Chocolate Lake, Halifax, January 2007

December Sunset, Lough Derg, Ireland

Is it over yet? The SCANDAL I mean

I read somewhere recently about an office game that some people play, I can't remember its name, where you make up funny statements about the war in Iraq, really ludicrous ones, statements that can't possibly be true.

Damned if I can remember any of them now...

Maybe Despite the whole world, including the US Army, wanting the opposite, Bush sends more troops to Iraq! was one of them.

Anyways, I've been thinking about that all week, which has been a lively one in Nova Scotian politics.

We had a SCANDAL, boys and girls.

Nova Scotian Cabinet Minister rear-ends Sports Editor and journalist going home after night in the pub and runs away!

Freelance photographer follows Cabinet Minister home and cell phone films him weaving across the carpark!

None of the media workers recognise the Cabinet Minister.

Eventually, Halifax cops get footage and tell photographer it is Cabinet Minister.

Photographer sells footage to the CBC and ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!

Cabinet Minister resigns and takes extended leave of absence from Caucus and no journalist asks him why!

Desperate to keep story running, media discover that Minister's lease car - a second hand Jetta - costs taxpayers $880 a month.

Nova Scotians wake up to the real scandal of over-priced car leases and say hmmmm...

At this point Queenie does the same and checks all the lease companies and their directors against the Tory donation list - grand total $13,500.

Never mind that!

The Deputy Prime Minister, the Chief of Staff and the Director of Communications were all told about the fender bender on the night in question by the Tory Caucus Chairman who drove past the incident and said, jeez, that looks like Ernie's car.

Which is fine, except they'd all been pretending that they only found out two weeks later (giving the Minister time to sober up, presumably).

Upon finding this out, media who have been scrumming the Premier spot the Chief of Staff sneaking out of Government Buildings and abandon the Premier in mid-sentence to chase his elderly Chief of Staff down the road and pin him to some railings until he answers question.

Chief of Police holds press conference to point out that cops are not incompetent for failing to breathalyse the Minister - he didn't answer the doorbell when they called round.

Chief of Staff holds press conference and says he didn't ask Minister whether he'd been drinking because he didn't want to know. Then states that he had a drink with the Minister earlier on the night in question.

Media don't ask the Chief of Staff why he didn't want to know.

NDP filibuster bill on campaign finance and rip into the Government at every possible opportunity and House sits until midnight every night for a week.

Media chase every politician they can find wanting to know what they know about the SCANDAL.

Minister for Agriculture, who until today had been open about incident, now states that he has a lawyer and is not answering questions and gets chased to the railings. Three times in one day.

Liberals, who are propping up the minority Tory Government, say they are having serious discussions about not doing that anymore, in between voting for the Government's crappy campaign finance bill.

Queenie is very amused at the complete lack of dignity shown by everyone in this situation but the NDP.

This is a great game, all the same.

Matthew's an Auld Dog

Matthew is a 38 year old, married father of three (Evelyn, Charlie and soon to arrive baby - Q): a veteran, a liberal, a hopeless romantic, and a walking cocktail party of information from Minneapolis/St. Paul.


If your rational for getting fit is a date on the calendar, it will fail. It has to be a lifestyle change. I can see why some people get real frustrated. I can gain 20 pounds in two weeks easy, but to lose that 20 pounds will take me 6 months of working out and watching what I eat.

Let's face it; the USA is the bi-polar nation. We tell everyone that looks don't matter that it's what is on the inside that matters, and then have our NEWS reporters telling us all the latest Paris and Britney gossip. We tell everyone that they need to be healthy, flooding them with exercise options and healthy advice, only to immediately follow it up with monster burgers, out of control portion sizes and junk food cheaper than healthy food. We tell people it's not what you want, it's what you have, and then create a society of lemmings with false desire for the newest and latest gadgets,often in a brazen quality that suggests that this one phone/car/television is the thing that will finally make you happy.

I love Minnesota, and Canada for that matter, but Ireland is truly wonderful, with the most beautiful people in the world.

Don't ask someone about their past if you don't want to know about it. Just know they are with you now.

Here is the great debate. Work something mindless, with limited interruption, put in your hours and leave, have some physical labor involved, but you never will bring work home, and earn $30,000, or work that skilled position where you work way over 40 hours for the week, constantly bring work home, think about work even when you don't have to, sacrifice family functions and make $70,000. There are times I wish I were still pouring beers in a bar.

