Britain's unravelling

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 19 Comments

Given British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s reportedly paralyzing fixation on the smallest details of running a government, it is perhaps fitting that he was brought to the brink of his political demise because of a bath plug. Well, that and a toothbrush holder, a box of matches, horse manure, a chocolate Santa, moat cleaning, and a duck house—not a duck blind, a place where hunters conceal themselves while shooting ducks, but a structure where ducks can shelter in case they’re cold. Or maybe wet.

These are among the things that British MPs have charged to taxpayers under rules that permit them to claim for expenses supposedly related to the performance of their parliamentary duties. And while sticking the taxpayer with the bill for an ice cube tray or a souvenir mug from the Tate Modern museum strikes most Britons struggling in the midst of a recession as outrageously miserly, many of the abuses were much costlier.

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Trouble even in Margaritaville

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 10:57 AM - 3 Comments

The newest and most comprehensive report on the likely effects of global warming sees Florida’s Key West flooded—bad news for the dining and shopping destination “Margaritaville,” founded there by singer-entrepreneur Jimmy Buffet. The report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also warned of a parched U.S. Southwest, a stormier Great Lakes region, and widespread disruption to agriculture. But even with all the new details, isn’t this sort of news getting too familiar to cause a real jolt? Will Congress, which is considering a global warming bill, do anything dramatic?

The Washington Post

More

By Paul Wells - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 10:56 AM - 7 Comments

The protesters in Iran have been shot to death by the handful. Gangs of police-state thugs rove the streets on motorbikes looking for people to beat. Reporters from foreign news organizations have been deported, jailed, or held in virtual house arrest. Today the largest pro-democracy protest of the week is underway.

From The Guardian:

The numbers at today’s rally are hard to gauge, but our correspondent Saeed Kamali Dehghan, reckons there could be as many as one million people there.

I just spoke to him on a fairly good phone line from Tehran.

He said the demonstration is bigger than Monday’s rally. Many are wearing black and carrying photos of those who died. Some are carry placards calling for a new election not a recount. The shops on the route are closed in support of the rally, he added.

Saeed pointed out that the rally has taken in place in South Tehran where Ahmadinejad claimed to have had a lot of support.

Tamils fear deportation from Canada back to Sri Lanka

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 10:31 AM - 1 Comment

After the crushing defeat of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, thousands of Tamils in Canada staged massive protests, claiming the Sri Lankan government was targeting civilians in their last push against the separatist, terrorist group. Now a group called the Tamil Action Committee is fighting Ottawa’s bid to deport an estimated 200 Tamils asking to be accepted as refugees in Canada. The group claims Tamils returned home from Canada will face an “aggressive” response from Sri Lanka’s authorities “because there were so many protests in Canada against the war on the Tamil people in Sri Lanka.”

Hour

Woulda been a heck of an election campaign

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

In an alternate universe where Canadians are just a day away from being plunged into a snap summer election campaign, the Liberals would be heading into the race with just the barest of leads over the governing Conservatives, according to the latest EKOS/CBC weekly tracking poll. The latest numbers give the Grits 33.7% support – down just over 2% from April – to the Tories’ 32.4%, and the NDP up nearly a point with 16.3%. According to EKOS pollster Frank Graves, a July election would have been “a risky bet” for all concerned — at the moment, neither party has sufficient strength to ensure even a minority victory, with a majority still far outside the realm of polling probability. “”It would be a crapshoot right now over who would win.”

CBC News

If you’re smart, you’ll marry money

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 53 Comments

At first glance, the new book Smart Girls Marry Money: How Women Have Been Duped into the Romantic Dream—and How They’re Paying for It by Elizabeth Ford and Daniela Drake appears to be a throwback to a paleolithic era in which women, smart or not, didn’t make their own money. (Its chick-lit hot-pink cover has Cupid’s arrow bisecting the “s” in “Girls,” lest anyone miss the avaricious point.) Indeed, its retrograde title seems calculated to repel actual “smart girls”—women who sail by the “self-help” aisle and who would kneecap anyone who called them “girls.”

