As dismal as Nova Scotians' votes were for the fourth place Greens in this week's Canadian election, the third place party, the NDP, wasn't granted much more.
If the Green Party's leadership and 90% of its membership weren't totally obsessed with propping up FPTP by electing 16 MPs on just 5% of the national vote, Greens in NS might actually have capture some third place finishes over the NDP....
Showing posts with label green party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label green party. Show all posts
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
WWII : none knew that Dawson Project a dog
Dawson's 'other Manhattan Project' might not have been hurt as much as one might think by being both (a) before the age of the internet and (b) having tight wartime censorship keeping its successes out of the scientific and popular media.
In times of little real (uncensored) news and with the official version too upbeat to be trusted, person-to-person gossip is often reviewed as perhaps most reliable source of information around.
Gossip has no airs.
The gossip of the poor sounds the same as the gossip of the rich : it removes money and power from the conversation, it is the true 'Great Leveler' rather like today's internet.
Doctors don't gossip, of course : too unprofessional - and in times of war - too un-patriotic as well.
But as every patient knows, they sure do consult each other a lot - and thank God for that !
So it all comes down to the same thing really.
News of Dawson's penicillin success in beating the unbeatable SBE did indeed spread, by doc-to-doc 'consults', rather like wildfire through dry grass, all over the very large medical fishbowl in tri-state NYC, in the Spring and Summer of 1943.
When one well browned off young medical professional went to Citizen Hearst's largest paper to plead for some of this miracle cure, an evening paper that was the largest in North America and syndicated all over, the rest was history.
In 2015, it is clearly not wartime and so equal-to-rich-and-poor-gossip will never elect Canada's federal Green Party.
But the internet could - because on it, no one knows you are a dog or a barely above the fringe party.
But no, the Greens head out, every election, deliberately looking for walls to bloody their head against.
Local candidate signs is probably the biggest single election expense in Canada, bar none.
The Greens don't have enough money to buy enough, big enough, slick enough, signs or enough volunteers to put them up quickly or enough supporters who can find their website quick enough to request the 'tipping point number of signs early on' to really move votes to the party locally.
Leaflets ? Ditto. Too few, too unslick, too few volunteers, too slow to get them printed.
The same with all printed material - the media only wants slick PDFs of your party platform and a dead cow can bang those out as good as the fifty million dollar conservative party machine.
Matching the big guys big and busy local campaign HQs - ditto.
Matching the big parties' constant national leaders' tour requires your own jet and a huge advance organization and enough supporters to provide the constant rent a crowds.
The Greens can't do it, so shouldn't do it.
But what the official party can do and the unofficial supporters should also do - in spades - is create those short snappy, hard hitting, funny, posters, ads, testimonials, streeters, rants, songs, etc etc that go viral, cost nothing but brains and sweaty hard work.
You know the ones that never seem better or worse - when viewing online or by mobile - that the best the slick Toronto ad boys do for the two big parties.
Free - did I also mention they are free to make and free to post online ?
Who will this hurt?
Well the majority of the people in every party spend the majority of their working days pleading for enough money to pay their salary and a minority actually doing something to increase thir party vote.
Parties mostly operated by amateurs of good will will mean these people will have to get a real world job.
Even Stephen Harper had a real job - in a mailroom, once.
For a few months.
Turning him back into an amateur might unleash his well developed sense of humour which he now keeps well hidden.
I'd love to see him in the Youtube mode, of course along side 50,000 Green activists...
In times of little real (uncensored) news and with the official version too upbeat to be trusted, person-to-person gossip is often reviewed as perhaps most reliable source of information around.
Gossip has no airs.
The gossip of the poor sounds the same as the gossip of the rich : it removes money and power from the conversation, it is the true 'Great Leveler' rather like today's internet.
Doctors don't gossip, of course : too unprofessional - and in times of war - too un-patriotic as well.
But as every patient knows, they sure do consult each other a lot - and thank God for that !
So it all comes down to the same thing really.
News of Dawson's penicillin success in beating the unbeatable SBE did indeed spread, by doc-to-doc 'consults', rather like wildfire through dry grass, all over the very large medical fishbowl in tri-state NYC, in the Spring and Summer of 1943.
