News roundup, 31 Aug 2026

- The Carney government is asking a court to throw out a lawsuit from activists who argue that the government's failure to update their emissions plans is in violation of the Canada Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act. The activists say that the elimination of various measures needed to meet targets in the legislation is prohibited under the legislation, but the government argues that the legislation gives the minister the power to amend plans and targets and that the courts "should not dictate climate policy".

- Many of the forested areas in the western US, from Oregon to New Mexico, that have been burned in recent years are not growing back, with shrubland replacing the forest. This is expected to accelerate spring melting, worsening the water crisis in the region; worse, it means the carbon sink benefits of the forests are no longer there.

- Toilet paper prices are spiking in the US thanks to the Trump regime's tariffs on paper products from Canada. Some think that this may have even more impact on the fortunes of Republicans in the midterms than fuel prices; it affects everyone, even those who don't drive, and the average American uses 25 kilograms of toilet paper per year. The fact that the country is experiencing an outbreak of explosive diarrhea thanks to the rollback of food safety measures probably does not help matters.

- The US is considering abandoning its neutral position on UK sovereignty over the Falkland Islands as a possible source of leverage over British policy. This was initially hinted at in a leaked Pentagon memo in April, which Marco Rubio downplayed at the time, but the Americans are now threatening to oppose the British on the issue if they don't commit to spending more money on "defense".

- Las Vegas is experiencing a dramatic decline in tourism thanks to the reluctance of Canadians and others to visit the US. Canadian visits to the city declined by over 17% last year thanks to the aggressive stance of the Trump regime, and Nevada now has the highest unemployment rate in the country. 

- Canada's lumber industry is looking at the possibility of needing to retool their sawmills to produce lumber in metric sizes so as to be able to more easily export it to countries other than the US. This has not been seriously considered before, despite Canada having formally adopted the metric system decades ago, because the vast majority of softwood exports have until now gone to the US. However, with that market no longer being reliable, the industry needs to find new markets, which means changing to metric.

- A group of teens on ebikes took over the runway at a small general aviation airport in Oakland County, Michigan, forcing a pilot planning to land there to do a go-around to avoid the need to clean blood off of his propeller.

News roundup, 6 Aug 2026

- Much of the UK, including over half of England and all of Wales, is officially in a state of drought. England received only 7% of its average July rainfall last month.

- Even if the war in Iran were to end immediately, experts think that it is unlikely that fuel prices will drop significantly before this fall's midterm elections in the US. That might be a problem for the Trump regime given that much of the public seems to actually recognize the president's role in the recent price spike. Whether this will impact the outcome of the elections remains to be seen, though; it's safe to assume that the regime will do their darnedest to suppress the Democratic vote.

- Abdul El-Sayed has won the Democratic primary for the Michigan Senate seat up for grabs this fall, defeating his AIPAC-backed opponent Haley Stevens by a narrow margin. El-Sayed is actually moderate compared to some of the people who backed him; he does not identify as a socialist, though he supports many policies favoured by those who do and was backed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Also in Michigan, Donavan McKinney (who does call himself a democratic socialist) won the primary for the state's 13th congressional district, defeating incumbent Shri Thanedar. While Thanedar was considered something of a progressive himself on many issues, they strongly differed on the Israel question. How they will fare in November remains to be seen, of course; McKinney probably won't have a problem, but El-Sayed will face a tough fight. Notably, polling predicted a considerably higher margin of victory than he actually got, and some think this may reflect rural voters being less willing to participate in opinion polls. And should he win, he'll probably need an extra security detail any time he leaves the Detroit/Dearborn area.

- The Republican-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will vote today on whether Anthony Fauci is in contempt of Congress after he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights to avoid answering questions in a hearing last week. Fauci believes that the hearing was a setup, intended to trick him into saying something false so that he could be found guilty of lying under oath, hence his refusal/

- Manitoba's Hanover School Division, which serves the city of Steinbach and surrounding areas, attempted to introduce a policy ordering staff to ignore a longstanding provincial law that entitles "mature minors" to confidential healthcare. Education Minister Tracy Schmidt has overruled the board, and has warned that she is willing to dissolve the board and appoint a provincial trustee to oversee the division if they continue to flout the law.