But skim more deeply—through the real-life anecdotes and beyond lines like “Mr. Rich can be Mr. Right”—and it’s apparent this isn’t a 21st-century How to Marry a Millionaire. Rather, Ford, a 41-year-old Emmy-winning television producer divorced from Harrison Ford’s son, and Drake, a 44-year-old medical doctor with an M.B.A. from Stanford who has been divorced and is remarried, adopt a satiric tone to deliver a surprisingly subversive self-help manifesto: imagine, if you can, Dorothy Parker writing for Cosmo. Many of their observations have been well-aired, to wit—women have a shelf life in terms of fertility and attractiveness; taking time out to raise children reduces women’s workplace value; women have more difficulty bouncing back from divorce. And even after decades of women graduating from professional schools in greater numbers than men, men remain the power players.

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Ah, the perils of youth

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 10:10 AM - 0 Comments

Were it possible for a building to sigh with relief, the House of Commons would have done so as news broke of an audiotape on which Lisa Raitt, the embattled (and luckless) natural resources minister, criticizes a colleague and refers to cancer as a “sexy” issue. As Raitt was assailed by commentators and opponents, dozens of ministers and hundreds of parliamentarians who’d said much, much worse during moments of dark candour were surely thinking the same thing: there but for the grace of slightly less incompetent staffers go I.

Raitt’s musings had been recorded, apparently by accident, and the recorder misplaced, apparently by accident, by Jasmine MacDonnell—the same aide who’d left behind a binder of sensitive briefing material at CTV’s Ottawa bureau, apparently by accident. In the time it took to write this paragraph, MacDonnell also misplaced her hat, car keys and umbrella. (Unsurprisingly, she’s lost her job, too.)

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This week

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Face of the week
Sidney Crosby after the Penguins’ Stanley Cup win; it seems touching the trophy after the semifinals isn’t bad luck after all.

A week in the life of Moammar Gadhafi
The Libyan leader visited Italy and went to Villa Pamphili, a large public garden in Rome, where he pitched the tent he stays in while travelling. On Friday, he failed to show for a meeting with deputies in the Italian parliament. Later, to avoid a diplomatic row, he met in his tent with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who explained that Gadhafi is “a bit unique”. That evening, he addressed more than 700 prominent businesswomen, claiming to be a defender of women’s rights.

GOOD NEWS

Bench strength
A B.C. judge got it right this week when he rejected a motion to water down the findings of a seven-month inquiry into the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski. Lawyers representing the four RCMP members who tasered the man at the Vancouver airport had argued the inquiry had no jurisdiction to rule on the conduct of the police, after inquiry head Thomas Braidwood warned he might find the tasering was unjustified and that the Mounties misled the inquiry. In another victory for common sense, the Supreme Court of Canada restored the conviction of Kelly Ellard in the murder 12 years ago of teenager Reena Virk. Ellard has had three trials: one hung jury, and two guilty verdicts overturned on appeal. A fourth trial would have been a logistical challenge, and a nightmare for the Virk family.

Comeback kids
After they lost the first two games of the Stanley Cup final, few thought the Pittsburgh Penguins had a chance against the Detroit Red Wings. When they came back and forced a game seven in Joe Louis Arena, where the Red Wings rarely lose, the odds were still against them. Yet the Penguins pulled it off, making Sidney Crosby, at 21, the youngest captain to lift the Cup. It was a thrilling end to the season, and about eight million Americans watched the final game—the biggest audience since the 1973 final between Montreal and Chicago. Thanks to the Pens and its young stars, hockey’s future is bright. Continue…

The beauty and the beasts

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 1 Comment

In late May, Winnipeg-born jockey Chantal Sutherland was still courting a long-shot hope—that she’d ride the champion thoroughbred Mine That Bird in the US$1-million Belmont Stakes, the third race in the Triple Crown, which ran in New York last Saturday. Sutherland has a history with the gelding who captured popular imagination after his stunning upset win at the Kentucky Derby against 50-to-1 odds. She’d ridden him to victory in three stakes races at Toronto’s Woodbine Racetrack last year and was aboard when his ankle was injured by another horse during the 2008 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita racetrack in Arcadia, Calif. For a heady minute, she thought she’d be riding him in this year’s Derby, the equestrian equivalent of Broadway, having flown to Louisville in early May to track-test him—a tacit agreement to ride a horse. But that same night she learned from the racing form that the mount had been given to American jockey Calvin Borel, who would go on to win the Preakness, the second Triple Crown race, aboard filly Rachel Alexandra. Now, less than two weeks before Belmont, it was undecided whether Rachel Alexandra would run. If she did, Borel would ride her, leaving Mine That Bird an open mount.