When one well browned off young medical professional went to Citizen Hearst's largest paper to plead for some of this miracle cure, an evening paper that was the largest in North America and syndicated all over, the rest was history.
In 2015, it is clearly not wartime and so equal-to-rich-and-poor-gossip will never elect Canada's federal Green Party.
But the internet could - because on it, no one knows you are a dog or a barely above the fringe party.
But no, the Greens head out, every election, deliberately looking for walls to bloody their head against.
Local candidate signs is probably the biggest single election expense in Canada, bar none.
The Greens don't have enough money to buy enough, big enough, slick enough, signs or enough volunteers to put them up quickly or enough supporters who can find their website quick enough to request the 'tipping point number of signs early on' to really move votes to the party locally.
Leaflets ? Ditto. Too few, too unslick, too few volunteers, too slow to get them printed.
The same with all printed material - the media only wants slick PDFs of your party platform and a dead cow can bang those out as good as the fifty million dollar conservative party machine.
Matching the big guys big and busy local campaign HQs - ditto.
Matching the big parties' constant national leaders' tour requires your own jet and a huge advance organization and enough supporters to provide the constant rent a crowds.
The Greens can't do it, so shouldn't do it.
But what the official party can do and the unofficial supporters should also do - in spades - is create those short snappy, hard hitting, funny, posters, ads, testimonials, streeters, rants, songs, etc etc that go viral, cost nothing but brains and sweaty hard work.
You know the ones that never seem better or worse - when viewing online or by mobile - that the best the slick Toronto ad boys do for the two big parties.
Free - did I also mention they are free to make and free to post online ?
Who will this hurt?
Well the majority of the people in every party spend the majority of their working days pleading for enough money to pay their salary and a minority actually doing something to increase thir party vote.
Parties mostly operated by amateurs of good will will mean these people will have to get a real world job.
Even Stephen Harper had a real job - in a mailroom, once.
For a few months.
Turning him back into an amateur might unleash his well developed sense of humour which he now keeps well hidden.
I'd love to see him in the Youtube mode, of course along side 50,000 Green activists...
Thursday, April 9, 2015
From acorns, oaks ...
I can't speak confidently about the impact upon the adult population of the 1950s of the startling news that all the world's best lifesaving medicines were being made by tiny, weak, slimy beings.
But I can say confidently how this seemingly little detail affected one particular small child from that era : me.
Big time !
And when I grew up, it still affected me as a young adult.
And still affected me , inspired me in fact, years later when I worked - at first all alone and with very few resources - to help create Nova Scotia's first political party for environmentalists....
The tiny and the despised besting the smartest chemists in the universe
Natural products made by the despised residents of dank basements, rotting bread, jungle dirt and sewage water - not synthetic chemicals made by middle class university men in big labs in the biggest and most civilized nations of the world.But I can say confidently how this seemingly little detail affected one particular small child from that era : me.
Big time !
And when I grew up, it still affected me as a young adult.
And still affected me , inspired me in fact, years later when I worked - at first all alone and with very few resources - to help create Nova Scotia's first political party for environmentalists....
Thursday, August 29, 2013
The Small Party : North America's first and most radical 'green' Party
I seem to recall meeting Elizabeth May in the summer of 1979 at an environmental fair on Halifax's Garrison Grounds just after the 1979 federal election.
She was nonplussed by the total lack of reference to any environmental issue in the election from any party and talked about forming some sort of party that would.
A few months later she did just that : THE small PARTY ran almost a dozen candidates - all but two in the Maritimes, Elizabeth among them.
I was still an NDPer (democratic socialist) then but rapidly becoming disillusioned.
I catch the allusion to "Small is Beautiful" and heartily agreed: I wanted Nova Scotia to cede from Canada and go its small way alone.
Still do.
Seeing how all the huge mega-corporations and vaulting political empires have happily co-opted the word "green" , I wonder now if the move to the Green Party label was the right one.
It doesn't seem offensive enough now, as a name.
Rupert Murdoch can see himself saying he is pro-green but never saying that he is pro-smallness.
He'd rather kill himself first.
Maybe "The small Party" label needs to be brought back out of cold storage and ran past the Nova Scotia voters once again.....
