Prof. Andrew Sancton, an 'expert' on municipal affairs at the University of Western Ontario ...
... is an idiot. There. I done it, I gone and said it. but he is. An idiot. I don't care who gave him the parchment. Clearly, any fool can see, yet another ballot would solve nothing, and we know this empirically because, lo and behold, we've had lots of ballots, and they all lead us to the same situation in council and what that should tell the 'experts' is that, listen carefully now, nothing is broken. There, now I gone and said that too.
re: The Sun-Times bit,
Council can work, expert says -- what they fail to take into account is that one choice is a psychosis (two choices a mere neurosis) and here is some tenured psychotic who obviously has not been reading
The Peninsular here.
Ok, I am no expert, but it does seem to me that when human beings do something that works, they do it again, and when it no longer works, they do it again, harder. This is the strategy Doctor Sancton recommends. It is like speaking more loudly when faced with a foreigner who does not understand your language: asking the voters to spin the wheel again is not going to change the underlying dynamic.
Here is what will: we need to abandon our antiquated control-systems metaphor for government and move into the 21st century. It was outlined here before, in great detail, under keywords of Heterarchy and Ortegrity and other scary scary words boys and girls, but it was here where it was said that the tri-partisan division of interests in the South Bruce Peninsula is an opportunity. An opportunity for change, for discovery, for growing up and treating Council more like grad students and less like kindergarten, for treating municipal government more like enlightened corporate governance and less like the East India Trading Company. We are no longer Lords vs Serfs, folks, not one of us is more 'enlightened' or 'informed', what we have are perspectives and partials and it is in the composite where the future lay. in the tacit acceptance that win-win is the only game worth playing. And it's not just here, it's Provincial, it's Federal -- the siding with the party-line thinking mathematically must by needs of logic anneal to the stand-off situation that we see EVERYWHERE. Look: It is ubiquitous. Clearly, any fool can see, we need a different strategy of decision making in human societal affairs. You won't fix it by carving the voters differently, you won't solve it renaming your party-lines.
So how's this, dear Council: Let's say we all take a deep breath and say, "OKAY, we ACCEPT that we are all DIFFERENT." There, done. Accept that as a fact, as factual as the length of the beach or the grams of gravel in a 40' stretch of roadworks. We are DIFFERENT, and the difference is GOOD. Vive la difference! There. Done. Next, just sit there, contemplating this: What do we do now?
Sound foolish? Is it any more foolish than making the papers month after month year after year, administration after administration for schoolyard bickering?