“You never know what could happen, a week before, a day before,” says Sutherland, sitting outside the jockeys’ room in the bowels of Woodbine a week before the announcement that Borel would ride Mine That Bird at Belmont. She has been working since dawn exercising horses in cold grey drizzle yet she’s a radiant presence in canary-yellow sweats and Ugg boots, her hair pulled into a ponytail, her manicured nails painted candy-apple red. She speaks of her love for the horse (who ended up placing third at Belmont the same day Sutherland won Woodbine’s far-lower-profile $170,275 Eclipse Stakes). But she’s also shrewd enough to know his success benefits her even indirectly: “Every time he wins or runs, my name gets mentioned,” she says. “It’s good publicity.”

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Now, it's only a one-day sample, but …

By kadyomalley - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 9:54 AM - 25 Comments

Looking at the latest CBC/EKOS poll, I can’t help but think that certain official opposition leaders — and the people who advise them — would prefer to see that little red line shoot off in the opposite direction on Tuesday night:

EKOS pollster Frank Graves suggests that it was the threat of a summer election that sent the Liberal numbers into free fall:
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Maclean's Interview: Bill Russell

By Kenneth Whyte - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 9:40 AM - 6 Comments

Q: I read that your grandchild once asked you if you were as good a basketball player as Michael Jordan, but I never read your answer.

A: I told him, that’s the wrong question. The question is, was Michael Jordan as good as me.

Q: Wayne Embry, who’s been in Canada with the Toronto Raptors, said that you were not the greatest player to play basketball but you would be the first player that he would want if he was going to start a team. That makes no sense to me.

A: Aha! Well, there’s my whole history, okay? The reason is that when people talk about great players they’re always talking about the offence, there are no real adequate stats for defence. When I was in college, my junior year in college we were 28-and-1. I was MVP at the Final Four. We won it, okay? I was first team all-American, my team was the number one defensive team in the nation. At the end of the season they picked another centre as player of the year. And my second year in the NBA the players voted me MVP, and the writers voted me second team all-league. So I’m used to that. But by my way of thinking, individual stats are great for golf, tennis, and most track and field [events].

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Hudson’s folly

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 9:20 AM - 3 Comments

Our Henry Hudson is bigger than theirs. The vast Canadian bay called after him dwarfs that (relatively) picayune American stream, the Hudson River. But the river flows by New York City, media capital of the world, and not by Arctic tundra, so books about the English explorer are coming out now, four centuries after he sailed to Manhattan, and not, as a Canadian might expect, in 2011, the 400th anniversary of his death in James Bay. Still, in a nice piece of cross-border irony, Canadian Douglas Hunter will publish in September Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the Voyage That Redrew the Map of the New World (Penguin), a study of Hudson’s 1609 New York journey, while American Peter Mancall examines the mutiny that cast adrift the explorer, to his death, two years later in the newly released Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson (Perseus).

Mancall’s book is a context-setting gem that explains why early modern Englishmen kept putting themselves in mortal peril in the Arctic. Hudson may have been the most experienced North Atlantic sea captain of his age, but he accepted conventional scientific reasoning. If the Arctic sun beat down 24 hours a day in summer, how could a solid ice cap possibly form? There must be a relatively easy way through. And in a corollary to the thinking that saw Virginia settlers plant olive trees because they were on the same latitude as southern Europe, Hudson probably went ever more deeply south in Hudson Bay in the fall of 1610 in order to overwinter near London’s latitude (52° north), a location he believed would offer a London-level winter.

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Bestsellers

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of June 16th, 2009)

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

A sure cure for eyelash inadequacy

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 18 Comments

Brooke Shields is on your television screen. Part of her is, anyway. Her eyeballs are on your television in extreme close-up. Look everyone, Brooke’s huge eyeballs want to sell you something—a new prescription drug called Latisse. Hmm, better turn up the volume because surely this drug is designed to treat a serious medical condition like high blood pressure or eye disease or . . .

“Grow Lashes! Grow Longer. And Fuller. And Darker Lashes!”

. . . or the tiny hairs on the edge of your eyelid possibly being a few microns too short.