I will say I am glad I am eating steak and fresh veggies instead of spaghetti and bananas.

We in the USA really push ourselves hard, much harder than I think we have to. I think it is a vicious pyramid where the guy at the top feels that making 40 million a year is not enough and then pushes upper management, who in turn push middle management, who then in turn create long hours and tough shifts for the workers, so that the next year they make 42 million. In that same time, no one calculates the accumulated cost of lost family time, stress on workers at work, stress in workers lives caused by work. I think we devalue the cost of actual living.

I had a boss tell a staff meeting that if you have a loved one who is getting ready to pass away, that she had no problem refusing to let you go be with them because you shouldn't wait until the end to let them know how you feel. It told me more about her than I ever wanted to know.

I love the men and women who choose to fight for the ideals that originated in the greatest democracy the world has ever seen. They have come freely to serve. They give themselves and their blind faith in our country fills me with pride. There is only one thing they ask in return for their service; don't send them into personal or unjustified conflict.

Do I love the troops? Of course I do. That's why I don't want to see them come home in body bags from a country that doesn't want us there, for nothing more than potential corporate profit.

George W. Bush is the worst president the United States has ever seen. He is the Anti-Lincoln. Instead of sacrificing his personal agenda for the betterment of the country, he sacrifices the betterment of the country for his own personal agenda. He is even worse than William Henry Harrison, the President who died a month after his inauguration.

I have to live somewhere that has four distinct seasons. Change is good.

Auld Dog is an intermittent column on this blog, which offers the collected wisdom of an individual for the rest of us to ponder. If you want to be an Auld Dog, send 600 - 700 pearls of wisdom, with a bio and a photo to Queenie, at auld.dog@gmail.com

Auld Dog - the first instalment

If you scroll down to the previous post, you will see that I have invited people to submit an Auld Dog post, which is a summation of all the nuggets of wisdom you have collected to date. Several people have mailed me back looking for guidance, headings, questions, etc.

If I do that, then I will be imposing my agenda on your thoughts. Which is not what I want to do. This isn't This much I know, this is Auld Dog.

In other words, just write the goddamned things will you! You're all talented people.

But here's one I prepared earlier, in case this happened.

Auld Dog

By Queenie

Queenie is a thirty six year old Irish woman who now lives in Canada and works for the NDP.

______________________

The rate at which we, as a species, are consuming every single thing on this planet terrifies me. I saw a documentary recently on seahorses, which will be extinct soon because people like to have dried seahorses to hang on their walls, or to eat, or something.

My first tattoo was of a seahorse. I love their shape. And the way the males nurture the babies.

They harvest them alive and leave them to slowly dry out in the sun by the way. The seahorses.

I fell in love with my partner when he and his buddy Martin cooked a romantic, candlelit, lake-side dinner for me and Martin’s wife and two other girl friends on a camp stove. Next day, I overheard the other women talking about how great he was, and I had this lovely warm feeling of ‘he picked ME!!!’ inside, which is still there every morning. He’s taught me how to make our love for each other spill over into everything else we do and make it shine.

I think what we need to do now is hold every action and object in our hands and ask ourselves, what’s the impact? It’s so tiring sometimes, though, I have to go to BurgerKing and rebel for a minute or two.

Good politics (by that I mean dialogue) does good things for good people. It’s power that’s the problem. The man who said power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely was the cleverest one ever.

Ohmygod! I just assumed it was a bloke said that. That says it all, really.

Every single morning for the last two years I have woken up and wondered whether or not I should have a baby.

But imagine if I had a child, and when it saw my seahorse tattoo it assumed it was like a unicorn? An allegorical symbol, not real?

When I watched the German film Stalingrad, I was so moved that I was lying in a foetal lump bawling my eyes out at the futility of it all when the last soldier walked out into the snow. That’s why I rent dvds. Catharsis is so much easier in the comfort of your own home.

There’s a selfish little bit of me that just doesn’t understand why all my Irish friends won’t come and live here in Canada. But there’s always the telephone.

Technology is a tool, not a status symbol. People who use technology in public to highlight their status are the tools.

I always thought if you gave teenagers the vote the world would be a better place, but now I reckon the people who tell them what to buy will tell them who to vote for, same as the rest of us.

I wonder who tells me to vote Left?

I had a boyfriend once who reckoned everyone was one or more G&Ts below par. I try to be just one, but some evenings I feel a good way down the bottle below par. So I don’t keep gin in the house.

