Politicians Behaving Well

I was glad to see Sir Harry acted upon my advice, and the "hero" of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, was arrested in the UK, and is now awaiting an extradition hearing. Sweden wants him badly; they take rape seriously there, at least since Stieg Larsson published his Millenium Trilogy, and that should be the end of all the leaky stuff.

Not that there was much to it. I mean, anyone with an ounce of brains knew most of it anyway, and the real effect seems more a matter of bruised egos rather than treasonous transgression. For my part, I can tell you that the real NODIS stuff [*] never saw the light of day. Yes, I have such material, but there I must stop. Anything further would be telling.

Now to some political matters. It is not often that these pages have saluted the politicians for their efforts, but this is the exception that proves the rule. Toronto's new mayor, one Rob Ford, has taken power and acted -- wait for it -- swiftly, honestly, and with a degree of compassion that few knew he possessed. Ford has brought forward for resolution the issues he campaigned upon, has begun to cut unnecessary expenditure, and corrected a grievous wrong. His latter action involved an elderly female constituent in city ward (not his previous one) who had a tree on her front lawn. It was an old one, but she had faithfully got a yearly arborist's report indicating that the tree was in good health.

The city said it must come down. It was on The List, you see.

The woman, thinking she had homeowners' rights, refused to cut it down.

When she returned home the next day, the tree was gone. What was left was a $5000.00 bill for the cutting of the tree. Outraged, she called her city councillor (who never returned the call), and protestations to the city bureaucracy got nowhere. "The tree was," they stated, "on The List."

In Rob Ford's first day in office, he contacted the woman to apologize, and stated that a cheque for the $5000.00 was already in the mail. Well, well, well. I will definitely tender a dinner invitation to the Manor.

Then the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who along with a fine Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty have kept Canada well away from sub-prime madness, showed another side of himself. At the Tories' annual Christmas party (Yes, Christmas party, Not a 'Holiday 'party) the good Stephen did a commendable job of singing and piano playing, drawing on The Proclaimers, Neil Diamond, and the Rolling Stones. He showed discretion as well, honouring John Lennon by playing the opening bars to his 'Imagine' without the lyrics. Since those lyrics begin with the phrase "Imagine no religion" this was circumspect. No point in enraging all the bishops, mullahs, imams, priests (or even the Pope), although part of me wished he had let fly. But it was a step.

The only sour note was struck by a Liberal MP, who lamented that Harper had not sung in French. Grits will, however, be Grits.

The there is Laureen, fair wife to the Prime Minister. She saw fit to publicly lambaste the Iranian authorities (read: thugs) for their not releasing Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani from the Evin prison, but instead, in an Iranian act of compassion, altered her fate from death by stoning to death by hanging. Her crime was adultery, with some high judges arguing for murder. This is all rubbish. My sources (which are stellar) tell me that that her husband (three decades her senior) died of a heart attack. How she committed adultery with a dead body remains unexplained by these all-knowing authorities. I suspect someone had it in for her, possibly because she had let a wisp of hair poke out of her hijab. Whatever the reason, the judicial action is a travesty, and good on Laureen for speaking out.

Oh dear, and I was concentrating on politicians behaving well. Sorry about that, but when I hear of the fate of some women crashing into Islamic fundamentalism, all I want to do is engage in some beheading myself. Either that, or head for my bedroom, assume the pre-natal position, and turn the electric blanket up to nine.

* NODIS. No distribution. Ever.