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The Jantzi-Maclean’s Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2009

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 8:40 AM - 5 Comments

Does Rio Tinto Alcan really deserve special recognition for hiring a woman as CEO? Given that women make up more than half the population and have been protected against discrimination by human rights legislation for decades, one would hope that such an event is now so commonplace that it doesn’t merit a mention at all. Same goes for Nike’s decision to focus on eliminating child labour from its supply chain, or BMW’s decision to introduce a hybrid car. Aren’t these things that companies should be doing anyway?

The reasons for recognizing them are stark and simple. In the mining sector where Rio Tinto operates, like it or not, women CEOs are still a rare find. Similarly, in the apparel sector, many of Nike’s competitors are still blithely unaware of the working conditions at their foreign suppliers. By the same token, BMW’s willingness to embrace novel technology for the good of the environment is still uncommon among luxury carmakers. It requires a leap of faith, for which the economic return is far from guaranteed.

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Question of the day

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 6 Comments

When are we going to get politicians who have the courage to tackle the real issues that bedevil and torment our society – such as how Jennifer Aniston could receive an award for her contributions to the film industry. Was it for outstanding achievement in yelling the only word she had in the entire script of her last movie (“Maaaaaar-ley!!!!!”)? Or was it Aniston who came up with the idea for selling combos at the multiplex snack bar? All I know is that this Women in Film gala honours a different actress every year, so you might want to start picking out a dress for 2010, Jennifer Love Hewitt.

ALSO: My latest column, from last week’s magazine, is now available here. And clicking over to it could prove lucrative! By virtue of simply looking at the accompanying photograph of Brooke Shields, you will immediately qualify for benefits relating to post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s that unnerving.

Mark Steyn on why the fascists are winning in Europe

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 180 Comments

To promote a greater sense of Euro-harmony, the European Parliament—actually, make that the European “Parliament”—is organized into ideological blocs, ensuring that French liberals sit with Slovene liberals, and Belgian greens sit with Latvian greens, rather than hunkering down in their ethnic ghettoes. The largest bloc is the “centre-right,” the second-largest are the socialists, and the third is now the “non-inscrits,” the bloc for people who don’t want to belong to blocs. As a result of this month’s election, this Groucho Marxist grouping of “Others” tripled in size to just under a hundred seats. So, if they’re not liberals, socialists, greens, “European democrats” or the “Nordic Green Left,” what the hell are they?

Okay, here goes. The members of the non-bloc bloc include: one member of the “True Finns” party; one member of the Slovak National Party; two members of the British National Party; two members of the Austrian Freedom Party; two members of the Vlaams Belang, the “Flemish Interest” party; two members of the Civic Union, which sounds like a gay marriage in Vermont but is in fact an offshoot of the Latvian nationalist For Fatherland And Freedom Party; three members of France’s National Front; three members of Jobbik, the Hungarian nationalist party; three members of the Greater Romania Party . . .

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Jantzi-Macleans 50 Most Socially Responsible Corporations 2009

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 25 Comments

Click on a company name for more details:

5N Plus Inc.
ARISE Technologies Corp.
Ballard Power
Bank of Montreal
Bank of Nova Scotia
BCE Inc.
BioteQ Environmental Technologies Inc.
BMW
Brookfield Properties Corporation
Canadian Hydro Developers
Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd.
Cascades Inc.
Catalyst Paper
Dell Inc.
Gap Inc.
General Mills Inc.
Gildan Activewear
Great-West Lifeco Inc.
H.J. Heinz Company
Hennes & Mauritz (H&M)
Hewlett-Packard Company
Honda
HSBC Holdings
IBM Corp.
ING Group
Innergex Renewable Energy Inc.
Johnson Controls Inc.
Kinross Gold Corp.
Loblaw Companies Ltd.
Manulife Financial
Nexen Inc.
Nike Inc.
Novelis Inc.
Petro-Canada
Plutonic Power Corp.
Rio Tinto Alcan
Royal Bank of Canada
Stantec Inc.
Starbucks Corporation
Sun Life Financial
Sun Microsystems Inc.
Suncor Energy Inc.
Talisman Energy Inc.
Telus Corporation
Toronto-Dominion Bank
Transalta Corp.
Transcontinental Inc.
Westport Innovations Inc.
Xerox Corporation
Zenn Motor Co.

