finally, i can give a nod to the NDP

[Birdy]

It's a good thing!

I said it before and i'll say it again, spiteful voting only makes you a spiteful person, and karma gets you in the end.

see ya buzz!

[SmoothedShredder]

It's funny how the Cities, where the individual manages to abuse and ignore nature on the grandest of Scales infavour of 'Me-ism' is NDP country, and that the Union responsible for supplying the most distructive/addictive individual product on the planet are the biggest supporters of "The Left". I find this very confusing. Unless there is an element of irrationality or lack of world view in the equation. If the NDP actually believed what they said, we'd all of been living in sustainable Co-ops in the 90's... the reality is that the NDP and the like minded like leaning on the Government... even if it's less efficent, less sustainable, and less environmental. I don't actually find this very enlightened, couragous, or feisable.

The conservatives might not paint a rosy picture with pretty flowers of the future for the citizens to help them dream, but they are taking decisive step that will lead us to living in self-sustainable Co-ops in the future, if only by forcing us to move towards a more collective, rely on your neighbour for help approach, and only because we've had such a sucessful run with our "political training wheels" on that we find ourselves in a state of overpoulation, war, and eminnent pandemic.

[Birdy]

It's funny how the Cities, where the individual manages to abuse and ignore nature on the grandest of Scales infavour of 'Me-ism' is NDP country, and that the Union responsible for supplying the most distructive/addictive individual product on the planet are the biggest supporters of "The Left". I find this very confusing. Unless there is an element of irrationality or lack of world view in the equation. If the NDP actually believed what they said, we'd all of been living in sustainable Co-ops in the 90's... the reality is that the NDP and the like minded like leaning on the Government... even if it's less efficent, less sustainable, and less environmental. I don't actually find this very enlightened, couragous, or feisable.

i think you've tapped into one of many hypocrisies of the left.

[d_rawk]

I'd be more concerned if there was a single uniform opinion 'on the left' then I am about there being competing ones. Competing points of view seem like a healthy thing to me.

Just as I'd be concerned about a unitary opinion 'on the right'. Luckily, we don't have to worry about the Liberals, 'cause they just go with whatever is most expedient

The NDP certainly doesn't represent all that is 'left', but as far as they are concerned ... the party did, after all, come out of the praries. On the Federal level, it has gotten more urban, definately. And it is a source of much reflection and competition within the party, to be sure. It also helps explain the disconnect between the contemporary Federal party and the provincial equivalents ... NDP governments tend to form (repeatedly) in the more 'rural' provinces, after all.

As far as unions go, it's true that it is a complex relationship. But the analysis above seems a tad shallow. The same convention where Layton was chosen as leader was the convention where they adopted the 'one member one vote' policy, which was explicitly designed to elimate the block votes that were formerly granted to the big unions. But this was partially an example of the encroaching 'urbanization' of the party, because while the large unions may exist closer to the urban areas, the collectivism that sat behind their influence in the party was concretely a remnant of its rural roots. So on the one hand you're saying that correcting the balance between urban and rural by shifting towards the urban is problematic, but at the same time suggesting that what informed the rural is problematic.

Also, there are many many on the left in general, and the NDP specifically, calling for a greener economy both personally and as a group. But the party doesn't control industry anymore than anyone else (in fact *less* than anyone else, since they haven't been in a position to influence it in any official fashion). Does this mean that they abandon workers entirely? That's nonsense. Yes, workers often work in lousy polluting industries -- because we have a lot of lousy polluting industries. Supporting the labourers isn't tacit approval of the conditions under which, or the products of, their labour. Those are conditions of which, and the products of which, they have little to no control. That's the point.

As far as the 90's-co-op-true-to-their-values (I'm assuming this is talking about Rae's Ontario), I'm leaving it aside for now. But knowing me, it is bound to erupt sooner or later