NDP expels Hargrove, Miller next? Fat chance.

-
The Ontario NDP have revoked Buzz Hargrove's party membership (hat tip Far and Wide again) which he has held for 41 years, an action which terminates his Federal membership. Funny that a week ago the rumour was about that Buzz's membership was in doubt but he claims to have not seen it coming.

NDP executive member and fellow CAW official Mike Shields noted that David Miller's NDP membership is questionable given his endorsement of Liberal candidate John Godfrey if Hargrove's actions deserved expulsion. Paul Martin mentioned Miller (and had the handgun ban photo-op) during the campaign which the NDP tried to explain away. Needless to say, NOW, helped by former employee and now Hizzoner's media flack Don Wanagas, got Miller's excuses in a row during the campaign.

Comments

Steve V said…
Mark

I don't dispute that Hargrove was probably out of line, especially if you read the letter of the Party constitution. But, Hargrove was already a pariah within the Party hierarchy, so the formal explusion only serves to alienate some CAW people with divided loyalties. The appearance of "tow the line" also doesn't reflect well on the NDP, or at least isn't necessarily a plus.

I think it might have been better to just isolate Hargrove from policy discussions and leave him on the margins. Now, for consistency's sake, the question is what to do with Miller. I understand the need for the NDP to hold ranks and not bleed support to other parties, but I don't see how this public display accomplishes that. In fact, it only highlights divisions in the public eye. That being said, it is a credible argument to say Hargrove tied their hands with his actions.
Sun Feb 12, 04:49:00 pm GMT-5
James Bow said…
According to the arrangement between the NDP and Labour (one which I thought wasn't good for the party), it was Hargrove's job to campaign for the NDP, and this is something he has consistently failed to do for the past twelve years.

As for Miller: although he is a member of the NDP, he is also the non-partisan mayor of Toronto, so he has a job not to campaign for the NDP, but to campaign for his city. That gives him some leeway to endorse other politicians -- or it should.
Mon Feb 13, 08:14:00 am GMT-5
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Your request could not be completed. Please try again in a few minutes."

-
When setting automatic replies (Out of Office) via Exchange 2013 OWA on behalf of another user, the message in the title can be displayed when saving the text. If you look at the System Event Log on the Exchange Server, you may see the following event ID 4: Current user: '" (domain)/(OU)/(OU)/(administrator) " on behalf of " (domain)/(OU)/(OU)/(User) "' Request for URL ( long URL follows ) failed with the following error: Microsoft.Exchange.Management.ControlPanel.RegionalSettingsNotConfiguredException: We couldn't process the request because the user ' (domain)/(OU)/(OU)/(User) ' hasn't signed in to Outlook Web App and selected a language and a time zone. Ask the user to do this, or, if you are a member of the built-in Organization Management or Help Desk role group, you can use Window PowerShell to select a language and time zone for them. Cancel the Automatic Replies dialog and switch to Settings, which will display a Time Zone selecti
Read more

Chirac gets it right on Lebanon troops?

-
When you have bloggers such as Far and Wide's Steve V and Sicilian Notes' Richard Waghorne , the former a raging critic of Israeli operations in Lebanon and the latter a largely uncritical supporter, agreeing on something you can't help feeling like the unlikely has happened - France is doing something right. They have both criticised France's reluctance to increase UNIFIL troop numbers beyond a fairly token 400, up from their current commitment of 200. France's reluctance is mirrored by the Germans who have offered naval anti-smuggling patrols and perhaps border security, the UK and Denmark who have also offered ships, the Italians who are ready to send 3,000 but not yet and the Irish who have earmarked 200 (which would bring them up to the legal maximum of about 850 overseas at any time due to the Liberia mission) but who are also holding back . The reason is that which I posted on some days ago (albeit having taken a second swing at it) - Resolution 1701 does
Read more

Remote Desktop Connection Manager - a boon for admins

-
I subscribe to a bunch of Microsoft blogs and one of them revealed a gem in the past month.  RDCMan, a tool which allows an admin to group together remote desktops, preset their username/password combos and connect to those groups with a right-click option, has been invaluable in my work lately which involves quickly jumping from server to server or from servers to a group of workstations.  The gorgeous thing about it is not merely a gallery of thumbnails of the connected sessions, but the ability to interact with the thumbnails with sufficiently accurate mouse clicks.  Heartily recommended. Here's the original post: Introducing Remote Desktop Connection Manager 2.2 (You had me at EHLO - the Microsoft Exchange Team blog)
Read more