I always took my parents far too seriously, until one day about a year ago they asked me to stop. I think they just want us to enjoy each other’s eccentricities now.

We developed social networks for a reason. For our survival. And yet the whole modern success mythology is based on the need to be a redoubtable individual.

For that reason, I was hugely relieved when we invented the Internet, but now we have MySpace…

If I were locked alone in a tower in deepest Albania from which no sign of life could be spotted across the mountains, I would find a party. It’s the Irish in me.

I can’t imagine a life in which I don’t talk about politics every single day. I blame my dad. He made me read the Irish Times when I was too young to know any better.

Sometimes I wish I weren’t so serious-minded. It played havoc with my sex life when I was single. Men just don’t want to sleep with the Head Girl.

One of the things I love about my partner is that even though the Head Girl was on vacation when he met me, he took it completely in his stride when term started again.

On the Future, and its coincidence with New Year's Resolutions

In response to my previous post, when I was using prevarication about what to write on as a space filler to make the post look like a half decent sized one,

Andrew Farrell said...

Talk about the distinction between your New Years Resolutions and your hopes for the future!I'm not just taking the mick, I'm interested in what bits of your future you do and don't see yourself having control over.

Which comment has been mulling around in my head all day. Without much of a breakthrough so far.

I have however:

• painted the bedroom set an ivory base-coat,
• tidied the utility cupboard, the linen box and the fridge,
• sorted out the recyclables,
• filled a garbage bag of clothes and shoes I don't wear anymore to send to the SallyAnne,
• spray-painted the red fold up chair black,
• shouted at Himself about something that needed shouting about,
• read the Observer online,
• talked online to my mate Juicy Lucy in Aswan, Egypt, where she is currently leading a Dragoman trip,
• made a stew,
• ordered photographs online,
• made Himself's birthday present,
• started a new photobook on Shutterfly (DON'T do this - dreadful interface, I am only doing it because it comes free with this year's photo print plan),
• finished John Updike's Terrorist, which is pretty darned good for an Updike,
• and played numerous games of Farm Hustle (and got to round three finally).

A typical lazy Sunday afternoon Chez Queenie.

I jest.

All of those things had to be done today because I should have done them all in November. In November I sat on the couch feeling sorry for myself, drinking wine, eating chocolate and watching television. Which is the only way I can get through November after trying every other possible alternative.

Which brings me to the first of my NY resolutions, to wean myself back off television.

Which leads me to Andrew's essay title: The Distinction between Queenie's NYR and her hopes for the Future.

I made an interesting realisation recently. As I am a person who needs other people's affirmation in order to feel good about myself, putting myself in a situation where the only people I have in my life are workmates and television actors is a bad thing.

Yes, I know, I know, I should know this. I do know this, I have known for a long time, for example, that working in politics, which is dog eat dog at the best of times, is bad for a girl who needs a lot of affirmation. I have also known for a long time that television is bad for the soul generally, but particularly for \ sensitive soul, who is worried about the colour of her teeth, skin, hair, size of her bosom, hairiness of her arms, blackheads on her nose, shape of said nose, etc. most of the time, not to mention every second sentence that comes out of her less than tactful mouth.

But there is a hell of a difference between knowing something and realising it about yourself.

There is.

Hence the decision to wean myself off all television except for Heroes, Ugly Betty, and Grey's Anatomy, which are all full of flawed people and therefore ALRIGHT TO WATCH.

Great, I hear Andrew say. Just great. But what about the dog eat dog world of Monday to Friday?

Hmmm... I guess that's where we enter the realms of 'parts of my life I have no control over', albeit temporarily. Seeing as my Canadian residency permit is conditional on my having a job in Canada, and my work permit is for this job only.

But if I spend the evenings undertaking self-affirming stuff, I'll be better set up for the day.

I had another realisation recently. I am a creative person.

I am.

I am a creative person who thinks I should be a writer because I love to read and I admire authors, but I am a creative person who needs constant affirmation from others, so taking photos and making calendars and painting furniture and making pretty cards to sell in the market and writing in my blog is much more satisfying.

Which leads me to the second of my resolutions.

Fuck the novel.

It's never going to happen.

An enormous weight of self-loathing is lifted off Queenie's shoulders.

However, the desire to write novels was always grounded in the need to try to make some money from being creative (those of you who wish to sneer should examine the bank balance of one JK Rowling), so the downside of the resolution is that I have to try and make some money from my photos this year.