News roundup, 11 May 2026

- Municipal elections were held across the England on Thursday; Scotland and Wales held their parliamentary elections on the same day. The results show crushing defeats for Labour across much of the country. The blogger behind Council Estates Media seems to think Starmer's unwavering support of Israel has something to do with it; I'd say it's a stretch to say that's a big factor in the defeat, but it definitely says something about the way the party has gone when they tried to play the antisemitism card against Green leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish. Ironically, while the Greens did respectably well in the elections, the main beneficiary was Reform UK, which has a fair number of actual antisemites. While it's fair to say the swing away from Labour is an indictment of that party, the fact that a plurality of those voters chose Reform is an indictment of the English people. The Scots and Welsh did a better job in their parliamentary elections, though.

- Three more passengers on board that Dutch plague ship now moored in the Canary Islands have tested positive for hantavirus, all after flying home. The incubation period for this virus is substantial; four Canadians who were on the ship have been ordered to isolate for 21 days.

- An Edmonton couple on vacation in Mexico got notifications from WestJet saying that their flight home from Los Angeles was cancelled; they had to be rerouted through Victoria and got home some 16 hours late. Under Canadian legislation this is a long enough delay to trigger compensation as per the Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR) - but the airline claims to be exempt because the cancellation was due to an unexpected safety-related issue with the aircraft. The problem is, the aircraft in question had been grounded several days previously; WestJet apparently switched which aircraft was to be used for the flight immediately before cancelling it in the hope of getting around paying compensation to passengers.

- Jana Ronne, a high school teacher in BC, got in hot water after confronting a student for the use of the word "pussy" as an insult. She responded by saying "Do you think women are weak? Women can be stronger than men"; somehow the discussion got steered into religion, and she responded to this by disputing the validity of religion (not clear how she got there; I suspect the kid cited the Bible/Koran/whatever). Subsequently she appears to have brought up the incident in class, unprompted. Apparently this made students who witnessed the interaction feel "uncomfortable", and they complained to the vice principal; the BC Commissioner for Teacher Regulation has given her a one day suspension of her teaching certificate and forced her to take courses on "creating a positive classroom" and "intercultural dialogue".

- A motorcyclist was seriously injured in a collision with a car on Scott Road, which forms the boundary between the cities of Surrey and Delta, BC. What is remarkable about this case, though, is that the motorcycle somehow ended up hanging from a traffic signal standard.

News roundup, 15 April 2026

- Donald Trump is threatening to revoke the trade deal he made with the UK last year if relations between the two countries don't improve. Trump accuses the UK, as well as numerous other countries, of being "not there when we needed them" for the war on Iran. To his credit, PM Kier Starmer says he will not give in. Meanwhile Trump is suggesting that peace talks with Iran could resume in the coming days, after breaking down over the weekend. 

- Along with the war, Trump's feud with the Pope and circulation of an AI-generated image of himself as a Christlike figure may be among the few things he's done that could significantly cut into his support. He's drawn a lot of support from conservative Catholics, but there seem to be limits. On the other hand, his followers are extremely good at compartmentalization, especially when he causes people they dislike to suffer.

- The Carney government is temporarily suspending the excise taxes on gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel. I still say a better way of providing relief, if you're going to reduce taxes, would be to reduce the GST by a revenue-equivalent amount, thus helping everyone rather than just those who drive or fly. This just incentivizes people to keep driving. And this sort of thing tends to develop a momentum; already Manitoba's opposition is calling on the province to scrap its gas tax permanently. This needs to be nipped in the bud.

- Communities in Manitoba's Interlake region are concerned about the flooding situation this spring. Peguis First Nation as well as the town of Arborg are watching anxiously to see if it's as bad as it's been in some recent years. Even in Winnipeg the floodway is being operated to protect low lying properties. This isn't entirely bad news, since it means some relief for Manitoba Hydro from the impacts of the drought we've seen over the last few years.

- An American influencer who calls himself Johnny Somali has been sentenced to six months in prison for public order violations in South Korea. He had caused public outrage by filming himself kissing a statue commemorating wartime sex slaves, referred to as "comfort women" by Japan. He has previously created a stir by taunting Japanese commuters about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

News roundup, 31 March 2026

 - Executives in Canada's federal civil service will be required to return to the office five days a week as of the 4th of May, and all other civil servants will be have only a single remote day per week. This comes despite the recommendation by the International Energy Agency that people "work from home whenever possible" to mitigate the risk of oil shortages as a result of the Iran war; the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, which represents some civil servants, is calling for the return to office order to be reversed. And Manitoba Hydro is also requiring its employees to be in the office four days a week as of this fall. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a similar fight is brewing as the Public and Commercial Services Union is calling for an end to the current policy which requires employees to be in the office 60% of the time. Plenty of other countries aren't waiting for it to become a real crisis; Thailand is not only allowing WFH but mandating it for those who can do so; Pakistan and Bangladesh are taking similar measures. It's worth noting that those countries are more dependent on oil imports than Canada and the UK are, and I suspect that commercial real estate, not to mention the kind of culture wars we see in the West, are not as big a factor there as in richer countries either.

