They are conspiring as we speak

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 3, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

More from the Prime Minister’s swing through southwestern Ontario.

“Don’t let anyone ever tell you they are not a coalition — they work together on everything,” he said.

Harper accused the three other parties of “obstruction for the sake of obstruction.” They should never be given the chance to govern Canada, he said. ”We have to defeat the coalition and ensure that we have a Conservative majority that can keep this country moving forward.”

Ignatieff in summer

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 13, 2010 at 2:03 PM - 0 Comments

In the latest print edition of Maclean’s there are something like 1,300 words, under this byline, about Michael Ignatieff’s summer. Here, for your amusement, curiosity or comparison, is the indulgently long version, including a never-before-seen alternate ending.

It could be read as the latest in a series that includes previous sketches in September 2008, February 2009, June 2009 and October 2009. It could also be read as a reference to my favourite rap song of 2008.

Anyway. Make of it what you will. Continue…

Calling London

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, August 8, 2010 at 11:27 AM - 0 Comments

Last night, he drew a crowd of perhaps 400 to the market square in downtown London. After an eight-hour bus ride from Ottawa he was not quite electric on the stage, but he waded in before and afterwards and shook hands and posed for pictures and marvelled at a bobblehead likeness of himself that someone had brought for him to autograph. Inside the market he talked garlic imports with two gentlemen from the agriculture federation. Before boarding the bus he stopped to talk with a group of pensioners who wore matching t-shirts calling for changes to the Bankruptcy Insolvency Act. Continue…

And we're back

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, August 7, 2010 at 12:19 PM - 0 Comments

Greetings from downtown London, Ontario. The Liberal Express and my vacation have arrived in roughly the same part of the country and since you can never fill a magazine piece with enough local colour, I am once more on the road.

Actually, to be perfectly honest, I’m here primarily because tomorrow’s tour stop at the Comber Fair happens to coincide with the opening heats of the Comber Fair demolition derby. I somehow managed, despite more than a decade spent living in Essex County, to not once make it out to Comber to attend the demolition derby. And so now being paid to possibly attend the Comber Fair demolition derby didn’t seem like the sort of opportunity I should frivolously pass up.

Mr. Ignatieff is due at the market here in London around 4:45pm. Tomorrow morning there is a breakfast event in London, then the fair and then a rally with Paul Martin in Windsor.

All aboard a new Orient Express

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 10:50 AM - 3 Comments

Photograph by Chen Xiaodong/ ChinaFotoPress/ Keystone

It sounds like the stuff of an Agatha Christie novel, or Edwardian travelogues that unfold over weeks rather than days. But if high-level negotiations between China and 17 countries throughout Asia and Europe bear fruit, passengers could one day traverse the 8,100 km between London and Beijing in just 48 hours, travelling at a blinding 400 km/h.

The idea is part of a proposed high-speed rail expansion that would connect China with the West and see all roads leading to the Middle Kingdom. One would link Singapore to Beijing; another would run through Russia to Germany. Still another would link China to Thailand, Vietnam and Burma. Another prospective partner is India, which appears willing to overlook tensions with Beijing to tap expertise China has gained during construction of its domestic high-speed network. While the projects could take a decade to complete, all parties appear to be in a hurry. “We’ve already carried out the survey work for the European network,” says Wang Menshu, a senior consultant on China’s railways. “The central and eastern European countries are eager for us to start.” China is even offering to build lines in exchange for natural resources rather than capital investment, says Wang.

The network’s completion would help cement China’s position as the world’s economic centre of gravity—a prospect that doesn’t thrill skeptics worried by the country’s growing might. But others are encouraged by Beijing’s leadership on the railway initiative. “If they’re putting their own resources into it, and if they’re acting collaboratively—taking these other governments into their confidence—these are good signs,” says Amitav Acharya, a professor at the American University in Washington. “China has to be at centre stage in Asia, and something like this is a big symbolic step for them.”

Speed Demons

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

The chant was sandwiched between a rousing, singalong of O Canada with the house oom-pah-pah band, and an even lustier rendition of Queen’s We Are the Champions (extra emphasis on “No time for losers”). It lasted maybe 30 seconds, starting out in the grandstands by the backstretch, then spreading quickly around the smooth curves of the Richmond Oval. Christine Nesbitt had just delivered Canada’s third gold medal of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, topping the podium by 0.02 seconds in the women’s 1,000-m speed skating race, and the delirious home crowd was already looking ahead. “We want more! We want more!” they screamed.

