You wouldn't know it, living in the UK, where the BBC did not this morning on its flagship radio news even mention it, but after a major national election, Canadians have woken up to an historically-new nation - for the first time since its founding, the Liberal Party is in third place, rather than forming either the government or the loyal opposition. The Conservatives have rebounded and now form a solid, stolid and right-leaning fiscally-lean government; but the big news is the new second-place party: socialists - the NDP, always also-rans, though the social conscience of the nation - now form a viable government in-waiting, with over 100 seats. Meanwhile, the separatists at federal level, the Bloc Quebecois, once a dire nemesis in Ottawa, have been wiped from the face of the Earth, left with four paltry seats, their leader, in tears, stepping down, after two failed decades; so too has the Liberal leader lost his seat, a smart blow-in from Harvard who never caught the national mood - his future must be in doubt. So - what now for Canada? In the next four years, a secure government, which will tack right, but maintain the stronger economy that has left Canada more untouched by the downturn than any other Western nation; Arts funding will suffer; and other social programmes, too. Quebec politics will be altered completely. The Liberals will no doubt reform from their rump - the Progressive Conservatives did, after their emasculation several decades ago, and now are stronger than ever. Question: what does Canada need to do to register over in Britain? It is the third-largest English-speaking country in the West, after the UK and America, ahead of Australia, and New Zealand - and yet, even at its most dynamic, it remains relatively invisible.
When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
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apart from maybe people who are from their but say they are british because they've lived in London for the last couple of years
Limp wristed liberaltypes always complaining about these silly little 'injustices' like, oh no my foreign countries election wasn't in the news or bitching about art funding been cut. It makes me sick.