- The Financial Times has reported that a broker at Morgan Stanley with ties to Pete Hegseth tried to make large investments in a defense fund in the weeks leading up to the attack on Iran. The deal apparently fell through because the fund had not yet been made available to Morgan Stanley brokers. The Pentagon is vehemently denying this, and is demanding a retraction from the newspaper.

- New legislation in Israel makes the death penalty the default sentence for certain kinds of terrorism - but the death penalty can only be used if the intent of said terrorism is intended to "negate the existence of the state of Israel". Presumably that provision is there to make sure no future government decides to use the law against West Bank settlers, some of whose actions against Palestinians could legitimately be called terrorism.

- The Ford government in Ontario has announced its intention to expropriate the City of Toronto's share in Billy Bishop Airport in the Toronto islands. They plan to extend the runway to allow jets to use the airport - something long resisted by Toronto - and to declare it a "special economic zone" so as to be able to exempt it from any municipal or provincial legislation that gets in the way of those plans. Prime Minister Mark Carney has diplomatically called the idea an "interesting vision" but has stopped short of endorsing it so far.

- Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania decided to test how much trust people put in AI chatbots. Subjects were asked to answer a number of questions, and had the option of using ChatGPT to do so. More than 50% of the subjects across all the experiments blindly parroted the answers given by the chatbot. In one study, with a sample size of 359, subjects followed the advice of the chatbot almost 93% of the time when its advice was correct - but nearly 80% of the time when it was wrong. This is alarming given that these things are wrong far more often than many people realize - a study last fall concluded that these things misrepresent news content nearly half the time, for instance. Even more alarming is that there seems to have been an increase in the incidence of AIs deceiving people and disregarding instructions in the last six months. In one example, an AI agent that was instructed not to make any changes in code instead created a new agent to do it instead.

- China has introduced legislation that will ban the use of apartments to store cremated remains as well as the burial of corpses or the construction of tombs anywhere except public cemeteries. Apparently rental apartments are often cheaper than cemetery plots, so people just rent an apartment to store Grandma's ashes.

News roundup, 27 Feb 2026

- The Trump regime has ordered its diplomats to lobby against efforts by other countries to regulate American tech companies' handling of people's personal information. Secretary of State Marco Rubio singled out the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as an example of the "unnecessarily burdensome" legislation that needs to be stopped. Rubio has previously condemned Europe's Digital Services Act for its requirement that social media firms remove illegal content such as child pornography and extremist materials. The US is also developing an online portal that's intended to allow people to get around such restrictions.

- Pakistan has launched airstrikes against Afghanistan after the latter country launched an offensive against Pakistani bases near the border. A representative of Pakistan's government says that 133 Afghan troops had been killed and over 200 wounded. The regime in Afghanistan denies any provocation, but also claims to have inflicted heavy losses, something Pakistan denies. Pakistan has launched strikes in the country previously, but this time government facilities have been hit. Their defense minister now describes the country as being in a state of "open war" with their neighbour. I guess the good part is that while they're fighting with Afghanistan they're less likely to enter hostilities with nuclear-armed India.

- Iceland's government, which had previously promised a referendum on entering talks to join the European Union by 2027, now hopes to move up the date to as soon as this August. Given that the country has essentially no military and the country to which it has outsourced most of its defense keeps threatening to invade neighbouring Greenland, this is quite understandable.

- The Green Party's Hannah Spencer has been elected to the UK parliament in a byelection in the constituency of Gorton and Denton, in Greater Manchester. Spencer, a plumber by profession, had previously led her party in the council of the Manchester suburb of Trafford.

- A new law in Kansas declares trans people's driver's licenses to be invalid if the licence does not correspond with their sex at birth. The state's governor, Laura Kelly, had vetoed the bill but her veto was overridden by the legislature.

- Vancouver's rightwing mayor, Ken Sim, has accused an opposition councillor, without evidence, of distributing illegal drugs. Sim claimed that Coun. Sean Orr of the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) was "handing out illegal drugs on Christmas Day to people on the streets". COPE calls Sim's claim "a clear violation of the city's code of conduct" and suggests that it may constitute defamation.

