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Andrew Kitching's avatar

A very interesting article. He’s right about parliament though. Full of mediocrities on the back benches, and despised by the executive. Look at Sunak waiting until the recess before announcing his break with the net zero consensus, and the Speaker bloviating his protest.

Stewart is right about the need for electoral reform.

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Frank Sterle Jr's avatar

Western governance is heavily steered and therefore disadvantaged by corporate interests, sometimes through economic intimidation. Meanwhile, the biggest of businesses are getting unaccountably even bigger, defying the very spirit of government rules established to ensure healthy competition by limiting conglomeration. ...

As it is, in Canada corporate lobbyists are known to write bills for our governing representatives to vote for and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time writing them up. I believe the practice has become so systematic here that it seems those who are aware of it, including mainstream news-media political writers, don’t find reason to publicly discuss or write about it.

Nations like China, on the other hand, govern while maintaining control over its own industry/business sector thus market, which may give it an overall trade/relations edge over Western countries.

Anyone who doubts the potent persuasion of huge business interests here in the West need to consider how high-level elected officials can become crippled by implicit/explicit threats to transfer or eliminate jobs and capital investment, thus economic stability, if corporate ‘requests’ aren’t met.

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