Conservative party
It’s time for the Progressive Conservative party to call a national conference of its snake-bit forces and draft a new image for the future. The recent by-elections suggest they have some shovelling to do before they get their party vehicle out of the mire.
They might consider dropping the Progressive from their name. This was adopted to appease John Bracken back in 1942 and since John died in 1969 that’s no longer an excuse for a seven-syllable name.
Progressive Conservative is too long for a headline, its dictionary definition suggests two opposites and with conservatism riding high the party might benefit from adopting a more definable name and position in the political spectrum.
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Late season rainfall creates concern about Prairie crop quality
Praying for rain is being replaced with the hope that rain can stop for harvest. Rainfall in July and early August has been much greater than normal.
For those who might fear an explosion from the grave of John Diefenbaker, I have it on good authority that Dief’s grave is covered with about five feet of steel.
I see by The Canadian Encyclopedia that in 1844 Benjamin Disraeli, who later became a British Conservative prime minister, described conservatism as “an unhappy cross-breed; the mule of politics that engenders nothing.” I don’t quite agree with Ben – conservatism in Canada engendered the Reform party, to the utter dismay of the blue Toronto establishment. Something must be done to reverse this because reforming is not in the conservative tradition.
In the Canadian political arena we must have wild-eyed radicals who run ahead of the pack, we must have small-l liberals who steal their ideas and water them down into something more politically acceptable and we must have conservatives who blow the trumpet of individual enterprise and a pox on government involvement.
Out of this mish-mash we get a continual state of political upheaval. Canadians wouldn’t be content with anything less.
