those with public health in mind.

Much of the complexity arises from the fact that, as Goulão has pointed out, decriminalization alone — doing nothing else — makes the problem worse. It's an improvement only when partnered with the needed treatment resources, which are expensive and required Portugal to invest massively. That investment has had all kinds of challenges thrown at it. First, the United Nations threatened sanctions against Portugal for decriminalization, sanctions that would have struck at the heart of their already-limited ability to pay for it; but they managed to dodge that bullet. Next, the left-wing government that approved the PDPM was voted out and replaced with a right-wing government that only just barely decided to keep it in place. Then the global economic meltdown of 2008 made Portugal insolvent and it had to accept a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, which put it under more pressure from the United Nations to bring back criminal prosecution for all drug offenses. Since then Portugal has had to continue deep cuts in government spending across the board. Through all of this, the PDPM treatment and recovery services survived, though it's been a very rocky road.

Generally, at first the PDPM did work very well in addressing its primary goal: reduction of HIV infections; and that's basically the only reason the incoming government didn't stomp it out of existence in its infancy in 2002. And that trend has continued. The reduction of HIV cases has been its greatest success, and is about the only graph that shows a steady trend, going from 600 per year in 1999 to only about 10 today. Another, which goes without saying, is the percentage of new prison sentences that are for drug related offenses, which is down from Portugal's high of some 40% in 1999 to about on par with the rest of Europe, around 15% today.

But drug deaths? They have not improved. Part of the reason for this is that Portugal has always had low numbers for this, usually less than half of what it is in the rest of Europe. Deaths today are about the same as before the PDPM. Total rate of drug use has also not improved, also because Portugal was always pretty low. It's actually up a bit, again generally in sync with the rest of Europe.

Yet if you do an Internet search to see how Portugal's doing 20 years later, the results are almost universally positive. Much of the reason for this was an extremely influential report published by the Cato Institute in 2009, which was paid for by the Marijuana Policy Project, a US nonprofit that promotes legalization of marijuana. So we should expect the Cato Institute's report on Portugal to be biased in favor of the merits of decriminalization and legalization, and it was. Whether you agree with a position or not, you want it to be based on data, not on bias. In 2010, the Obama administration, faced with pressure to mimic Portugal's policy based on the Cato report, published a white paper listing a number of flaws in Cato's report. Following about a dozen bullet points, it concludes "It is safe to say that claims by drug legalization advocates regarding the impact of Portugal's drug policy exceed the existing scientific basis."

But we should not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. That Cato overstated the PDPM's positive impact doesn't mean the impact hasn't still been positive. It certainly hasn't solved everything, and has had little effect in many areas, but did put an enormous dent in the HIV and AIDS cases among heroin addicts. And in doing so, it has ended up saving Portugal a lot of money. When you take all the costs associated with drug addiction, everything from police and ambulance services, hospital treatment, social services, and so on, it was found in 2015 that social costs associated with drug use dropped 18% by 2010.

The best way to characterize the first 20 years of the PDPM in summary is to note that it has had some major, though somewhat narrow, successes. Importantly, it hasn't failed anywhere; all of its outcomes have been either favorable or neutral at worst. Portugal's policy was implemented in a resource-starved test environment, among a population with a strong element that opposes it. It was done in a country that had a drug problem that was unusual due to Portugal's unique history, and may fare better if implemented in some other countries, and may fare worse in still others. It has suffered from international pushback, but has also inspired plenty of international imitation. The results, as defined by a number of metrics, are not as good as many of us might hope for; in others, they are. But that it's been able to produce results ranging from positive to neutral, with really nothing in the negative, says a lot for it; and that it produced these results under tough conditions says more. It is a model that will work best in countries with a strong interest in public health and data-driven policy, and will likely not work as well in countries that value religion-driven zero-tolerance policies above public health. In that sense, Portugal's drug program is not too far different from many other innovations.
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By Brian Dunning
Follow @BrianDunning

Link Follow the link for resources and references Brian Dunning used in writing his article.
 
Or, on the other hand, maybe there's a Plan B ;)

Adam Pankratz: Maybe B.C.'s drug addicts should have to face shame and stigma​




VANCOUVER — B.C. has decriminalized drug possession of 2.5 grams of cocaine, MDMA, meth and opioids, including heroin. Those in favour hail it as a victory against stigma , while opponents worry it will have unintended consequences. We will leave the public policy debate to others, but will ask another very pertinent question: what’s wrong with stigma?