News roundup, 7 Aug 2025

- Manitoba's Southern Health Region has warned that numerous people appear to be defying public health directives regarding the measles outbreak in the region. I can't help thinking that while the law may allow for action to be taken against these people, public health officials are having to weigh this against the social harm that could result from the inevitable populist backlash against such measures.

- A man who was caught on video during the Jan 6 putsch calling on rioters to kill cops is now a senior advisor for the US Department of Justice. 

- The Trump regime appears to be planning to end the missions of the Orbiting Carbon Observatories, which measure CO₂ and plant growth around the world. NASA has been "asked" by the government to draw up plans to end the missions, including deorbiting one of the satellites. 

- Although some parts of the world have gotten wetter with climate change, a lot more have become drier. 75% of the world's people live in the latter. 

- Manitoba Justice sometimes outsources prosecutions to people who normally serve as defense lawyers. There has been a significant increase in this recently, with more than 70% of criminal cases being outsourced. Justice Minister Matt Wiebe attributes this to logistical matters (e.g. juggling maternity leave) and to the practice of hiring a special prosecutor when there is a potential conflict of interest. The union representing prosecutors, however, says the government needs to hire more prosecutors to deal with rising caseloads.

- A BC man who suddenly found himself getting rejected for loans discovered that his credit score with Equifax had been reset to zero. The agency refused to provide any explanation until the CBC started investigating, whereupon they pointed to an obscure policy under which they reset the scores of anyone whose file is labelled "inactive". The other major rating agency in the country, TransUnion, says that they do not do this, but many lenders rely solely on Equifax, with the result that people who studiously avoid using credit are putting themselves at a disadvantage.

- China has submitted plans to the UK government for a new embassy, to be located near London's financial district. The thing is, parts of the submission have been redacted, leading to fears about espionage. There are also fears that the facility could be used to detain dissidents living in Britain - Hong Kong authorities recently offered large amounts of money for information leading to the capture of 19 pro-democracy activists living abroad.

- The UK has arrested three people, two of them seniors, and charged them with showing support for a banned organization (Palestine Action) under the Terrorism Act of 2000. The "terrorism" attributed to the organization has consisted of disruption of the operations of factories owned by Israeli arms companies; it seems a bit of a stretch to call that terrorism, given the lack of actual violence. More on the organization here.

- Police in LaSalle, Ontario caught a man who had apparently entered Canada illegally by crossing the Detroit River in a kayak.

News roundup, 21 May 2025

- The bond-rating agency Moody's has stripped the US of it's triple-A rating, becoming the last of the three major agencies to do so.

- The UK has suspended trade talks with Israel, condemning the latter country's cutting off food aid to Gaza and accusing them, in effect, of planning to ethnically cleanse the territory. Maybe Kier Starmer isn't quite the American puppet that I initially thought.

- Cases of measles continue to show up, with warnings that an infected person or persons were at two locations in Winnipeg (the Franco-Manitoban Cultural Centre and a diner in Southdale) on the 11th of May. I guess it's better that they notify us late than never, but given that anyone exposed on that day is potentially in their pre-symptomatic but still infectious state...

- Five years ago, the Ontario government lifted the cap on the number of cannabis stores, and in some places this has led to a huge proliferation of stores, such as the six in just over a kilometre of Danforth Avenue in Toronto. The thing is, a whole bunch of them are expected to have signed five-year leases that will all be coming due over the course of the next few months, so it will be interesting to see how many of those leases get renewed.

- Canada Post's very mandate may be putting it in an untenable situation. It is required to provide service to every address in the country at a set price - but since 2006 it has had to service some 3 million new addresses, while the number of letters mailed in the country has been reduced by more than 50%. In January the federal government had to bail the corporation out to the tune of a billion dollars. CUPW points out that the Canada Post executives still seem to be getting their bonuses (something ignored entirely in the CBC story). This certainly isn't a good look, although it sounds like the elimination of those bonuses would be a drop in the bucket as far as addressing the situation.

- According to folks in this Reddit thread, several Alberta cabinet ministers were invited to the National Prayer Breakfast in the US in February. And in a softball question lobbed at Donald Trump, it appears that rightwing journalist Brian Glenn mentioned meeting with "two government officials from Canada" who told him that there was a path to annexation. Just curious, when was the last time we had a treason trial in this country?