Nesbitt didn’t need to be told. Fulfilling the prophecies and clinching the event she was touted to win—the 24-year-old from London, Ont., hadn’t lost a 1,000-m all season long—wasn’t much of a relief, or a release. There were some Kodak moments, as her mother Judith, an elementary school teacher, came to the trackside for a quick hug and to show off the “Go for gold Christine” banner her students at Lord Roberts French Immersion had drawn up on a white bedsheet. Nesbitt also entered into a lingering lip-lock with her boyfriend, Dutch long-tracker Simon Kuipers. But that was about it for passion.

At the flower ceremony—the medals would come later that night at BC Place—silver winner Annette Gerritsen of the Netherlands leapt onto the podium and thrust both arms in the air. The best Nesbitt could muster was a tight smile and a wave. If you had just arrived at the rink, you might have thought they were standing on the wrong spots.

Continue…

The tally

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 1:55 PM - 208 Comments

With 51 precincts reporting specific estimates—restricting the count to media-reported figures and, where available, police counts—it’s possible to account for approximately 21,000 anti-prorogation protestors at yesterday’s rallies. Continue…

No ideas please, we're Canadian

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 27, 2009 at 8:28 PM - 8 Comments

Chris Selley sees hope—or at least something completely different—in David Cameron’s Britain.

“Reticent” isn’t a word that comes to mind. What comes to my mind instead is that if either Michael Ignatieff or Stephen Harper had given that interview, Canadian politics-watchers would still be picking themselves up off the floor, and the appropriate war room would be tearing into the other guy like a pack of half-starved wolverines…

Anyone who reads a newspaper knows lean times are coming to Canada too, one way or the other—tax hikes, spending cuts, or some combination of the two. The difference between Ottawa and London is that in London, they’re actually talking about it. Indeed, to hear Cameron talk, he actually thinks he’s telling the British people what they want to hear.

Week in Pictures: July 15th – July 22th, 2009

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 24, 2009 at 2:50 PM - 0 Comments

'I'm not sure how much people know about what he's gone on to do'

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, July 11, 2009 at 9:21 AM - 50 Comments

Elizabeth Renzetti sketches Michael Ignatieff’s return to England this week.

Not many of Mr. Ignatieff’s former London associates would have pictured him on a podium, engaged in partisan debate. “I don’t think anyone foresaw him strutting across the stage of international politics,” said Mr. Loader, who was one of the creators, 20 years ago, of the BBC’s live culture program The Late Show . He hired Mr. Ignatieff as one of the four hosts, and the former academic quickly “became the good-looking intellectual one. He was quite well-known, he had a reputation as something of a cultural polymath.”

'Liberalism is not a bloodless breviary for rootless cosmopolitans'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 8, 2009 at 4:05 PM - 23 Comments

The text of Michael Ignatieff’s speech—for the annual Isaiah Berlin lecture—in London, England this evening.
Continue…

About those taxes (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 11:16 AM - 21 Comments

Michael Ignatieff visits the University of Western Ontario.

Tax increases to improve employment insurance or to slash the deficit are not on federal Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s agenda during the recession, he insisted yesterday in London.

Dealing with both issues will be costly, but the time to do it is when the economy begins to recover, he said. ”No one in their right mind wants to shut off the recovery by raising taxes in any form,” he said.

Ignatieff said the $80-billion deficit run up by the Conservative government troubles him. ”No responsible politician looking at that number can excuse forever and a day raising additional revenue . . . No Canadian is going to believe you.

“Once recovery is underway and we are still stuck in a structural deficit, then we would need expenditure review, cutting back government expenditure.”

ITQ goes to the G20: From protest theory to practice (burning effigies not included)

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 at 10:41 AM - 19 Comments

1:55:28 PM: The lunch break is over and the briefing session has, presumably, resumed, but those acquainted with ITQ and her allergy to sitting inside when there are events to be liveblogged has joined a small G20Voice breakaway sect, and is now playing hookey in The City, which is where The Protests are supposed to happen (or Happen). We’re a miscreant band of rebels from the G20Voice briefing, some of whom are dutifully photoblogging the annoyingly controlled chaos that is not so much breaking loose as politely introducing itself through the winding streets of the financial sector. It’s definitely a bigger and more diverse crowd than you’d find on the Hill at any given rally, but not exactly the blood in the streets that was billed. Has anyone coined the phrase “protest porn”? Because I think the leadup to this definitely applies. Anyway, we’ve now wandered off in search of a wily band of climate change protesters, which is also giving ITQ a rather unique introduction to London. Forget Big Ben – what does that sign say, and why is it upside down?

And yes, if I see a pro-G20 “Capitalism! Give it one more chance!” demonstration, I’ll totally stop by.

2:19:30 PM: As one of my fellow protest tourists just pointed out, using the megaphone to shout the phrase, “We have workshops!” is not the most effective street outreach strategy. Also, there was almost a confrontation between an angry man in a wheelchair and the climate change activists who have blocked off the street, but then he changed his mind, called off the blocade running and is currently smoking a cigarette.