Especially since I sneaked the Canon EOS in before 1 January and the third of my resolutions.

I have enough things (apart from a car).

I have enough clothes. I have enough shoes. I have enough art. I have enough pieces of pottery. I have enough dishes. I have enough books (until I have finished reading them all). I have enough music. I have enough make up and body lotions. I have enough jewellry. I have enough throws. I have enough linens. I have enough curtains.

I don't have enough money in my travel budget. I don't have enough savings. I don't have enough money to invest in a business someday. I don't have enough money to buy a piece of land near the Tobeatic Wilderness, and build an off-grid house on it.

So this year I resolve to cut down on my expenditure and start saving for the future.

Which leads me to the issue of the future. And my control over it.

I must say, Andrew, I laughed my ass off when I saw that.

Control??????????? ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Does anyone?

No I am not giving the lecture on global warming, although Himself's son has copped it now and apparently we are all going to be flooded in thirty years. You have been warned. Start practising your paddling.

Then I started to think about it.

What can I not control?

I can't control the decision to be made by Immigration Canada. I can't control the way Ireland is now and the loss of what I liked about Dublin. I can't control Himself's dreams of the future (although I can influence them to a certain extent. not that I ever would. much. :-), which have a pretty strong impact on my future. I can't control what happens to my family and when and if they will need me to care for them.

I can't control the price of property in Ireland and the ECB rate and its impact on my mortgage. I can't control my income too much at the moment. I can't control when the Tories are going to call an election, which will impact on my life.

So I guess my resolutions are all about how I fill in the time while I wait for these forces to move me one way or another.

Most people call this time life. I call it this year. I don't think any further than that. I never have.

Maybe I should extend my view. I don't know...

Whacha think, Andrew?

And my final resolution for this year is to start a 'This Much I Know' column, a la Observer magazine. I'm going to call it 'Auld Dog', as in 'the auld dog for the hard road'.

For those of you who don't read This Much I Know every week, it is a column in which a person, old/ young, famous/ normal, male/ female, etc. etc. is asked to summarise the things they have realised about life. Sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are sad, sometimes they are downright sensible and useful to think about, sometimes they highlight just how shallow the person is, sometimes they reveal hidden depths. My favourite last year were Bill Nighy's and an elderly guy who sells vegetables in Covent Garden market.

To submit an entry, email 600 - 700 words of wisdom, not less than ten individual Auld Dog conclusions if you can, along with a short bio and a photo if you like, to Auld.Dog@gmail.com and I will post them here.

Happy New Year everyone. Finally.

Queenie's back in Canada

Having had a month’s break from blogging, it is as difficult to go back to as it was to go back to school.

Or work.

Or to get those essays in by early January.

Or face into exams.

Queenie has spent ALL DAY tidying her apartment: and by tidying her apartment she means the kind of tidying that entails laying her socks and tights out in orderly lines in their drawer, which has been dusted and lined.

Of sorting her tops into piles named: basics, summer, funky all-year, sporty (there was just the one), outdoors, and sparkly (lots of them of course).

Of rearranging her rock collection.
And her ornaments.
And her candlesticks.

That kind of difficult.

Studying for her finals kinda difficult.

A big ‘uuuuunggghhh’ of boredom mixed with guilt and a tincture of panic squeezing her temples everytime she tries to tackle it kinda difficult

At least her future isn’t riding on her blog…

But now she is bored of tidying, not that she’s finished, no sirree bob, it will have to be in order to find the bed tonight.

So maybe a bit of writing might break the monotony of folding.

So why the long break?

It wasn’t intentional, although Queenie could pretend it was and no one would be the wiser. It just panned out that way. Early December was frenetic – pouring four weeks of work into two so that Queenie could go on holiday; going on holiday for three weeks; and then another frenetic week in work while she tried to figure out what she was supposed to be doing in 2007.

Watching the federal government try to work out how much of a threat to their planned June majority Stephan Dion is, and watching the provincial government drive itself out of office through its own incompetence, whilst trying not to laugh at either of them because we are a RESPONSIBLE Opposition is what I’ll be doing mostly, it would appear.

Also, watching the Labour party fuck up the election in Ireland AGAIN is on the cards too. But at least that won’t lead to any canvassing on my part.

Queenie will sit this one out.

A lot of politics is sitting waiting patiently for the other shoe to drop. More difficult than it looks.