- Andrii Portnov, a Ukrainian lawyer who once served as an adviser to onetime president Viktor Yanukovych, has been shot dead in Madrid after dropping off his kids at school. Portnov was under investigation in his homeland for corruption, and at one point had been investigated for treason for his alleged involvement in the annexation of Crimea, though the latter investigation was eventually dropped.

- The man who blew himself up in front of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs has been described as holding "nihilistic views" as well as having "antinatalist leanings". The thing is, if you're an antinatalist, doesn't that mean that you actually believe in something? Surely a true nihilist wouldn't care whether other people reproduce or not.

News roundup, 5 July 2024

- Kier Starmer will be the UK's Prime Minister as his Labour Party has scored a decisive victory over the Conservatives in yesterday's election. They are projected to win 412 seats, though a number of seats still have not been decided. The Conservatives are forecast to win 122 seats, and the centrist Liberal Democrats 71. The SNP is down to 10 seats, while the Greens, Reform UK (the former UKIP) and Plaid Cymru win four each. This is Labour's second biggest win ever after Tony Blair's victory in 1997; a detailed breakdown is here.

- In France, Marine Le Pen's National Rally are now expected to fall short of a majority in the second round of parliamentary elections this weekend, so France is safe from a fascist takeover for the time being. That's not to say there aren't problems, as evidenced by a disturbing number of threats and acts of violence against candidates and party activists in recent days. Nonetheless, Emmanuel Macron's roll of the dice may have paid off.

- In the US, Joe Biden is down two points following last week's disastrous debate. Interestingly, Trump didn't actually make any gains, suggesting that there may be a firm limit to his support. Unfortunately that's still more than enough for him to win unless something changes, and Biden is still vowing to stay in the race (so far at least). His campaign points to polling that suggests that none of the proposed replacements would fare significantly better than him - but they have far less name recognition, something that would change if one of them became the candidate. New reports that Trump is being accused of sexually assaulting a 13 year old ought to be decisive but probably won't convince his diehard supporters to change.

- TVO's Steve Paikin suggests that Justin Trudeau's best chance of holding onto power might be to revisit the electoral reform that he previously rejected. In principle this might well be true, although in practice it would be very difficult to actually implement this in time for the election. While there is no legal requirement for a referendum, making such a sweeping change without one might be a bridge too far, politically (and if one were somehow held, it would be seen as a referendum on Justin Trudeau by too many people). Plus, even if the change were somehow made in time for the next election, the Bloc would effectively become kingmaker, and they cannot be trusted not to back the Conservatives.

- Manitoba Hydro warns that millions of dollars of infrastructure investment are required to maintain the reliability of the power grid in the province. This includes upgrades to the power plants themselves (one of which dates back to 1911) as well as towers, lines, etc.

- Liquor Control Board of Ontario employees are striking as of today, something expected to greatly increase sightings of pink elephants in the province. Issues include too much dependence on part-time workers as well as plans to put alcohol in convenience stores.

- The City of Winnipeg has approved over 6,600 new housing units, a figure expected to rise to 8,000 by the end of November. Of those, at least 123 are considered "affordable", though the devil is in the details with something like that. Actual construction of these units will doubtless take a few years.

- A Toronto police detective with the force's drug squad was arrested in neighbouring Mississauga and charged with impaired driving, leaving the scene of an accident, fleeing police, and possession of cocaine and meth. Two Peel Regional Police officers were reportedly injured in the course of the arrest.

- A 72 year old man in Florida has been arrested for shooting a Walmart delivery drone as it passed over his house; he apparently believed that he was under surveillance. Say what you will, but anyone who can hit a moving target 75 feet up with a 9 mm pistol is a pretty good shot.

News roundup, 21 June 2024

- Chris Skidmore, who served as the UK's energy minister under Theresa May, has vowed to vote Labour for the first time in his life in protest against the current Tory government turning climate into a "culture war" issue.

- Many Liberal MPs think it's time for Justin Trudeau to move on if there's to be any chance in salvaging the party's chances for the election. One unnamed MP said that "if we saw Justin Trudeau jump into a river to save two children being chased by a crocodile, people would say it was his fault", and like it or not, that is probably the case.

- A bill recently passed by Parliament, and now awaiting royal assent, will require companies who make claims about their environmental policies in advertising to provide evidence to back up their claims. Seems reasonable to most, but the Alberta government is up in arms about this; presumably they fear that the oil industry will collapse if they aren't allowed to lie to the public about what they're doing. An oilsands alliance has already removed all content from their website in anticipation of the bill becoming law.