We, as a society claim we don’t like to stigmatize or judge and say shame is bad. But this is to act foolishly: shame and stigma are how we show errant members of society that they need to reform their ways and change for the better. Looking around the world these days, one can’t help but feel that a little more shame would go a long way.

Despite shame and stigma’s positive restraint effect on many human urges, anyone with a desire to push through a “progressive change” for the alleged better will inevitably raise the negative spectre of stigma and shame in the face of opposition, often followed by raising the bedfellow of victim blaming. This, they feel, lends credence to their argument. The thought of shaming or stigmatizing someone will, so the social justice warrior hopes, compel a meek capitulation from their opponents, who ultimately seek not to be labelled regressive and heartless.

The notion that stigma is harmful to those hurting themselves or others is obviously disingenuous. Paradoxically, it is also its own form of shame and stigma. The difference is simply directional: progressive shaming confers virtue on those who mete it out for the right reasons, while regressive shame is the scorn poured on those who are uncomfortable with the idea that previously illegal or harmful activity should no longer be condemned.

We in B.C. have a drug problem to be sure. Opioid deaths are intolerably high. The people afflicted need support, but incredulity at the decriminalization approach should be taken more seriously than it currently is. Anyone in Vancouver who has driven or, God forbid, walked down East Hastings in our Downtown Eastside can tell you that the lax approach taken in recent years has only created more suffering.

The now godforsaken hell hole of human misery that the neighbourhood has become, has been a long slow slide that began with neglect and is fuelled by indifferent tolerance to drug abuse and crime. For years, politicians, most recently Vancouver’s former mayor Kennedy Stewart, have sought more allegedly progressive and less confrontational solutions to rampant drug use and addiction. The results are easily observable to any visitor to that area of town: tent-filled and garbage strewn streets of human suffering for blocks and blocks in Vancouver’s historic centre. All this, despite a price tag of $5 billion per year on social services. It’s not working and it’s hard to see how further decriminalization will improve the situation.

Indeed, if the non-response to the homeless (and drug) problem in other Vancouver neighbourhoods is any indication, it won’t. In 2020, a homeless encampment in the Strathcona neighbourhood that was left to fester ended with citizens attacked and newborn babies being threatened with rape and death with a stick. Call me old fashioned, but I’d like to stigmatize that kind of behaviour rather that pursue decriminalization.

“Decriminalization” or “following the science” are terms that have a sweet progressive ring and as such is the oft-favoured option for (non) action of politicians on the entire west coast. The problem is, the science proves very difficult indeed to follow, if it exists at all. Who can forget California’s effective decriminalization of theft under $950? How’s that working out? The shuttered doors of San Francisco shops scream a tale of woe, sorrow and business dreams shattered. The rampant drug use there is also no positive harbinger for Vancouver residents.

In Portland, following riots which torched and smashed the city in 2020, the police referred over 1,000 cases to the district attorney, which declined to prosecute over 70 per cent of them . Portland, a city once renowned for its cafés, breweries and nightlife is a hollow, unsafe shell of its former self.

It seems reasonable to ask if a little bit of good ol’ shame and stigma here wouldn’t help matters. Shame of stealing. Shame of vandalism. Shame of drug use. We don’t value these attributes as a society, so why no stigma? Were my daughter to behave in any of the above described ways, shame would be first on the list, followed immediately by stigma and repentance.

In writing that, I can hear the twitter elect sharpening their blades ready to pounce with murderous relish upon me and my ilk to hurl such opinions in the trash. They would, as it were, seek to shame me to more considerate, empathetic and politically acceptable opinions and behaviours. Shame, it would seem, is actually fine; it’s only the political direction of its application that makes it offensive.



 
Back in the day in n/w Ontario, persons who had been assessed by a doctor and committed to a mental health facility would be transported to Thunder Bay. We would often stay overnight (big city, nice restaurant, etc.) and when we got back home the person would have beaten us back. Not only released by the mental health professionals, but driven to the bus station.

Back in 1972, my first station was 800 metres from "999".
The person could walk to the Queen car ( if released, and so inclined ) before our soup had cooled down.
I didn't mind those calls because they ussualy walked.
 
Hilarious, and very sad (because it's true) at the same time ....

