My old pal Bruce Wark endorses the NDP subsidy for dirty, coal-fired electricity with some knee-jerk left-wing cant contrary-minded views: You're forgetting about an important and well-established principle. Governments should not tax necessities. Sales taxes on electricity and home heating fuels fall most heavily on the poorest Nova Scotians and are therefore regressive. Under NDP pressure, the Tories removed the provincial sales taxes on all home heating fuels. But later, they restored the tax on electricity. The NDP is being consistent in removing the provincial portion of the HST on electricity. Right now, there are thousands of Nova Scotians who are behind...

27 September, 2009

You have to wonder who in Michael Ignatieff's camp thinks it's smart for him to keep giving long form interviews to plummy foreign journals. First it was the New Yorker, now it's The Guardian, a left-of-centre daily in Britain, where Iggy hosted a BBC-TV arts program for six years. Interviewer Rachel Cooke is a tad shaky on Canadian politics—she calls Ignatieff "the man most likely to be Canada's next prime minister," and describes the Harper government as "on its knees"—but she does get off a few delicious zingers. On his return to Canada: [H]e likes to attribute his return at least as much...

27 September, 2009

Introducing Globe and Mail columnist and CTV host Jane Taber on a CBC panel today, Sunday Edition host Michael Enright said the following: She is often accused by Tories of being a Liberal, and by Liberals of being a Tory, which means she is doing her job. This canard is so common among journalists as to qualify as hackneyed. If both sides in a dispute criticize you, you much be striking the right balance. But there is an obvious alternative explanation: You could be doing such a crappy job that all sides find something to attack in your work. Let me be clear...

27 September, 2009

For years, North River fiddlemaker Otis Tomas had his eye on a giant sugar maple that grew on a hillside near his home. Finally one day, he cut it down. At a Celtic Colours concert in Sydney Mines October 12, musicians from Cape Breton, Vermont, Scotland, and Ireland will play two fiddles, a guitar, a cello, and a harp, all built by Tomas using wood from the fiddle tree....

27 September, 2009

The provincial budget introduced this week fulfilled the Dexter Government's campaign promise to bribe support middle class consumers with $30 million in annual subsidies for greenhouse gas production. The cynical gambit election promise will rebate provincial HST on residential electricity, an energy source fueled by filthy, health-degrading, planet-destroying coal. It will save consumers about $10 per month. Writing at Rabble.ca, Christine Saulnier, Nova Scotia director of the Canadian Center for Policy Alternative, gives the plan a drubbing. Money quote: This is not a significant saving for those who are struggling to pay their bills. It is, however, a significant loss of revenue...

26 September, 2009

Jeffrey Simpson delivered a devastating smackdown of Michael Ignatieff yesterday. Money quote: The rhetoric infecting these speeches suggests wide differences and new ideas. Strip the rhetoric away, and the differences narrow and the search for interesting new ideas shrivels. No question, Ignatieff is, to this point, a bewildering disappointment on policy and leadership, but there's one thing missing from Simpson's analysis. The old saw about Liberal Party strategy says, "Campaign left, govern right." These days, just about everyone campaigns moderate, even the Conservatives. Stephen Harper's main contribution to his party's revived fortunes has been the strategic good sense to slip a robe...

24 September, 2009

Buried in a Herald story about Dave Carroll's testimony before a passenger rights organization-sponsored hearing in Washington, lies this little nugget: Last week, for the first time since his YouTube hit went Stage 6 pandemic, Carroll inadvertently flew United Airlines—a long booked connecting flight to a gig in Chicago. As the flight prepared for takeoff, a United attendant, apparently oblivious to Carroll's musical history with the airline, chastised him for not placing his (Taylor?) guitar in an overhead bin. A nearby passenger watched in amusement. "Oh, he’s going to write a song about you," she said....

23 September, 2009

A Dartmouth manufacturer has come to the aid of a rhinoceros suffering from dry itchy skin in a Georgia zoo. Dr. Hayley Murphy, director of veterinary services for Zoo Atlanta, thought the "dry, flaky, skin [with] some ulcerations" exhibited by Boma, the zoo's black rhino, likely reflected broader health problems. When she met reps from Dartmouth-based Ascenta Health Ltd., at a trade show earlier this year, she decided to try an omega-3 dietary supplement Ascenta markets for horses. An Ascenta news release says Equine Omega-3 produced a dramatic improvement in Boma's skin problems after three months of use. Ascenta also makes human health...

23 September, 2009

Maritime Noon host Costas Halavrezos has interviewed hundreds of so-talkers: "So" is the name of a great Peter Gabriel album, but I've had precisely the same discussion with colleagues about its use as a preface to answers. I first noticed the "so" tic when interviewing American academics and bureaucrats, but it has clearly become an invasive species here, with increasing prevalence over the past year. (I should start assembling the digital detritus I've edited out of interviews: so, um, well, uh.) Previous discussion of the "so" tic here and here....

23 September, 2009

Nothing stirs up readers like English usage. Several have responded to my earlier post about a habit many interviewees have recently developed: beginning their answers with, "So...

23 September, 2009
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