- A search of the Prairie Green Landfill for at least two of Jeremy Skibicki's victims will commence in the fall, once a "targeted zone" where the remains are most likely buried can be identified.

- A man is suing Loblaws and the City of Winnipeg after an incident in 2022 in which he says that two police officers serving as security at the Superstore on Gateway Road made racially offensive comments, apparently under the impression that he was indigenous (he isn't) and then roughed him up when he tried to take photos.

- A strip club in Guelph, which was built in 1891, has been granted a heritage designation.

- Longtime Winnipeg broadcaster Larry Updike has died.

News roundup, 29 April 2024

- Pro-Palestinian protests at university campuses have lead to hundreds of arrests across the US. 

- The UK's Home Office is detaining refugee claimants weeks earlier than planned in preparation to ship them to Rwanda; it is suspected that the change in timing is to enable the Tories to look tough on immigration as municipal elections are held across the country.

- The legislation to ban TikTok in the US unless parent company ByteDance sells it within 9 months is now awaiting Joe Biden's signature. India has already banned the platform; how American courts will react to the ban remains to be seen, though.

- The spread of avian influenza through wildlife continues to cause alarm.

- A new bill in the Alberta legislature would give the province considerably more power over municipalities, including the power to remove councillors and repeal bylaws.

- Manitoba's Hanover School Division, which serves the eponymous RM as well as the city of Steinbach, has just passed a policy giving the school board a direct say into the hiring of gym and music teachers. The stated reason for singling out those two teaching areas specifically is that they're "faces of the division at sporting events and concerts"; a parent group called the Hanover Parent Alliance for Diversity fears that the real motivation is "to reduce the number of diverse and 2SLBGTQ+ staff in the division".

- South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, considered a possible choice as Trump's running mate, is bragging about shooting a dog and a goat on her farm. Now granted, that might be the sort of thing that often happens on farms, but the reason for shooting the dog was simply that she had judged it "untrainable" and "dangerous" (no indication that she consulted any experts on the matter). And even if it was necessary, it's kind of telling that she's talking openly about it as a way of signalling to the MAGA crowd that she's their kind of person.

Online predator sentenced; victims' families differ on sentence

You may have heard of the bizarre and tragic case of an American nurse, William Melchert-Dinkel, who has just been sentenced for seeking out depressed people online and getting them to kill themselves. At least two of them, Nadia Kajouji of Brampton, Ontario, and Mark Drybrough, from Coventry, England, actually did it. Melchert-Dinkel has just received a somewhat creative sentence - following 260 consecutive days in jail, he'll serve weekends on the anniversaries of Kajouji's and Drybrough's deaths for ten more years. One thing I find interesting, though, is the vastly differing reactions of the victims' families to this sentence. From the CBC article:

Marc Kajouji, Nadia's brother, said the punishment was too light for the crime.

"A guilty verdict isn't justice; punishment is justice," said Kajouji. "A year in a jail with work release doesn't really seem like justice."

Meanwhile, across the pond we see this:

Last night Mr Drybrough’s mum Elaine, of Walsgrave Road, Stoke, said the sentence was a “good result”.

So is an individual difference, or a cultural one? I'm inclined to think the latter, especially since this isn't the only case of dramatically different responses to similar crimes between Canada and the UK. Remember how Tim McLean's mum was all but calling for the public execution of Vince Li? Well, when another person with severe mental illness, Sabina Eriksson, killed a man in the UK in 2008, the victim's brother had this to say:

"We don't hold her responsible, the same as we wouldn't blame a rabid dog for biting someone. She is ill and to a large degree, not responsible for her actions. But her mental disorder should have been recognized much earlier."

So why are we so much more vengeful here? I think it's probably because we watch more American TV, with its emphasis on hang 'em high "justice". For what it's worth, I find the British response more rational and civilized.

British troops may face war crimes trials

Maybe there's a smidgen of justice out there somewhere:

A number of British military interrogators may face war crimes charges after members of their unit filmed themselves while threatening and abusing Iraqi detainees at a secret prison near Basra, the high court heard today.

The men have been referred to the Director of Service Prosecutions (DSP) after an investigation considered whether they had breached the International Criminal Court Act, which prohibits war crimes.

From the Guardian.

UK government fears peak oil

They don't want to talk about it in public, though:

Speculation that government ministers are far more concerned about a future supply crunch than they have admitted has been fuelled by the revelation that they are canvassing views from industry and the scientific community about "peak oil".