Rex Murphy: The CBC is boring and preachy and that is why there is 'CBC bashing'​

CEO Catherine Tait shamelessly attacks Pierre Poilievre for 'stoking' criticism of the broadcaster

It has to be the top unabbreviable qualification of the president of the nation’s largest, publicly funded communications instrument — CBC — that she has some understanding of … communications.

That she knows how to communicate with the public her organization is subsidized to communicate with.
This is plainly, painfully, not the case.

Catherine Tait has suggested in public that one of the reasons the CBC is in decline is because it is being attacked by Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre. “There’s a lot of CBC bashing going on — somewhat stoked by the Leader of the Opposition,” she told the Globe and Mail, frustrated over the party’s “defund the CBC” campaign. “I think they feel that CBC is a mouthpiece for the Liberal government.”

Does Catherine Tait not recall or does she even know that the CBC and its erstwhile national anchor sued the Conservative party during a federal election?
During. A federal election.

A government-funded news organization and one of its brand faces Rosie Barton, sued the opposing political party during a federal election. That surely did wonders for its neutralist, objective reputation. And now the President of CBC wandering the country to select venues speaks to what she calls “CBC bashing” — it may be just criticism born of annoyance and frustration at CBC’s performance and programming — hits at Pierre Poilievre as its “stoking” source. With the clear implication that the dismal ranking of CBC in the public mind these days comes only from its critics, and the Conservative party – the one CBC sued — in particular.

That’s not stepping on a rake and getting it in the mug with the hardwood handle.

That’s searching for a moving bulldozer before you lie down for a nap.

Will someone please tell the CBC president that heading the CBC does not make her, ex officio, the leader of the opposition to the real leader of the opposition. The communication skills on display here are abysmal.

There are many, many reasons why CBC is devastatingly low in ratings, why its audiences have drifted off, why its prime newscasts do not outscore some pitiful private blogs or podcasts — and among those many, many reasons I suggest Pierre Poilievre, leader of the opposition, and whatever he has said, swims at the very, very bottom of the pool.

In fact he may be in another body of water altogether.

The principal reason CBC is not watched is because those running it don’t know what a public news service and public programmer actually is.
I can speak to this as I was there when the proclamation was made. Their first priority, the mother of all priorities is the hallowed Diversity. Capital D. All bends and stands in line behind Diversity.

Well, here’s a press release. The purpose of a public news service is to provide news. It may have all the social justice goals it wants. It’s employees may embrace every cause on the wide so-called woke agenda. In their own time. On their own dime.

But it is not the CBC’s business to instruct the population on its “goals and values.” Nor is it the business of its programmers or reporters to infuse all their work with social uplift, to highlight items that follow a “progressive” narrative, to smother or ignore those which do not; to assume that the eco hysteria of the global warmists is holy doctrine, and to bar, pass over, and deny reportage from the host of serious authorities, major scientists, and solid arguments that challenge that doctrine.

The CBC newsroom is not a synod for ratifying dogmas and ruling implicitly or explicitly, on what is policy truth.
If people want missionaries — and the appetite has greatly declined — they may go to churches, synagogues, mosques and revival tents.

CBC has become a parody of what falls under the generous umbrella of social justice activism, and sees itself, not as a ruthlessly objective, wide-ranging, fearless gatherer of the happenings of this country; but as a desperately moralistic hectoring monolith out to better the millions and millions of Canadians who happen (ital) not (end ital) to be interested in every latest bulletin on every downtown faddish cause and protest from the woke agenda.

If you travel vast swathes of this country, and I have, a large number of the people you will meet will utter this same sentence — “I never watch it now” (now is a key word here) — or, “It’s been ages since I looked at CBC News.”

The second huge reason is that its missionary compulsion doesn’t stop at news. Every comedy (I use the term very carelessly) on CBC is a message bag first and laughter, in most cases, an almost hopeless extra. Great bulks of people actively — actively — work, not to watch these self-celebrations of the CBC’s pious posturing. And this second reason comes with the greatest penalty of all: the shows are boring.
The third, perhaps I’m wrong here, maybe it is the real first reason. CBC has forgotten, doesn’t know, or care about most of its own audience, and almost always, addresses its non-audience in the most patronizing, condescending tones. The vast reaches of urban Canada could lie in outer Siberia for all the connection CBC has with them.