Anyways, more of that anon, I don’t want to talk about politics today.

What should I talk about?

New Year’s Resolutions?

The Best of 2006?

My trip to Ireland?

My impending application for residency in Canada?

My hopes for the future?

The band of uuunnnggghhh tightens imperceptibly at the thought of all of them.

Queenie is coming home soon...!

I am going to be in Ireland in 283 hours!

And I keep thinking about whether or not it will be the same.

Which is pointless.

Because I have forgotten what it is like.

Some time is passed trying to remember what Dublin is like...apart from pub interiors...

I remember them pretty well.

I think it's because they're where all the light and colour were.

I can't get my Control button to work. I'm stuck in italics.

Some time is spent fixing the italics button.

Okay... where was I?

Oh yes. Light and colour.

That's how I remember things.

This journey I have been on, for the last year and a half, has ramped up so much speed that I am now HURTLING through time and space in my own time machine with my own assistant.

And I am about to step into a new episode, which will be Dublin in the Future.

Christ I hope there aren't any Daleks.

They're like bears. Only worse.

Or zombies.

Himself will probably try to shoot one of them. For supper.

Final Ballot and new Liberal leader

Total Valid Poll - 4,605
Needed to Win - 2,304

Candidate - 1st - 2nd - 3rd - 4th

Dion - 858 - 974 - 1,782 - 2,529
Ignatieff - 1,412 - 1,481 - 1,660 - 2,076


Well, at least the environment will have a champion at a very senior level in Canadian politics, as Dion is one of the architects of the Kyoto second level targets and actually named his dog Kyoto.

It will cause upset in the Liberal party as all the old guard were backing Iggy or Rae. But who cares about that.

And poor Iggy. I do admire his journalism and intellect. But he's not a very good politician.

So now Canadian politics are remarkably like Irish politics. Without the personality.

Stephen Harper is Michael McDowell without the personality.
Stephane Dion is Michael D. without the personality.
The Greens are just as annoying and lacking in personality as their Irish counterparts, but they're in trouble now with a viable Liberal alternative.
And Jack Layton is Enda Kenny with a porn star moustache.

And I'm done with politics for a month. Onto nicer things.... my forthcoming holiday to Ireland.

Third Round Results

Total Valid Poll - 4,817
Needed to Win - 2,410

Candidate - 1st - 2nd - 3rd

Dion - 858 - 974 - 1,782
Ignatieff - 1,412 - 1,481 - 1,660
Rae - 977 - 1,132 - 1,375

Well, there you go. It's a Dion - Ignatieff race and Dion is in charge.

So Bob Rae is the kingmaker.

The expectation is that he will let his delegates vote freely. (Like he has a choice). Iggy is gone to talk to him now.

Iggy is very arrogant. He probably won't eat crow enough to pull it off. But what the hell do I know.

Third Round Ballot Results not even in yet and it's chaos

Well, the prevailing sentiment amongst the pundits is that Bob Rae is out. So there goes my prediction. The Dion camp is very smug. The Ignatieff camp is showing off minority delegates they are snaffling from other camps.

The DJ is playing "We are Family". As the family is tearing itself apart on live television.

Again.

This is truly the most bizarre event I have ever seen. Rick Mercer, who is the Gerry Stembridge of Canadian politics, is on the panel now and is pointing out how everyone in the convention centre is lying through their teeth and how it is complete chaos.

You can email Peter Mansbridge who is hosting it. Most of the emails are from concerned citizens wondering how the candidates get to go to the toilet without being followed by a media scrum.

The answer is they don't. As far as I can see.

Twenty minutes before the results are out the Rae camp is unofficially conceding.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How things might shake out

Ooookay... there are 1,100 votes up for grabs.

Here's what I think.

Ignatieff probably won't win now. In fact, he's left the convention floor to huddle with his advisors.

Kennedy asked his delegates to go to Dion. The reason he has done this is because he is from Ontario and wants a Quebec leader, so that the next time it will be an Ontarian (traditional the Liberal leaders alternate).

The polling shows that Kennedy's delegates are evenly split between Rae and Dion. If this happens, Dion will remain in third place and will be knocked off the the ballot paper. Then Rae will beat Iggy as Dion's people will go to Rae.

