Election

All predictions point to a Conservative minority led by Stephen Harper. I want to see a Conservative government, but not one led by Harper.

I don't like the GST cut. I would rather see an income tax reduction instead so I don't have to spend money to save it. Reducing consumption taxes just encourages people to go more into debt than to save their money.

I don't like the Alliance leftovers in the party. I come from the PC side of the Conservative Party, and we can do without some of the extreme social conservatives. I am really glad that Randy White is gone from the party. He represented Abbotsford, probably the safest Conservative riding in BC. It didn't matter what he said, he would still get elected, no matter how detrimental his views were to candidates in tough ridings. There, the real election is when the Conservative candidate is selected, not the actual general election. They could run a trained monkey and win that riding.

I would rather see the Conservatives form another opposition, just for Harper to go down and to give the party time to rebuild itself. With the Liberals in the state that they are, there is really no reason that the Conservatives shouldn't be able to form a majority government. The fact that they can't points to a poor leader and some elements of the party who people really don't want.

My riding is going to be represented either by Liberal Hedy Fry, NDP Svend the thief, or some Conservative candidate who I know nothing about. It looks like it will be a close race beween Hedy and Svend. I hope that the Liberal and Conservative vote don't get split so that Svend wins.

The first by-election will probably be in Quebec when Paul Martin resigns his seat after becoming leader of the Opposition. It will be interesting to see which party takes that seat.

Tan lines

I thought this was funny.

Property Taxes

I got hit with a bill for outstanding 2005 property taxes last week to the amount of $452. The city reappraised the value of my property and realized that the $190 paid for 2005 wasn't enough. Since I had taken possession of the apartment Nov 1, that's a lot of cash for just 2 months of owning the property.

I talked to my notary who handled all the adjustments, and he talked to the notary for the seller, who agreed to pay for all of the outstanding 2005 property taxes. Nice. That's half my plane ticket to Thailand.

Election Attack Ads

The federal Liberals launched their attack ads yesterday. I've been reading various publications, and they're getting a lot of criticism for their ads, even from the Globe and Mail. I thought this parody was hilarious, it really highlights how ridiculous some of the claims are.

Stephen Harper has a dog.
You know who else had a dog?
Hitler.
Adolf Hitler.
That's who.
Did Stephen Harper train his dog to attack racial minorities on command?
We don't know.
He's not saying.
Choose Your Canada.

The original ads can be found at http://www.liberal.ca/multimedia_e.aspx. The voicework is done by CBC's Shauna McDonald.

Acting!

Tonight was my first acting class. There were only 4 of us in the class, which is very small. After the improv warmup, we were given scenes to act out. My scene required me to show anger. I don't really get angry.. I just get really serious looking when I'm not happy about something. This is definitely going to pull me out of my comfort zone and force me to be more open and passionate. It's just what I need. Now I have some lines to memorize for next week when we act out the scene again.

Deal is closed.. down 7

We've successfully been acquired by a California company, effective 6pm yesterday. There were only 7 layoffs, 1 in our Vancouver office and 6 in our Whistler office. Most were call centre and sales-related, since our new company already has staff for that. On the plus side, we've gone from a money-losing company to a company in the black!