Ms. Tait, you may have captured portions of Queen Street in Toronto, blocks on Robson in Vancouver, and the hearts of any protesters who have every blocked traffic, tried to stop a pipeline, or glued their hairy limbs on to some painting or pavement — but these are not the whole country. That is niche broadcasting carried to its ultimate folly.
Your audiences have shrunk and fallen because you ignore, greatly ignore, so much of the country and so many of the much wider, deeper issues of a wider, much deeper population.

As far as your tour goes, university panels, and interviews conducted by your own employees, with somnolent panels — none of which, none of which, as far as I have seen have taken place on farms, in small towns, in the north or out east in the villages and outports.

The universe of values and priority concerns within the headquarters building on 100 Front Street, Toronto is narrow, bounded and specialized.
To equate them with those of those of this whole, broad genuinely diverse country is a delusionary folly, product of a hothouse culture.

Diversity is much more than faces, identity or sexual inclination — it also includes minds and opinions and individuals, individuals who are always far more than blank templates for whatever group they issue from. CBC’s “diversity” is one-dimensional and superficial and most of all annoyingly preachy.

And news is news. It is not a subtle form of extended anti-bias lecture to be paid for with a 1.4 billion dollar subsidy.

Rex Murphy: The CBC is boring and preachy and that is why there is 'CBC bashing'
 
Daily Telegraph takes note of Canada again.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's very woke Nationalist First Minister has just quit, prompting this commentary


First, Jacinda Ardern. Now Nicola Sturgeon. Justin Trudeau will be next​

I foresaw the SNP leader's fall, and the next victim of "Go Woke, Go Broke" is already on the conveyor belt to their political demise

PATRICK O'FLYNN 15 February 2023 • 12:38pm

The demise of Nicola Sturgeon as Scotland’s First Minister is further vindication for the adage “Go Woke, Go Broke”.

Just a month after Jacinda Ardern’s “nothing left in the tank” resignation statement, Sturgeon today produced a near carbon copy – as predicted by yours truly when the New Zealand PM announced she was leaving the stage.

Like Ms Ardern before her, Ms Sturgeon was keen to argue that she wasn’t going because opinion polls had turned against her and an impending election could therefore become a humiliation. Good gracious me, no. In fact, she claimed to be confident she’d have been able to lead the SNP to more success at the next general election.

She said her decision was “not a reaction to short-term political pressures” either and instead flagged up the “relentlessly hard” day to day nature of a job which left the incumbent with “virtually no privacy”.

To be fair to Ms Sturgeon, she was less given to self-reverence than was Ms Ardern in January, joking that “I’m not expecting violins here” and speaking intelligently about how she had become a polarising figure whose presence at the top of Scottish politics could potentially obscure the alleged merits of her separatist cause from the eyes of some voters.

But across Scotland millions of those voters were surely thinking: “You lost me when you said a man was a woman just because he said he was”. Far from being a fringe issue, the militant trans rights agenda adopted by Ms Sturgeon shattered her authority as soon as all the warnings of those who opposed it came to pass. It even turned this most assured of public performers into a babbling mess in a series of excruciating TV interviews.

There is a lesson there for the many senior figures in Westminster – Starmer, Mordaunt, Davey and lots of others – who drove into the same cul-de-sac: best reverse out at high speed, avoiding any street furniture along the way.

But another question now looms as a second long-serving darling of the “progressive” Left falls by the wayside: who is next? After Ardern and Sturgeon, the fickle finger of fate would seem now to be pointing at the leader of the selfie-taking summit rat pack himself, Canada’s ultra-Woke Justin Trudeau.

As a purveyor of such policies as gender neutral military uniforms and decriminalising hard drugs, he is highly vulnerable to a conservative turn in public opinion or even just the revival of common sense in the electorate.

In April he will mark ten years as Liberal Leader, eight of them spent as his country’s Prime Minister. While a federal election does not legally have to take place until 2025, there is mounting pressure for one to be held this year. And there is already a narrow majority of voters thinking Trudeau should step down as party leader and PM.

Given that he formed his second consecutive minority administration in 2021, after undershooting expectations in that year’s election, it is very hard to make a case for him ever again reaching the heights of the 2015 federal election that catapulted him into power with a strong overall majority.

He may have become the master of backslapping bonhomie when meeting other world leaders, but mark my words, he is on the wane. Our next victim of the Woke curse is already on the conveyor belt to his demise and you won’t even need to stick pins in a doll to make it happen.
 