If Dion gets 2/3 of the delegates, and Rae gets 1/3 (including the Dryden votes), then they will both pass Iggy and he will fall off the ballot paper. That will be really interesting, as the final showdown will be between a francophone policy wonk and an Ontarian former socialist. The Liberals need Rae, but they might not be able to stomach him and go for Dion. That will be a mistake. Dion will not beat Harper.

If Dion gets all of Kennedy's votes, then he will jump into the lead and Dryden's votes will decide who comes second. Rae could fall off the ballot then. If that is the case, then possibly his vote could give it to Ignatieff.

But I don't think Dion will get that much of a transfer. He's too francophone.

Second Ballot Results

Total Valid Poll 4,690,
Needed to win 2,346

Dion 974 up 138

Dryden 219 down 19

Ignatieff 1,481 up 69

Kennedy 884 up 30

Rae 1,132 up 155

The vote is down on the last one. So people are holding their fire.

So Ignatieff is the only one who only needs just one candidate to move to him to win. His people are more tail up than before. Rae and Dion both need Kennedy and Dryden to win on the next ballot.

Dion is calling for all delegates to move to him. They're waiting for Kennedy to call for his delegates to go to him. Dryden will go to Rae, presumably.

And there's about 1,100 votes up for grabs now and there's twenty minutes to snag them. Even though a candidate can ask his delegates to move to another candidate, they don't have to do it. They can vote for whomever they want. As can anyone after the first ballot.

Very strange system.


Rae only got about half of the votes he was trying to get from Volpe and Brison's camp, whereas Dion got all of Hall-Findley's votes. Now Dryden has offered him 219 votes, but if Kennedy drops out, he has over 800 which, if he delivers them to Dion will push Dion ahead of Rae.

Michael Ignatieff is sitting looking a little lonely as no one is offering him votes. There's a substantial Anyone but Iggy campaign going on.

Watching water polo in murky water

While we are waiting for the results, Ignatieff and Rae, who were room mates in University, had a staged meet and greet where they said that friendship is more important than politics.

I wish.

Speculation is rife that Rae and Iggy are going to combine to defeat Dion and Kennedy. Kennedy will go over to Dion if he comes in fourth. The word is that Dryden's people will go over to Rae.

So it is starting to look like I might be right and it will be Rae and Dion on the final ballot. Which is Ontario v Quebec.

When is it otherwise??

But will the next ballot be the third or the fourth.

I am such a junkie for this shit....

The vultures have appeared

Just little dots in the sky over the conference centre at the moment.

They are particularly zoning in on Iggy, as he is sitting in the hall with his wife in an obvious sulk about something. His inexperience in politics plays against him at times like this - he forgets he has to pretend that everything is hunky dorey even if his whole strategy is falling apart.

What is going on now is that each camp is trying to poach delegates from other camps so that they can a) get more votes in the second ballot, and b) persuade the media that they have the momentum.

They are all in groups in the conference hall, each of the groups shouting and singing, carrying banners and posters.

Tambourines with the face of the candidate on them are big this year, boys and girls, for those of you who will be running election campaigns next spring/ summer. I will work on the first campaign to offer me free tambourines. They rock.

Ignatieff supporters are now shouting and roaring and tambourining loudly as he has poached 40 South Asian minority delegates from other parties. Rae's people are quietly tambourining the news that he has poached Dion people. Dion has changed his colour scheme today from Liberal red to Green. To symbolise growth. Yeah, Stephane, I believe you. Why don't you just leave and form an environmental party called the Greens.

Dion has poached Ignatieff people, but.

Wolfie Kennedy has managed to poach one person from the other camps. I think his youth is showing now and the momentum is not going to the whitest teeth in the room.

Politics is so peurile sometimes, isn't it.

My gut is telling me it will be between Rae and Dion and that Rae will win. Second ballot voting is just finished so we will know more in a few minutes

Now they're playing ground hurling...

Okay, official results of the first ballot:

Brison 192 - Scott has announced he is dropping out and going to Bob Rae.
Dion 858
Dryden 238
Hall Findlay 130 - Martha has announced she is dropping out and going to Stephan Dion
Ignatieff - 1,412
Kennedy - 854
Rae - 977
Volpe - 156 - Joe Volpe has announced he is dropping out and going to Bob Rae

They are doing everything in French and then English, so I keep getting the numbers wrong as the Quebec accent is difficult for me to understand.

So basically, the first ballot went as expected, except Stephane Dion (former Environment Minister and all-round good guy) edged ahead of Kennedy (toothsome guy I instinctively don't trust).

