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This city is at the same time very livable and very hard to live in. It is a beautiful city with great people but part of what makes it so interesting, also makes it, well, unnerving.

Their are bicycles everywhere. They are strapped to every tree, locked to each lamp post and crouding every intersection. The handsome (and beautiful) Dutch whizz around the city silently with excellent posture as they make thier rosy cheeked way to their final destination. The other side of this eco-pefect reality (enjoyed by young and old) is that if you are a pedestrian or a motorist, you are either constantly worrying about hitting a quickly moving cyclist or being slammed into by one of Amsterdam’s silent, two- wheeled assasins.

The Canals are perfect. I love them and the presence of water traffic and the possibilities for exploration and transportation are fully exploited. Further, the canals beautify the city and divide the different sections of town from each other so it is all a tidy series of connected worlds. The need for canals on the other hand, combined with the many cyclists and cars (mostly parked) means that the pedestrian is constantly squeezed out of what ever space was available and has to resort to leaping from 1m x 1m brick islands between bike paths and traffic lanes to avoid being hit by one of the aforementioned land hazards of Amsterdam. Add to this the Metro stations and the tram lines and the adage “spoilt for choice” becomes “too many cooks in the kitchen…”. With so many well thought out transportation modes to participate in, the limitations of space and the mutability of human life impinge on the full enjoyment of getting around in this city.

The Red Light District lends the otherwise meticulous Dutch an air of excitement in an otherwise visceral-free zone. Stimulation in the rest of the city will tickle your brain and your purse, even your creative juices but for true excitement, go directly to the amygdallic brain-stem people: the Red Light District. While possibly not visited by choice by Dutch over 25, the Red LightDistrict of Amsterdam is busy, vibrant and, well, full of smoke and, well, windows. The smoke is emmitted by visitors of a youngish demographic and the windows are the dwelling places of sex workers (or tourist landmarks) displaying a wide variety of genetic variability and generally trying to look sexy and bored at the same time. From a citizen’s point of view (and Amsterdam is a city of its citizens) the clientelle this district attracts (think frat boys and soccer hooligans in particular) effectively excludes a portion of the city from use. If I lived in Amsterdam, I would probably never go there.

There you have it. My 2 Euro cents on the subject. Hello to you all from the City that the Dutch took back from the Sea.

A beautiful day in Holland means beautiful pictures in Amsterdam. Here, close to the flower market, a residential building shows off its many windows over the canals in the center of the city.

Blogged with Flock

And Kevin in Calgary (Kevin!) writes his agreement with the Provisio that: “the first person that I thought she looked like was Diana Krall”.

This is true, in addition to Nicole looking like Ali Larter, also looks like Diana Krall. Excellent excuse for my webstats too. At this rate, all we would have to mention is Terri Hatcher and the world will beat a path to my door (blog).

My pal Nicole, pictured here at our wedding in September, has just birthed her first babies! That is right my pluralisticly minded readers! Two little boys Cole and Aiden. Congratulations to you Nicole and your little, squirmy family!

On a related note, I was recently struck by the resemblence between my friend Nicole and the TV actress “Ali Larter” from the (very good) TV show Heroes. As I have all of this nifty tech before me, I present for your comparison a photo of Ali Larter so that you might judge for yourself if the resemblence I reckon they share is in fact or in fact is fiction…

Now I am not bringing up this ancillary topic just to artificially boost my site viewer numbers. Bree and I really disagreed on this until I saw the show again. My mind is made up. Doppelganger. But you know what is funny? I didn’t even ask her yet if the twins were identical…

Well sort of..

While I started thinking about the United Independents in 2002, I did absolutely nothing about it. Daniel Rosen is doing it, right now, in Nevada. I caught word of this in the November issue of Wired Magazine. I could not find the article online so the link is just to the Wired homepage. In the hard copy, the article reads in part,

…But did the founding fathers really mean for America to operate like ancient Greece? Doesn’t representative
democracy mean placing trust in, well, representitatives, who read the fine print for us? “No one in congress ever reads the bills their voting on, ” says Rosen, who trails badly in the polls…” how can you read a bill if you are busy meeting with lobbyists to raise money for your next campaign?

I honestly wish him success. If that good fortune can not happen to him in his bid to win a seat in the US House of Representitives, then I wish him well anyway.

Hey,

Thanks Joss for that last comment. I too am stunned by the small amount of people that are willing to get informed and participate - or even form opinions- on political issues and current events. I can’t help but think however that a riding represented by a “mercenary MP” would get supercharged with participation. Not all issues are important to all people, like stem cell research; maybe a hard core environmentalist or tax reform person would not really care, but those who did care would be way more likely to make their voices heard. And for once, their voices would matter.