Signs of movements to the middle?

9:21AM

Sir Keir Starmer says Jeremy Corbyn will not be a Labour candidate at the next general election​

Sir Keir Starmer has said categorically that Jeremy Corbyn will not be a Labour candidate at the next general election.
He told a press conference in east London: "Let me be very clear about that. Jeremy Corbyn will not stand for Labour at the next general election as a Labour Party candidate.
"What I said about the party changing I meant and we are not going back and that is why Jeremy Corbyn will not stand as a Labour candidate at the next general election."

9:17AM

'The door is open and you can leave'​

Sir Keir Starmer said the Labour Party "has changed" as he issued a warning to to the people in the party who "don't like the changes that we have made".
He said: "Not because it was convenient to do so, not by fiddling around the edges, not just until the next person to lead the party comes along, but permanently, fundamentally, irrevocably.
"We have changed from a party that looked inward to a party that meets the public gaze. From a party of dogma to a party of patriotism. From a party of protest to a party of public service."


And Defence is hacking away at Treasury for money....
 
Signs of movements to the middle?






And Defence is hacking away at Treasury for money....
Their usefulness is done. All of them got a big move to left and more government control. People are upset so out they go job done. Replace with a more "moderate" people then calm down. But ever forward. Politics is not pendulum its is ratchet ever moving left. It can move fast or slow but never back.
 
Left-wing Labour MPs have hit out at Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to bar Jeremy Corbyn from standing for the party at the next general election.

They accused the Labour leader of running it by “diktat not democracy” and said that local members should get to choose their candidate.

Mr Corbyn has vowed to fight to get on the ballot paper for the next election by securing the support of his local branch in Islington North.



Labour/Tory, Republican/Democrat, Liberal/Conservative, Bernie/Donald, Biden/Romney, Boris/Rishi, Populists/Professionals

Not much faith in the Professionals these days. The people want their own voices in their parliaments.
 
Having had to actually have to explain to people on far too many occasions, on how Canadian elections work . I have come to conclusion the "people" are ignorant almost to the point of stupification.
What this country really needs is a really decent high school level civics course.
Mind you I am not sure how much of an effect that might actually have.
 
Having had to actually have to explain to people on far too many occasions, on how Canadian elections work . I have come to conclusion the "people" are ignorant almost to the point of stupification.
What this country really needs is a really decent high school level civics course.
Mind you I am not sure how much of an effect that might actually have.
Even people who had don't understand it. It was there in the 70's and 80's but today no one knows. Ask anyone how is the PM elected? They answer in the election. No he/she is the leader of the party that has the confidence of the house. He elected by his own riding.

The problem is the overriding of cultural power from the south. I would guess more people in Canada know of the Electoral College than the Privy Council.
 
Even people who had don't understand it. It was there in the 70's and 80's but today no one knows. Ask anyone how is the PM elected? They answer in the election. No he/she is the leader of the party that has the confidence of the house. He elected by his own riding.

The problem is the overriding of cultural power from the south. I would guess more people in Canada know of the Electoral College than the Privy Council.

The problem lies in the difference between Edmund Burke's Tories and Keir Hardie's Labour.

Edmund Burke saw himself as an independent agent of his constituency. Free to make his own decisions.
Keir Hardie's Labour Party saw the elected members as the voices of the membership at large, there to enact the will of the membership.

Burke worked within Parliament. Labour worked outside Parliament.

The party squabbles continue.
 


Labour/Tory, Republican/Democrat, Liberal/Conservative, Bernie/Donald, Biden/Romney, Boris/Rishi, Populists/Professionals

Not much faith in the Professionals these days. The people want their own voices in their parliaments.
And yet, feels good to finally see a real attempt at statesmanship from the Labour party.


One that might prove necessary before long

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If the likes of Corbin get back in control of Labour, it won’t take long to revert to their Tankie ways.
 
Having had to actually have to explain to people on far too many occasions, on how Canadian elections work . I have come to conclusion the "people" are ignorant almost to the point of stupification.
What this country really needs is a really decent high school level civics course.
Mind you I am not sure how much of an effect that might actually have.

Even people who had don't understand it. It was there in the 70's and 80's but today no one knows. Ask anyone how is the PM elected? They answer in the election. No he/she is the leader of the party that has the confidence of the house. He elected by his own riding.