Himself and I almost had a row about Kennedy last night. Himself thinks he's the best. I had to explain that you had to not listen to what they say too closely and look at their teeth. Having said that, Himself is as entitled to his opinion as everyone else. And Kennedy is younger and more energetic.

Scott Brison (former Tory, gay MP, Nova Scotian and former star of this blog) is giving his 'I give up' speech. He has told his delegates that he will vote for Rae now, but they can go to whomever they like. How many of them will stay with the herd?

In terms of the second ballot, what was supposed to happen was that Dryden would drop out as well and then the second ballot would be a sudden death knock out between Dion and Kennedy (who are in third and fourth place). Fortunately for us junkies, Ken Dryden is being as bull-headed as he obviously was to be a hockey Hall of Famer and so there will be an interesting second ballot now. Interesting for that and for a number of other reasons:

- a number of delegates didn't get to vote yesterday because bad weather delayed them
- there are people called ex-officio delegates who can vote for whomever they like and they voted for Martha Hall Finlay and Ken Dryden last night for heart-tugging reasons.
- lots of people voted before the speeches last night, and Ignatieff in particular thinks he will get more votes in this round.
- the only person with any momentum is Dion, who is real, old-school, Quebec Liberal.

There is ongoing television coverage on three channels, but there is nothing going on, so the journalists are basically roaming the halls looking to see who's talking to whom.

Worse than the Fianna Fail Executive convention.

Gerard Kennedy - the uberkind

Gerard Kennedy is up now. He's positioning himself as the new Trudeau.

He has Trudeau's son introducing him.

Young Trudeau is possibly the most annoying Canadian on the planet. Bar George Stromboulopolous. Except George has a job and s not just an opinionated social butterfly. No, I don't really mean that. I like George, I'm just jealous because he has the best job in Canada, hosting The Hour, CBC's edgy, pop culture-y, witty current affairs program which goes out at eleven pm every night.

Secretly I like George because if Luke McManus was Canadian he'd be George Stromboulopolous.

And his teeth are too white.

Kennedy's I mean. Not Luke's.

Never trust a man who claims to care about the poor if his teeth are too white. Kennedy ran the first Food Bank in Canada.

That's my learning for today.
Kennedy is being even more boring than Dion.

Bob Rae is up next. And then the Prince of Darkness himself. Ignatieff.

Moving from critters to political critters!

This weekend sees the election of a new leader for the Liberal party of Canada, the long long battle for power which has been going on for almost a year now.

There are eight contestants: Michael Ignatieff (intellectual and former journalist), Bob Rae (former NDP premier in Ontario), Gerard Kennedy (social reformer young type), Stephan Dion (Quebecois candidate, former Minister for the Environment here), Ken Dryden (former hockey goalie and newbie politician), Scott Brison (Nova Scotian who has been the star of this blog before), some other non-entity I can't remember and Martha the woman with the double barrelled name who is coming in last.

There's a huge conference in Montreal where they are all giving speeches tonight and so I am in happy land.

Prepare to be bored for the next twenty four hours.

Very very bored.

Obviously I am up for Bob Rae. Although Ken Dryden's my underdog hero and his speech rocked just a bit ago. And when he came offstage a journalist asked him what he wanted and he bellowed "I want my canada back" at her. V. funny. I know exactly what he meant.

Stephan Dion is talking now and he has a very strong Quebec accent which I find offputting (along with most of Canada although they won't admit it). Although Dion was a good Minister of the Environment.

But he won't win I think. Although traditionally Liberal leaders come from Quebec.

Paul Martin was from Quebec, but he didn't sound like Dion.

Happy happy junkie politics place....! They're all taking lumps out of the Tories.
I should get myself a beer now.

Your seduction style

Another quiz from the blog of myles'.

Exciting (or possibly tragic) news on the critter front!

Queenie went out last night and had a few pints to mark the last night of being able to smoke in the pub and needless to say the pub was packed so she crawled home too late. And all day today she had a headache. Until she left work at four o'clock, whereupon the headache miraculously disappeared.

Which just goes to prove that it is work that I am allergic to and not too much alcohol.

I always knew that.

Anyways, on to critter talk and then we will be done with it.

Himself shot Mr. Buck through the lungs the other night with his Swedish early twentieth century sniper rifle and now we have a freezer full of venison.

So there. No more critter talk, there's too much death in it.

Tragic perhaps. Yummy definitely.