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is also refusing to hand over policy documents about "peak oil" – the point at which oil production reaches its maximum and then declines – under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, despite releasing others in which it admits "secrecy around the topic is probably not good".

Experts say they have received a letter from David Mackay, chief scientific adviser to the DECC, asking for information and advice on peak oil amid a growing campaign from industrialists such as Sir Richard Branson for the government to put contingency plans in place to deal with any future crisis.

A spokeswoman for the department insisted the request from Mackay was "routine" and said there was no change of policy other than to keep the issue under review. The peak oil argument was effectively dismissed as alarmist by former energy minister Malcolm Wicks in a report to government last summer, while oil companies such as BP, which have major influence in Whitehall, take a similar line.

But documents obtained under the FoI Act seen by the Observer show that a "peak oil workshop" brought together staff from the DECC, the Bank of England and Ministry of Defence among others to discuss the issue.

From the Guardian. If they're so reluctant to share this information, it makes one wonder just how bad the situation is.

Some good environmental news for once

The Large Blue has been reintroduced to the UK:

Conservationists are hoping a wildlife success story - the large blue butterfly's return to the UK - will continue this year with a new record for numbers flying at a site where it was reintroduced.

The large blue had vanished from the British countryside by 1979, but a successful reintroduction project over the past 25 years has seen it return to 25 sites, including the National Trust's Collard Hill near Glastonbury, Somerset where it was brought back in 2000.

Last year a record 827 large blue butterflies emerged and flew on the National Trust site - a 22% increase on 2008, which in turn had been a record year.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the exception to the rule; this species and many others are declining on the European mainland.

Even Brown's resignation couldn't save Labour

It's now official; David Cameron is the UK's new prime minister. What went wrong is unclear; as George Eaton points out, in settling for Cameron and the "alternative vote" the Liberal Democrats have retreated considerably from their previous position on electoral reform. But maybe it was seen as political suicide to side with Labour; alternatively, perhaps Labour figures that they're better off not being in power right now (some have suggested that the new PM is going to be extremely unpopular very soon, owing to the austerity measures that will be necessary). Also, Clegg and company might believe that AV is a foot in the door that could eventually lead to the adoption of multi-member STV at a later date (it would at least get the public accustomed to preferential balloting).

Incidentally, for some suggestions as to how the past election would have gone under AV and under multi-member STV, check this out (this is of necessity rather speculative, as in the real world many voters would have given their first preferences to a different party if they had confidence that their vote would count).

Interesting developments in European politics

Firstly, Gordon Brown has decided to take one for the team:

The British political landscape was transformed last night as an unbridled bidding war for power led to Gordon Brown proffering his resignation as prime minister in a dramatic attempt to secure Labour a power-sharing government with the Liberal Democrats.

Brown's surprise announcement on the steps of No 10 prompted an extraordinary Tory counter-offer to the Lib Dems: a referendum on the alternative vote electoral system, and a coalition government with seats for Nick Clegg's party in the cabinet. The proposed Tory coalition deal would last at least two parliamentary sessions.

The hurried Tory offer, previously seen as completely beyond the ideological pale for the party, was swallowed by shell-shocked Tory MPs.

Cameron said he would whip a vote in parliament to ensure there was a referendum on the alternative vote, but the Tories would then be free to campaign to keep first past the post in the referendum itself.

From the Guardian. If Clegg is as smart as I think he is, he won't bite on the "alternative vote" system, which is another term for instant-runoff voting. While it can be viewed as a special case of the single transferable vote system preferred by the Lib Dems, it is one in which proportionality is sacrificed for more local representation. To my mind this system is at best only marginally better than FPTP and under some circumstances can be worse (if introduced in Canada, for instance, it would likely lead to a never-ending string of Liberal majorities). I suspect that Clegg would probably rather work with Labour than the Conservatives anyhow, and with Brown out of the way he'll have more credibility making such a deal.

This isn't the only big thing to happen across the pond either. Angela Merkel just suffered a significant setback in Germany:

Results from Sunday's poll show Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won 34.6 percent of the vote, down a full 10 percentage points from the last election in 2005 and their worst showing ever in the state. The center-left Social Democrats (SPD) were only marginally behind, winning 34.5 percent of the vote.

The business-friendly Free Democrats, the CDU's current coalition partner in North Rhine-Westphalia and at the national level, gained half a percentage point, winning 6.7 percent of the vote. The environmentalist Greens did the best, almost doubling their showing from the last state election, securing 12.1 percent. The Left Party won 5.6 percent, and is now poised to enter the NRW state parliament for the first time.

