Will we be truly a-maze-d?

The Brits have a penchant for misnomers. There are no juggling clowns at Piccadilly Circus. Nor any wrought iron at Notting Hill Gate.

In true colonial fashion, same thing with Lansdowne Park. No green to be seen, unless you count the astroturf or the crisp market veggies that appear in warmer months.

So why not a hedge maze to enliven the redevelopment of Lansdowne, make it a genuine wow-factor magnet and put some actual park in the ol' parking lot?

We could even give the verdant passages homey names like the Larry O'Brien Logic Loop and The Zoning Bylaw Biway. Of course, we'd save a special moniker for the most tricky, dense and confusing lanes: The Light Rail Rigamarole.

Cabbages and kings

Even a casual flip through the collected history of Canada's prime ministers makes it evident that almost the entire lot have been kinda cranky, whatever their public personae. And even a casual flip through the Oxford Big Word Thingy, Canine Edition, shows that we coyotes define "kinda cranky" as, pretty much,"venal, manipulative, backstabbing sonsabitches".

Protestations of the heartwarming benefits of public service aside, I'm not sure what drives people to seek the job. Lately politicians score somewhat below coyotes on measures of public trust. And as long as I'm bloggin', I'll be doing everything I can to keep it that way... I digress. And you're shocked, shocked, I know.

If you know this blog at all, right now you're prolly asking, "Coyote, if they're all kinda cranky, why do you dislike this one, so?" Good question.

I think it might be his attitude. People who are as sure of themselves as Stephen Harper appears to be, seem to me to be lacking a vital bit of humanity. Questioning oneself is a good thing. And in most democracies, compromise, however abhorrent it is to any one high-rankin' individual, pleases more people than does dictatorship by fiat.

A year ago, as the prime minister spouted patent nonsense about coalition governments being unconstitutional, I thought he was just spinning his sound bites for - how to state this delicately? - the dumbshits in his voter base. The ones who get wa-a-a-y too much of their cable edjumafication about government on Foxic News. How could he believe that crap?

Lately, I reach toward a darker thought. That maybe he really is the same kinda dumbshit as his voter base. That he does believe that crap. Maybe in Harper's mind, his election magically turned the prime ministership into an American-style imperial presidency and gave him a rather startling range of powers. Many of which never were foreseen by guys who actually, you know, crafted parliamentary government over the past few hundred years.

So, what if he thinks this makes him a law unto himself and dares the opposition to do anything about it? Well. If ya wanna look back past Canada's parliamentary history, even a, ummm, casual flip through Britain's history suggests that guys who tried to screw over the ascendancy of parliament did not end well.

But hey. If, in deference to the PM's tender feelings, we were to use an American example, the president who most epitomized this kinda thinking was ummm, Dick Nixon. Dear me. That did not end well, either...

Difficult as the concept seems to be for him, personally, the PM may wish to study compromise. It might be on the final exam.

999 Posts Later...

...do you love us just the same?

And I thought there was no 5th anniversary.

Coyote injures nose

Taking Hits for Hits?

In the attached Google Analytics graph, you can see that our daily hits for the past month has ranged between 16 and 125.

There are sites with higher readership.

For example, the Salisbury Journal has received more than 130,000 hits on their story titled "Dog injures nose". [plus update that is not really an update]

Coyote, I know you would like to see our readership increase. Maybe it's time you mixed it up a bit.

Or readers, do you have other suggestions for postings that would bring us high hit counts?