Winging It?

 

It appears that Doug Ford has, indeed, called a provincial election. American friends, I hope you will not be bored, but Ontario is going to vote in February, of all times, because our junior fathead of a premier* thinks he can get a better mandate than he has.  At present both of our opposition parties are weak, having poor communication and not much positive spin. Ford says he wants a stronger mandate in order to deal well with the senior fathead that you lot just put in charge.** I do think this whole thing is an exercise in futility, but … our local member of the provincial legislature (MPP) is a man I know and like, both personally and as an effective representative. So, I am going to hold my nose and support him. Be prepared to read about Canadian politics this coming month.

I shook my head until it rattled earlier today. I was reading a post about effective communication and the writer used the word ‘disfluent’. (Note that it can also be spelled as dysfluent, and there is some evidence that the ‘I’ and ‘Y’ spellings have different connotations.) If I had been freewheeling writing a similar article, I would probably have said ‘halting speech’, with ‘halting’ in the sense of slow and hesitant, especially through lack of confidence; faltering. (Oxford Dictionary). \’Halting’ is a gerundive of ‘halt’, meaning stop. The ‘I’ spelling usage is, I guess, handy if one wishes to be very, very politically correct. Why? Well, the use of the ‘halt’ gerundive might offend someone whose gait is not smooth, as in “the halt and the lame”. (Truth; I have no idea, but I suspect the word looks erudite.)

I would be in Marathon today if the Florida trip had been a go. I have not looked up how cold it is down there, lest tears render my keyboard too slippery to use, but I did note that the average temperature is 76°C. Since my daughter had a house sitter set up and a plane ticket, she has zoomed off to Europe and is, if I recall correctly, going to be in England today to see an exhibit and thence will travel to to Cyprus to visit a friend. I observe that a career as a foreign service officer has a side benefit of the acquisition of friends all over the world. Nice. Let us see what Cyprus offers by way of climate in January. “January, along with February, is the coldest month in Cyprus. On the lowlands minimum temperature might go below 7-8°C in the coastal areas and 5-6°C inland. Average maximum temperature in January is about 16-18°C.” Yeah. And there are probably flowers coming out in England.

Ah well. "Cold winds shall blow, and we shall have snow, and what will Cock Robin do then, poor thing? Sit in a barn and keep himself warm, and tuck his head under his wing, poor thing.” (That was from memory.Here is the original.  I am, of course, quoting Mother Goose. I would have said Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream, but I was wrong. Well, it is over fifty years since I had much ado about Shakespeare.

*American friends, note that the federal usage for gov’t is Prime Minister, Member of Parliament (MP) and the provincial equivalents are Premier and MPP. We usually call the federal gathering of elected representatives Parliament and the similar provincial gathering the Provincial Legislature. They are both ‘parliamentary’ systems, with the Queen’s representative, the Governor General the titular head of the federal system and separate representatives, the Lieutenant Governors, one in each province. I am sure this is more than you ever wanted to know.

** Under parliamentary procedure, the governing party, should it have a majority in the legislature, is able to dissolve the session and trigger an election. Ford’s Conservative party is governing with a majority at present.