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, 27 March 2026

- France's foreign minister, Roland Lescure, says that at least 30% of the Gulf's refining capacity has been taken out of commission by Iranian retaliatory strikes. This means that fuel prices aren't likely to come down any time soon; while this may accelerate electrification of such things as transportation, I fear that given the average person's attention span, many will forget the reason for the high prices and blame their own leaders, voting reflexively for opposition politicians who, in many cases, are hostile to the very measures that could limit the impact.

- On the positive side, there are indications that Donald Trump's excesses may be hurting the electoral chances of the far right, at least in Europe. The recent municipal elections in France were a disappointment for Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement Nationale, and Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni just lost a referendum on stacking the judiciary. Perhaps most encouraging is the fact that Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán may be headed for defeat.

- Polish prime minister Donald Tusk says that Lithuania warned as far back as 2019 that Hungary posed a security risk to the EU and NATO. There are allegations that Hungary's foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, was briefing his Russian counterpart during breaks at EU meetings; Szijjarto initially denied this, calling it "fake news", but later admitted that he "consulted" with Russian as well as American, Turkish, and Israeli officials before and after these meetings.

- The UK government has vetoed a plan by Scotland to build a wind turbine manufacturing plant in cooperation with a Chinese manufacturer. The central government cited vague concerns about national security, but Scotland's deputy premier says the government has failed to explain their reasoning to her satisfaction.

- Former Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who is often cited by media outlets as an expert on gas prices, has been making strange claims such as saying that building more pipelines would "insulate Canada from price shocks", in spite of the fact that the country is already a net exporter. McTeague is currently the president of a fossil fuel advocacy group whose website has called Chinese EVs, a potential shelter from such price shocks, a "Trojan horse". It's worth noting that while he served as a Liberal during his parliamentary career, he voted against a same-sex marriage bill and opposed the induction of Dr. Henry Morgantaler into the Order of Canada; it looks like McTeague was the real Trojan horse. 

News roundup, 19 March 2026

- Opponents of Avi Lewis in the federal NDP leadership race have focused on the Leap Manifesto and Lewis' involvement in its creation. Former Alberta environment minister Shannon Phillips, who has endorsed Heather McPherson, has gotten worked up about a video from 2020 in which Lewis and his wife Naomi Klein read out and ridicule negative tweets people had made about them. Along with the usual rightwing suspects, there is one from Phillips in which she calls Lewis a "radical ecoterrorist" who will "send Alberta's economy off a cliff". Interestingly that detail was omitted from the CBC article, which was happy to report how Klein and Lewis made fun of her in response to it. Phillips also accuses Lewis of "writing off Alberta New Democrats". Similarly, candidate Rob Ashton has accused him of being "divisive". The brutal truth, though, is that any even remotely satisfactory action on climate is going to be divisive, and some people are going to see themselves as being left behind. When you need to treat a cancer, you can't afford to lose too much sleep over the damage the chemo and radiation do to adjacent, non-malignant tissue. Oh, and let's not forget who else Phillips has endorsed; there are few topics more divisive among left-leaning folks in this country than tactical voting.

- Ontario premier Doug Ford is urging BC and Quebec to drop their electric vehicle targets, fearing the impact on auto manufacturing in his province. Both province have scaled back their targets, but not enough to satisfy Ford.

- After Ontario's Information and Privacy Commission (IPC) learned that Doug Ford had used his personal cellphone for government business, apparently to avoid scrutiny, the commission ordered the premier to release records related to this. In order to avoid having to comply with the ruling, the government has introduced a bill to retroactively change the law governing the commission to exclude any communication by the premier, cabinet, and their staff.

- Two teens, one in Rivers, Manitoba and another in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, have been arrested after allegedly planning coordinated attacks on schools in their respective communities. 

- Scotland's parliament has voted down a bill that would have legalized assisted dying. So no MAID in Fife for the foreseeable future.

- A staff member at the Pioneer Ridge Long Term Care Home in Thunder Bay, Ontario has been charged with criminal negligence for allegedly causing the death of an 86 year old resident. The care home itself faces the same charge, as well as one of obstructing justice.

- Jeremy Frimer, a psychology professor at the University of Winnipeg who came very close to being fired following a complaint against him by a student, is suing the university along with the faculty union for allegedly giving him complex PTSD. The union is included in the suit because he says they didn't go to bat for him adequately; he's representing himself after 21 different law firms declined to take the case. How credible his case is, I leave as an exercise for the reader.