The problem is the overriding of cultural power from the south. I would guess more people in Canada know of the Electoral College than the Privy Council.
It isn't just US bleed over. Our education system does a terrible job of preparing people with a ever decreasing standard for students to make. I have family in education who have watched standards degrade for the last few decades because everyone has to pass even if passing has no value. This doesn't even just apply to high schools, colleges are starting to become like this as well, which devalues even that education significantly.

The solution is to start failing kids when they deserve it, increase the difficulty of the courses so they actually learn something, and make sure what they are learning actually has value. A half credit for civics isn't much value when we barely touch on how the system works. The fact we don't teach how mortgages, credit cards, car purchases, taxes, and other critical financial things work and expect people to magically know is a failure of the system. Mind you we would have a tough time finding teachers for that stuff as many of them are blissfully unaware as well.

When you require students to have 12 years of English class despite passing a literacy test in grade 10, yet the more important things in life are not taught, I question the value in what we are teaching. Giving proper education at all levels is the start to improvement. Its a long term thing but realistically that's all you can do.
 
^^
And the kids that get passed to the next grade when its obvious that they should be given another crack at the same level are made to feel more and more stupid as they fall further and further behind their peers. Then they start to act out, drop out, or commit suicide as their prospects for a productive adulthood become dimmer and dimmer.

It's a terrible system.
 
^^
And the kids that get passed to the next grade when its obvious that they should be given another crack at the same level are made to feel more and more stupid as they fall further and further behind their peers. Then they start to act out, drop out, or commit suicide as their prospects for a productive adulthood become dimmer and dimmer.

It's a terrible system.

Just a point of clarification. For NS, it's not that teachers don't fail kids anymore; it's that kids are not allowed to be failed anymore.

The reasoning behind it is the social stigma that is attached to failing a grade will do more damage. Which in my mind proves that education before grade nine is really just government funded child care with some busy work thrown in.
 
Ever see what meth does? It ain’t good.

It isn't just US bleed over. Our education system does a terrible job of preparing people with a ever decreasing standard for students to make. I have family in education who have watched standards degrade for the last few decades because everyone has to pass even if passing has no value. This doesn't even just apply to high schools, colleges are starting to become like this as well, which devalues even that education significantly.

The solution is to start failing kids when they deserve it, increase the difficulty of the courses so they actually learn something, and make sure what they are learning actually has value. A half credit for civics isn't much value when we barely touch on how the system works. The fact we don't teach how mortgages, credit cards, car purchases, taxes, and other critical financial things work and expect people to magically know is a failure of the system. Mind you we would have a tough time finding teachers for that stuff as many of them are blissfully unaware as well.

When you require students to have 12 years of English class despite passing a literacy test in grade 10, yet the more important things in life are not taught, I question the value in what we are teaching. Giving proper education at all levels is the start to improvement. Its a long term thing but realistically that's all you can do.
does it matter if we pass 33% of students instead of failing them though? They are still the same 33% they have always been. Or is it only relevant how that policy impacts the top 33% or 67%?
 
Just a point of clarification. For NS, it's not that teachers don't fail kids anymore; it's that kids are not allowed to be failed anymore.

The reasoning behind it is the social stigma that is attached to failing a grade will do more damage. Which in my mind proves that education before grade nine is really just government funded child care with some busy work thrown in.
I think the problem is that basically we see education as a requirement to be successful (which I strongly agree with). The issue is it is only a requirement to being successful if we are actually teaching them what they need to know. Since we correlate success with education the result must be everyone passing said education. The problem being if we pass everyone without making sure they know what they are supposed to, you haven't actually educated anyone only provided a check in the box.

That check in the box is meaningless if it doesn't have the knowledge behind it. That 'education' is meaningless if they never learned anything from it. But people are so fixated on having the check in the box they forget what that check is supposed to represent.

does it matter if we pass 33% of students instead of failing them though? They are still the same 33% they have always been. Or is it only relevant how that policy impacts the top 33% or 67%?
It does matter, it degrades the quality of education for everyone else. It matters because if they haven't actually learned what that says they are supposed to have learned, why give them a pass? We are too tolerant of incompetence as a society. We are seeing the effects in all trades, jobs and even the CAF now. We keep dropping the standards in everything when people aren't making them. This is leading to a race to the bottom which instead of correcting the issues that exist only compound them long term.
 
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