I’m not sure misquoting me proves anything I’ve said one way or the other. On the other hand, it says much about you.
Canada not participating at Expo 2012
Guess what other country isn’t going. Come on, it’s right in the caption for the big picture at the top of the page. [rob schneider] You can do it! [/rob schneider] Heh.
(Methinks, I’ve thrown a real wrench into my contention that it would take the NDP to make us like Greece) D’oh!
Ok, it’s rare enough that someone in newspaper comments makes me laugh out loud, so I’ll give them credit…a poster named v0ci3cau3a offers the brilliant financial solution to “SEND THE GAZEBO!”
Someone probably told the Government that it was something we couldn’t afford…
I think that’s a great example of “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
He didn’t misquote you; he did edit your quote down to the point he wanted to respond to, which is allowed.
Folks, please remember that we’re in MPSIMS and not GD, and keep things friendly.
Or at least civil. 
Thanks,
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
Never thought you’d be telling a bunch of Canadians to be polite, did you, twicks? 
Well we also didn’t attend the 2008 Spain Expo.
Still, spending $50 million on a pavilion we can later possibly sell, in 50 million person country with 1 trillion in GDP while trying to negotiate a FTA and I’d say it is penny wise, pound foolish.
…
Always have been, still am. I live in Hong Kong now, though. Whether temporarily or permanently, I’m not sure (I’m leaning to permanent, but we’ll see). After 9 years of working overseas, and then having to come back and do the morning commute again in Calgary, the first time I had to scrape my car windows in years at -30C was enough for me to say, “This sucks frozen donkey balls”, and to look for work again in warmer climes.
He started a new sentence and used my words to continue it thus changing their meaning deliberately rather than just responding to them. Maybe ‘misquote’ is the incorrect term for it. If it is, I apologize.
Oh, btw, I didn’t bring this to the attention of twickster or the mods. Just saying in case someone thinks I’m the sort to run crying if I’ve been ‘offended’, which I haven’t been.
This made me laugh.
Being run by a party called the “Social Democrats” does not mean Germany is a socialist nation, just as the Democratic Republic of Germany was not democratic. Unless Germany has recently nationalized all the rather prominent big name corporations and businesses it is so famous for, it is quite decidedly a nation with lots and lots of capitalism.
Which is sort of the point.
Uzi’s claim that the NDP would bankrupt Greece ignores the point that Canada is not Greece, that Canadian political parties have 144 years of history of invariably moving to the centre on fiscal issues, that in fact there is no evidence of any sort that the NDP is less fiscally responsible when in power than are the Liberals or Tories… and, again, Canada isn’t Greece. Canada is a bigger country, far richer, isn’t wholly populated with tax cheats (tax cheating is practically the Greek national sport; cheating and bribery is just culturally endemic there) and does not have the same structural expense problems Greece does. The claim that the NDP would drive Canada into Greece-like bankruptcy is about as reasonabe and based in fact as claiming that Stephen Harper plans on turning Canada into a fascist theocracy.
And I’m a guy who didn’t vote NDP because I don’t like their financial policy. They had silly, damaging ideas that were either ridiculously stupid or simply dishonest (e.g. capping credit card interest rates.) But drive us to the point of Greece? No, that would not have happened, full stop.
Fair enough - instead of saying ‘the economic philosophy of socialism’, I should instead be saying something along the lines of ‘combining capitalist ideas with ideas of social welfare’.
May I rephrase the statement, then? Both Greece and Germany have a level of ‘social spending’ in place - they have welfare, unemployment insurance, they fund the arts, they have government support of medical care, subsidized child care, extended paternity/maternity leave benefits. In many of these areas, their level of spending is beyond what Canada spends, as a percentage of GDP. Yet the economy of Germany is sound, while the economy of Greece is in trouble. I would not say that Greece’s biggest problem is its ‘social spending’, however convenient a scapegoat that may seem, and that was the basis of my statement about the Social Democrats.
Would you accept that the Social Democrats are ‘socialist’ in the same sense that the NDP are ‘socialist’? (If the NDP aren’t a bunch of socialists, we’ll have to take it up with Prime Minister Harper. That was his label for the NDP-Liberal coalition, after all - ‘socialists and separatists’. 
)
At any rate, I agree with you - we’d have to grow a sizable grey market economy in short order to become like Greece. We Canadians debate the long-term and short-term benefits of social spending versus stimulating the economy through tax cuts, but it is all in the context of a fundamentally sound economy.
It *was *one of the more surreal moments in my mod career. 
We’re very, very sorry.
There, that oughta rebalance the scales.
Anybody who thinks Canucks are passive and polite hasn’t been in the stands when the refs make a bad call on the home team, is all I have to say.
What, are you blind? Forget the refs, just be in the stands in the first place!
Yeah, we’re polite. On the surface.
You guys are getting dangerously close to spilling the beans. Shhhh. We need to keep our reputation for being polite and passive…for now.