The election outcome means that the opposition Social Democrats and the Green party could narrowly form a governing coalition in Germany's most populous state with a slim one-vote majority, but would likely require support from the Left Party.

From Deutsche Welle. What's critical to this is that state governments appoint members of the Bundesrat, the upper house of the German parliament, and as a result of this Merkel is expected to lose control of that house. And a big reason for this is Germany's reluctant approval of the bailout of Greece, which pleased the markets but had a rather different effect on the electorate. We'll have to see how this goes; Merkel is not up for reelection until 2013, unless her coalition somehow collapses, so she could find herself stymied for quite some time by an uncooperative Bundesrat.

The UK election

Well, as we know the British election resulted in what the Brits call a "hung parliament". Myself, I prefer the more value-neutral term "minority parliament", but that's just me. (Interestingly, the British expression is not known to have been used before 1974, according to this article). Now Nick Clegg has said that he'll give the Conservatives the first opportunity to make a deal with him, given that they won the most votes as well as seats. However, one of Clegg's demands is electoral reform, something that the Conservatives are very leery of, so Brown may yet get the chance to hold onto power. Gwynne Dyer has a pretty good summary, but there is something in his article that I take issue with:

Clegg is talking to Conservative leader David Cameron first, since his party got the largest number of seats and votes, but Cameron’s best offer is "an all-party committee of inquiry on political and electoral reform". He cannot offer more, because his own party won’t let him.

This does not make a lot of sense politically, since Labour, not the Conservatives, is the greatest beneficiary of the current voting system. But there I go again, expecting rational self-interest to determine political choices. The real reason that the rank and file of the Conservative Party hate the idea of change—any kind of change—is because they are conservative.

While I agree with Dyer that Cameron won't be able to offer more, I don't agree that Labour is the biggest beneficiary of first past the post. In terms of seat count alone, Labour does indeed benefit more than the Tories do, but in order to successfully govern under PR a party has to have potential coalition partners. Both might have a shot at the support of the Lib Dems, but under PR there'd be other parties represented in the House as well. And I suspect that Labour's base would be a lot less uncomfortable with them forming a coalition with, say, the Greens than rank and file Tories would be about a coalition with the BNP or UKIP.

National carbon calculator (UK)

The good folks at the Guardian (h/t Marc Lee at Progressive Economics) have come up with a neat little web app where you have to adjust sliders to try to reduce Britain's CO₂ emissions by 80%. It shows how you have to balance electricity supply and demand, and how much of a reduction in travel and consumption would be required. It's quite challenging. And Marc does say this:

They even share the back end spreadsheet, so we may have to mash up a Canadian version soon.

Looking forward to that. In some ways, Canada has it better; we have far more hydroelectric capacity (not to mention solar, given that in most of this country you actually see the sun). On the other hand, our cities are separated by distances that the average person in the UK (or France or Japan, for that matter) can hardly imagine, and thus our transportation costs (for people or other materials) will be much higher. And then there's heating costs...

UK to get a taste of minority parliaments?

The opinion polls are starting to look that way:

A ComRes survey for the Independent showed the Tory lead over Labour narrowing to five points in the past month. A YouGov survey for the Sun gave the Tories a seven-point margin, well up on the weekend's low of two but still short of the double-digit lead David Cameron needs to be confident of a Commons majority.

Both surveys were conducted before the Tory peer and fundraiser Lord Ashcroft revealed he had "non-dom" tax status yesterday.

The polls reinforce the recent trend showing Labour gaining ground on the Tories as the election, expected on 6 May, approaches.

The Independent survey was taken over the weekend, when Cameron admitted to his party's spring conference that the Conservatives faced a "real fight" to win power.

While the findings give the Tories a bigger share of the popular vote, the poll rating suggests Labour would be returned to government with the most MPs under the first-past-the-post electoral system.

This would leave Labour short of an outright majority, however, and so it would be forced to strike deals with the smaller parties for support on controversial issues.

Fears of a hung parliament sent sterling temporarily to a nine-month low against the dollar yesterday following another YouGov poll at the weekend suggesting the Tory lead was down to just two points.

From the Guardian. Depending on how far short Labour falls, who would be the most likely partner in a coalition or accord? I'm thinking the Liberal Democrats (if Labour isn't too far short of a majority, Respect is a theoretical possibility, but that seems like too much to hope for). What kind of concessions might the Lib Dems extract? This could have interesting consequences, especially if electoral reform is on the table.