2:24:16 PM: Off to try to catch a “horse charge”, which is exactly what it sounds like, and which will apparently be happening back at Bankers Are Evil headquarters. Every now and then we pass a cluster of suit-clad bankerish looking people huddled in alleys outside Hy’sian restaurants, who are clearly the target of the sprinkled pockets of carefully choreographed rage. They look just like Hill staffers watching a noontime protest — not angry, just wondering whether it’s worth going back to work. After living through the chaos of O-Day, I can empathize. Being inside the security cordon is so much less exciting than you’d think. Continue…

ITQ goes to the G20: So why are we gathered here today?

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 at 10:38 AM - 13 Comments

12:05:46 PM: Oh my. I’m — not sure what I’ve gotten myself into. Or rather, what we’ve all collectively gotten me into. I do hate ending sentences with a preposition, but I haven’t slept since yesterday morning, so cut me some slack. Anyway, after an adventurous wander through the ultrahigh security zone that is Westminster, I’ve made it to the briefing, just in time for the tail end of a presentation by Save The Children, which is quite insistent that we – the G20Voice bloggers – make sure that the leaders meeting tomorrow are reminded that the economic crisis isn’t the only one. I think that pretty much sums it up; as I’ve already noted, I was a bit late. Aside: Even for an O-Day survivor, it’s quite surreal outside this oasis of earnest, well-meaning calm that is the Methodist Central Hall. Everywhere you look, there are police – bobbies, I guess, but it feels so pretentious to call them that – strolling in pairs, huddled in clumps, standing at tube stations, alone but steadfast and waving at the people in the trains going by. Oh, and being accosted by rapidly-approaching-frazzled Canadian journalists asking timidly for directions, of course. Unfortunately, most of them weren’t able to help because, as the first one so besieged explained, they’ve been brought in from all over the country, so in most cases, aren’t any more well versed in Londonian urban geography than I am. Okay, so this event – the prebriefing – has, while I was typing the above missive, now transformed from presentation to roundtable. Well, it’s in the process of transforming; it’s a very consensus-keen group, so the question of whether to break off into table-sized chats or hold a room-wide plenary is being debated, in the politest possible sense of the word. Right now, however, someone whose name I didn’t so much miss as was never given at all – at least, not while I’ve been here – is waxing angrily eloquent about Germany, and its resistence to adopt the proposed financial regulatory system proposed by the other European countries. It’s an “overarching denial”, apparently. Anyway, the moderator throws it to the floor, and the guy sitting next to me eagerly seizes the microphone to agree with him: if there is insufficient stimulus for developing countries, the future is bleak for dealing with IMF loans and — saving the children. Oh, and apparently this session is being livestreamed – so if anyone out there is watching, you may get to see me — or at least the top of my head, bent as it is over this BlackBerry. I don’t think anyone in this room disagrees with the main point — that tomorrow’s meeting has to deal with the issues facing the developing world. “It’s going to be a mess,” another speaker predicts. Not sure if he means the conference or, you know, civilization as we know it. “We need signposts at this summit.” Continue…

What are we doing in Afghanistan? (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 3, 2009 at 12:13 PM - 2 Comments

Good question.

A couple excerpts from Stephen Harper’s speech to the House when the Prime Minister tabled the 2006 extension of the mission.

Continue…

BTC: He was for Europeans before he was against them

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 7, 2008 at 10:03 PM - 7 Comments

Europe. Not worth the risk. Just ask Stephen Harper. Continue…

Megapundit Extra: Hilarious foreign mayors edition

By selley - Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 3:14 PM - 0 Comments

Boris Johnson, formerly a British Conservative MP and a highly entertaining weekly presence on the Daily Telegraph opinion pages and now, improbably, mayor of London, returns in today’s edition to discuss his latest crimes against political correctness, as depicted in the photo below.

This is a man who is still, as far as we know, in possession of Tariq Aziz’s cigar case—which he purloined from the smoldering rubble of the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister’s home on a tour of Baghdad in 2003 and has steadfastly refused to return. (“Hello, hello, hello, I said to myself as I spotted something on the floor, what have we here?” he wrote of his decision to pocket the memento.) This is a man who, as editor of the Spectator, took responsibility for an editorial attributing Merseyside’s collective grief over the beheading of Kenneth Bigley to a “peculiar, and deeply unattractive, psyche [of victimhood] among many Liverpudlians” borne of “a combination of economic misfortune … and an excessive predilection for welfarism.” But as politics becomes local, scandal becomes… well, even siller. By now we’re sure you’ll all have spotted it: he’s not wearing a bicycle helmet, against an expressed promise to do so, and not for the first time he’s been caught in the act.

Continue…