The latest podcast of Meet the Suppressed: The Bloggers Hotstove has been posted at James Bow's blog. During the discussion we take mild attempts at picking Cabinet Ministers (which breaks
down into a Stockwell Day, yeah or nay debate, with some Garth Turner thrown in for good measure) and at picking a Liberal leader. We also talk briefly about the "urban/rural split" which quickly turns into a discussion of Proportional Representation.
Here is my line in the sand on PR. Any system that involves MPs being picked from Party lists is destined to have even more cronyism and corruption than our system already has and I would never support such a system. My solution to the Party list is to have regional MPs chosen based on which losing candidates had the most votes in that region. Take Alberta for instance. In PR there would probably be four Alberta NDP MPs. The four chosen should be the four who got the most votes in Alberta. That way it is still democratic. However it takes away one of Jack Layton's arguments in favour of PR - affirmative action MP selection.
The panel will be taking next week off for the Super Bowl. Well, more to the point, I am taking the week off for the Super Bowl and since I am the one with the recording ability then the whole panel is off. I hope to be able to off new features for the Hotstove when we come back including the much asked for RSS feed for iTunes (etc.). I also some other advances/improvements in mind but I will have to leave it as a tease for now (sorry Brian, no video!).