She was nonplussed by the total lack of reference to any environmental issue in the election from any party and talked about forming some sort of party that would.
A few months later she did just that : THE small PARTY ran almost a dozen candidates - all but two in the Maritimes, Elizabeth among them.
I was still an NDPer (democratic socialist) then but rapidly becoming disillusioned.
I catch the allusion to "Small is Beautiful" and heartily agreed: I wanted Nova Scotia to cede from Canada and go its small way alone.
Still do.
Seeing how all the huge mega-corporations and vaulting political empires have happily co-opted the word "green" , I wonder now if the move to the Green Party label was the right one.
It doesn't seem offensive enough now, as a name.
Rupert Murdoch can see himself saying he is pro-green but never saying that he is pro-smallness.
He'd rather kill himself first.
Maybe "The small Party" label needs to be brought back out of cold storage and ran past the Nova Scotia voters once again.....
Monday, July 16, 2012
The STEADY Party : re-birthing the Greens under a new banner
Greens, yes, but by an accident of history....
The Greens had no idea how vacuous the term GREEN would become when they set about naming their various parties all those years ago.
And in fact few choose to call themselves Green in the earliest days.
Only after the German Greens' success, did the term get adopted holus bolus by other ecologist parties.
Even deniers claim to be a little bit green today.
Maybe its time then to get at the heart of the green movement and pick a name that no Liberal, Conservative or Socialist will take up, unless they give up 200 hundred years of their party traditions.
A STEADY party is probably swiftboat-proof,by name, anyway
A steady state economy oriented party might as well rename itself the STEADY party : pure and simple.....
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Paul Shreenan: trying to be GREEN in big metro
Paul Shreenan is a true renaissance man.
He has been a geography and urban planning prof , a two time GPC candidate, a very successful urban food gardener,a father, an avid cyclist and lately a bus driver.
He tries very hard to live green and use as few resources as possible.
So he doesn't own a car ,for example.
But Paul can't take a bus to get to his work, because he is one of the bus drivers arriving at the bus garage while it is still dark to drive the early morning buses we use to get to work.
A bit catch-22.
So most bus drivers drive back and forth to their early morning shifts - often over great gas-consuming distances.
A mantra of centralization means all buses for a city 400 kn across sit in one big garage.
Paul's solution, as he told me last night at his house-warming party (shout out to all the other attendees for helping make it a great do !) is to buy a heavy ,sturdy, cheap ,one-speeder bike (aka a beater to biking fans) and cycle for 30 minutes up and down Dartmouth's notorious hills to reach the bus barn.
Luckily it has showers, because it is heavy sledding er biking.
Sure it helps kees Paul slim and fit but most of us aren't that fit or committed ----- simply can't walk or bike to work.
Work is here , in this corner of metro Halifax-Dartmouth, and homes are there - many miles away.
By way of contrast, both my granddads walked to their jobs at car plants in Windsor Ontario - because factories were built next to people in the GOOD old days.....
He has been a geography and urban planning prof , a two time GPC candidate, a very successful urban food gardener,a father, an avid cyclist and lately a bus driver.
He tries very hard to live green and use as few resources as possible.
So he doesn't own a car ,for example.
But Paul can't take a bus to get to his work, because he is one of the bus drivers arriving at the bus garage while it is still dark to drive the early morning buses we use to get to work.
A bit catch-22.
So most bus drivers drive back and forth to their early morning shifts - often over great gas-consuming distances.
A mantra of centralization means all buses for a city 400 kn across sit in one big garage.
Paul's solution, as he told me last night at his house-warming party (shout out to all the other attendees for helping make it a great do !) is to buy a heavy ,sturdy, cheap ,one-speeder bike (aka a beater to biking fans) and cycle for 30 minutes up and down Dartmouth's notorious hills to reach the bus barn.
Luckily it has showers, because it is heavy sledding er biking.
Sure it helps kees Paul slim and fit but most of us aren't that fit or committed ----- simply can't walk or bike to work.
Work is here , in this corner of metro Halifax-Dartmouth, and homes are there - many miles away.
By way of contrast, both my granddads walked to their jobs at car plants in Windsor Ontario - because factories were built next to people in the GOOD old days.....
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