Under the circumstances, lets say only 5% or registered voters cared enough to make their views heard on an important issue. With a riding office making information known and urging people to register their opinions, this rises to, lets say 10%. Add those who then “vote” just because they know others with opposing views will (15%) and another portion just for sugar and giggles and you have 20%.

Some issues will not have a big turnout, some will have more. Lots of people may have views or not but the willingness to register one’s views is a low enough bar to determine who is and who is not a stakeholder in any particular issue. If it meant that much to them, they would have given their opinion. I think the kind of turn out you would get with this process would be enough to form a sample of the ridings electorate as a whole. I do stand behind the sampling idea on this. But it is not just about the sampling. It is more like saying “60% of the riding’s voters who were informed and gave a damn, would vote XYZ.”

As for the lack of telephones and other statistical hurdles, while it is a problem for social research, it is not a problem for excercising franchise. The participation is from registered voters. There is a list and the list is verifiable and updatable. Where the list is a bad list, ths process would clean it up. Voters could “vote” via phone, internet, inperson, mail and each vote would be manually and electronically verified to the voter.

On the subject of the Tyranny of the Majority (thank you John Stewart….Mill) I have to say that our system of government already provides it’s citizens with a social contract that makes the Tyranny of the Majority idea impossible. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms means if a riding votes 100% to bar Athiests or Japanese people or Baptists from public office (or etc) it simply does not have the power to override the charter.

The more I talk about it the more I like it. Check out the next post…

Congratulations Paul! Your Emeritus self is too shiny for my eyes!

In response to my post on introducing a political party whose only platform plank is to deliver representation for the riding’s voters, we had insightful comments from both Jocelyn and POW Paul. Paul writes speaks for our favorite Scottish Religious leader: Edmund Burke:

“Your representative owes you not only his industry but his judgment. He betrays rather than serving you if he sacrifices his judgment to your opinion.”

Paul then chimed in with a keen identification of one of the main issues:

One of the finest benefits of the admittedly imperfect system we call representative democracy is that, at its best, it allows us to select people who are smarter than us to create innovative solutions that we might not have thought of…..Do we really want Joe Schmo to decide our positions on medical research, greenhouse gases, and war policy - if he’s not an expert in any of these fields himself?

Jocelyn agrees with Paul, and not just because he is dreamy. She too thinks the MP has an independent role to play:

“I think what Paul thinks too…Particularly when it comes to delicate matters that are contentious, such as assisted suicide or gay marriage or when life is really alive, I think it pays to have people with some expertise behind the votes.”

I have considered the viewpoints you express. We currently do not elect MPS that can boast any particular aptitude in any policy area. At best we vote for MPS for their affiliation to a party leader we think represents our views or have a good bunch of advisers.

This United Independents is essentially a work-around. The current system is build for representative democracy but the views of the people are never expressed. What you may like on social policy in one party, may be balanced against a foreign policy you hold as repugnant.

Each riding office could publish the running poll status on an issue. Those registered to vote in the riding would all have a chance to vote and I believe many would if the process was made easy and multiple voting platforms were made available (Internet, mail, phone, in person). The goal is not “perfect government policy” the goal is accurately representing the views of the constituents.

I hope I can make a post out of these comments alone. Keep em coming!

That is what we’ll call them. They will be united and independent. I am talking about a new political party people. An idea of a generation. A political movement that will change the Canadian Political Landscape forever. The United Independent Party.

Think of it. The perfect synthesis of modern communications technology and the representative political system. The right time and the right place. In each of our 308 ridings, a candidate runs on a simple yet powerful platform: to vote the preferences of thier constituents. The party determines the riding candidates on a basis of background pre-qualifying and riding preference. The party determines a code of conduct and publishes and presents the foundation document of the party, the Social Contract.

The Social Contract is a document that outlines what constituents can expect from their representative and how the system works. Each UI MP agrees as a condition of their membership to vote in the House of Commons as their constituents direct them. The constituent’s line is the party line. The role of the MP is to deliver the opinion of their constituents in Ottawa and maintain a constituency office that both informs the electorate and survey riding opinions. In practice, it works like this:

As a vote nears in the House of Commons the constituency office educates the riding on the issues at hand. The information is presented in an unbiased way and opinion pieces are presented from the various stakeholders. The office collects the opinions of the voters in the constituents based on the voters list and standard statistical principles or reliability. The MP then votes the will of the constituents in the house. If the opinion of the riding is not determinable through statistical significance or is against the charter of rights and freedoms, the MP will either abstain from the vote (or vote their personal preference I have not decided).

Thus the will of the people is realized in the legislative home of our nation. Well, I’ll think about it some more.