Quotulatiousness

January 7, 2010

10 Downing Street: the coup that wasn’t

Filed under: Britain, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:48

A rather odd week for Britain’s embattled Prime Minister, with members of his cabinet seeming to be working on his ouster, yet still publicly supporting him. I suspect it’s a case of timing — few expect Mr. Brown to win the next general election, but potential leadership contenders don’t want to push him out of the top spot until after the coming debacle. If he gets replaced before the election, the new leader will take a lot of blame for the polling results, while the Brown team can take Parthian shots at the new leader’s supporters.

This the most likely reason that the “coup” never happened. All the key players in the next act want this act over properly, with Gordon Brown facing his doom at the hands of the voters, and a new leader in place (theoretically) untainted by the outcome of the election.

January 6, 2010

Behold the awesome power of Facebook groups

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:05

The editors at the National Post poke some fun at their opposite numbers over at the Toronto Star:

We know about the Star editors’ foray onto the big exciting Interweb because of the newspaper’s front-page headline on Monday: “Grassroots fury greets shuttered Parliament.” The breathless story suggests Canada is on the verge of some kind of violent 1917-style revolution — a “growing public uprising” no less, complete with “protest rallies” from coast to coast, and young activists full of unhinged, wild-eyed rage. The evidence for all this: 20,000 people joined a Facebook page called “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament,” which urges Parliament to “Get back to work.”

[. . .]

For all we know, that 20,000 figure is up to 50,000 now, thanks to the Star publicity. Or maybe even 100,000. Who knows? But for the sake of context, let’s look at some other causes that also got a six-digit response: Almost 300,000 people have joined a group encouraging rocker John Mellencamp to quit smoking. Another hundred thousand people have joined a group encouraging random people to move to Finland. A whopping half-million people have used the power of Facebook to declare that they enjoy the television program 90210.

And then there’s our personal favourite: A group called “If 100,000 people join this group, Laura will name her son Megatron” recently met its goal. Congratulations, Laura, on the birth of your Transformer. We bet you didn’t know that he’d become the subject of — what does the Star call it? — oh yes, a “growing public uprising”!

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