Carrick to Calgary

The confidence vote has just gone through at Ottawa and the final total was 152 - 152 votes, a tie. The government managed this by getting votes from 2 Conservatives, Belinda Stronach (who defected) and Chuck Cadman (who used to be a Tory but resigned). In the end it came down to the Liberal-appointed Speaker of the House, who voted with his masters and saved the Government by a single vote.

I watched all of this in the Doctors' Lounge at the Foothills, on the big screen TV at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Strangely, I was alone - if you were in the UK, there would be a crowd of interested staff clustered round the TV just to see history being made or a government falling, but here no-one seems particularly bothered. Everyone's happy enough, the sun is shining and everyone has a job and enough money, so who cares about politics? Maybe that attitude towards politics partly explains how Canada got into this mess in the first place. If more people were paying attention, maybe they wouldn't have been able to steal 200 million dollars...

So Tony Blair's back in 10 Downing Street in the UK, but no-one wants him to stay, George Bush is in the White House and the Democrats are leaving the country, and the Liberals retain their weak grip on the country of Canada. Didn't politics used to be more interesting than this? The Government will limp onwards, pushed hither and yon by the winds of chance until an election is called early next year. And who knows where we'll end up then? No more politics for now...

J