For the related article and methodology, click here.

Stephen Harper, Super Genius

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 7:03 AM - 67 Comments

There are moments when we have no choice but to acknowledge the strategic brilliance of Stephen Harper.

I refer not to the Prime Minister’s negotiations with Michael Ignatieff, who mistakes process for progress the way Al Pacino mistakes SHOUTING for acting, but rather to this line from today’s Toronto Star story: … Harper said his nominees will include Human Resources and Skills Development Minister Diane Finley, one of her senior officials and an MP still to be selected.

Genius. Genius.

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Liberals gather in the courtyard

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 1:18 AM - 12 Comments

Quebec Liberal staffers held “Soir des plaines sur la Colline,” a summer bash in the East Block courtyard. Below are Quebec Liberal MPs Marlene Jennings (left) and Alexandra Mendes.

Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler.

Montreal Liberal MP Justin Trudeau.

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A Blue-Ribbon day in Ottawa

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 6:48 PM - 37 Comments

A Particularly Funny Filler Clip

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 5:51 PM - 1 Comment

Didn’t have a lot of posting time today, but here is a Filler Clip™ of a particularly For The Win nature: scenes from the second appearance of the second-greatest comedy guest characters of the last 25 years (after Mr. Bookman), Bob and June Wheeler, played by Brent Spiner and Annie O’Donnell. Written by series creator Reinhold Weege in a two-part episode called “Hurricane” that should have made the “top 100 episodes of all time” list, these scenes are not sophisticated in any way — including the old-fashioned reaction shots and “let me get this straight” type straight lines — but damn, low comedy is brilliant when it’s done right. Of course today, for the most part, it’s the good one-camera shows that are less afraid of corny jokes, old-fashioned plots and broad humour, like 30 Rock, which is in many ways the broadest and corniest show on the air. Many multi-camera shows, which theoretically are supposed to go for “hard” jokes to please the audience, in practice wind up going for very mild jokes because just about anything can make a studio audience laugh if it’s delivered with the right rhythm. But many of them would be better off with big, Vaudevillian turns.

Two other things of note: this clip is a great opportunity to hear the most famous intrusive laugh in sitcom history, that guy whose loud, incessant chortle could be heard above the audience after almost every joke. Legend has it that this was Reinhold Weege’s dad. And this clip also provides an example of real-life complaints being addressed on the show, as the scene is in part a response to public complaints the show had gotten from the government of West Virginia about the stereotypes embodied by these characters.

Sarah Palin is no Hillary

By John Parisella - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 5:50 PM - 29 Comments

When Hillary Clinton conceded the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama last June, she said her campaign was responsible for 18 million cracks in the ceiling—one for every vote she obtained in the primaries. Sarah Palin would later make reference to Clinton’s concession speech when she was selected by John McCain to be his nominee, seemingly viewing herself as Clinton’s successor. Since the November election, Governor Palin has often been mentioned as a contender for the GOP nomination in 2012 and her constant presence in the media has only served to fuel that speculation.

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The Commons: Who is this man?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 5:37 PM - 68 Comments

The Scene. Near the end of his visit to the National Press Theatre the other day, having completed his prepared statement and having finished his response to the last of two dozen questions from the assembled reporters, Michael Ignatieff was afforded a chance to make an exit. But he was not ready to leave. He had one last answer. To a question that hadn’t been asked.

“If you’ll allow me to conclude on one note,” he said. “My stake in this is actually proving to Canadians, who are very skeptical about politics and our political system, that we can make this system work for them. That we can hold a government to account, get them to improve their performance, get good government for Canadians. That’s the big prize here actually. Make Canadians feel we got a pretty good system here and it works for Canadians and it delivers results for them. We get that, good result.”

He then turned to his right and walked away from the podium, a pensive look on his face—perhaps considering his own words, perhaps worrying that he’d said something he shouldn’t have, perhaps wondering if he’d made much sense to anyone in the room.

It is dangerous to believe what a politician says, or even to believe that he believes what he says. It is impossible, ultimately, to separate the individual from his stated purpose of persuasion and his unending pursuit of public approval. But it is tempting to believe Mr. Ignatieff genuinely believes this much. If only because, in relative terms, it sounded so odd. So out of sync with everything else, simultaneously quaint and precocious, alluring and disorienting.

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