Alec Saunders SquawkBox

A few more links on the Larry Spencer affair, mostly responding to Colby Cosh’s Friday post. 

Casting the first stone? points out that Spencer is a member of parliament, not some old guy holding court at the barber shop.  In this case, the barber’s chair happened to be attached to a microphone.  That’s the upside of being an MP, and also the downside.

In Some old farts are more dangerous than others Wickens also takes Cosh to task for glossing over the fact that Spencer is an MP.

Yes, Cosh was right that Peter McKay’s statements were fatuous and self serving.  Big hairy deal… what politician doesn’t spout that sort of crap occasionally?   Other than that, though, Cosh gets it dead wrong.  Differing views on personal and economic liberty are the reason we have political parties.  Differing views on personal morality are the reason we have different religions.  Larry Spencer’s views on the legality of homosexuality are not a reasonable or legitimate subject for political debate, even if he has only figured out "last week" that homosexuality is a matter of nature, and not nurture.  The fact that he’s old doesn’t forgive his expression of an offensive viewpoint (to most Canadians) in a public forum.

You’re working too hard to be contrarian on this one, Cosh.

More and More, Made in India, from GigaOm: Om Malik’s Broadband Blog.  Five years ago I wrote a letter to the editor of the Seattle Times pointing out that if the US wanted to remain competitive in the software business it was going to have to have a labour force to do that.  The issue at the time was protectionism (when is the issue in Congress ever anything but protectionism?), with various pols in a flap over H1B Visas being granted to Indians to come and work in the US.  There are only two ways to get that labour force — home grow it, or import it.  They did exactly the wrong thing and sent some of the brightest of the software industry’s workforce home to India.  And in the process, they accelerated a cycle of Indian entrepreneurs turning to the homeland to produce new products to sell on the global stage. 

The fallout continues this morning on Larry Spencer’s remarks. The Globe’s Alliance-Tory merger hits roadblock on gays gives a good round-up of what’s going on, and at the end of the article suggests that Stephen Harper may take a harder line with Larry Spencer than he did yesterday.

The Globe also published a Compendium of Alliance Gaffes, which didn’t appear in the online edition.  This short little montage of intolerance leaves one with the impression that the Alliance is simply incapable of change.  The stink that surrounds the Alliance is not going to disappear quickly, even with the merger.

Susan Riley, writing in the Ottawa Citizen, get’s it dead on in Harper’s risky balancing act.  She points out that while he tries to keep the "social conservatives" on side by opposing gay marriage, demography will ultimately marginalize any party that adheres to this position.  Women, young people, and Quebecers are the groups most in favour of legal gay marriages.  Young people are a growing demographic, and in order to be successful a merged conservative party must reach out to women and Quebecers as well.

Harper’s tepid response is probably the thing which has damaged him the most in this episode.  His weak condemnation of Larry Spencer has the fiscal conservatives of the new party scrambling to find a more acceptable candidate in the upcoming leadership race.   The new party is going to have to do everything it can to erase the reputation for bigotry that the Alliance has accumulated.  Harper is simply too weak on these issues to be credible as a leader.

I’ve just discovered Telepocalypse.  Great blog on the telecom industry and what’s happening with VoIP, amongst other things.  Some of the more interesting entries:

Telecom theory. Traditional cost accounting vs creating consumer demand for voice services.

End-to-end is a political statement.  Putting brains into end points and the implications.

Better to have loved and lost.  Encrypted traffic will spell the end of the PSTN.

Holy ****.  Quickie analysis of what it would take for an incumbent telco to keep revenues constant as the cutover to VoIP happens.

From this morning’s National Post, Alliance MP Larry Spencer thinks being gay should be illegal. Later in the day, the Globe and Mail reported that he had resigned his post as Alliance Family issues critic, and Stephen Harper was considering whether to boot him out of caucus and the party altogether.

Spencer said homosexuality was a conspiracy that began in the 1960s and included recruiting young boys in playgrounds and locker rooms to the movement. He said it also included the infiltration of North American’s judiciary, schools, religious community and entertainment industry. And he said it is only a matter of time before polygamy and pedophilia will be legalized.

What rock did this guy crawl out from under? 

The Smug Canadian writes:

Regardless what you think of this stuff, our government has more important things to do. No party can benefit from lunatic members like this; the Alliance would be better off handing a seat to the NDP than to allow people like this to remain in government.

It’s hard not to agree with that.  These comments have members from both the PCs and the Alliance scrambling into damage control mode.  Every possibility exists that without strong action by the Alliance, moderate PCs may vote down the merger agreement.  I’m not sure why Harper is even considering whether to keep him.