While I was away...

[jsburbidge]

While I was up at the cottage for a week and a half, I seem to have missed...

• everything involving the Jack Layton death and subsequent funeral, including all of commodorified's visit to Toronto, and her triggering the chalk homages to Layton in Nathan Phillips Square
• fajrdrako's entire visit to Toronto
• Peter Watts' wedding (not that I would have known about it, but it was local and occurred during the time frame). The vows show just how far one can push the form in Ontario.

On the post-Layton situation: from where I stand the biggest issue is not who will be the next NDP leader, but how effective the general social democratic/progressive movement can be at providing enough push-back to (1) provide a public-opinion check to anything problematic the majority conservative government comes up with (Parliamentary opposition by itself is likely to be ineffective), (2) ensure that the reinvention of the Liberals tends towards a progressive slant rather than a corporatist one (n.b. the whole trend of the Chretien Liberals), and (3) provide an alternative narrative at a broad level to the emerging one that I see in the media of how the country is getting "more conservative".