Creating a Baby Boom. Not. #nlpoli

Flip over to the Occupy NL blog and you’ll see a critique of some recent SRBP posts on the provincial government’s bonus cash for live babies program.

Let’s summarise the critique and then go from there.  While this summary will get you through this post, to be fair and to make sure that nothing gets missed, go read the full post with all the charts included at Occupy NL.

The author takes issue with the SRBP approach in the initial post in the December series, which looked at the total number of births. He contends that we should look at “the average number of live births a woman can expect in her lifetime based on age-specific fertility rates in a given year.  Secondly, his analysis doesn't acknowledge that declining birth rates is a trend nation-wide and that provincial rates should be compared to what is happening in other provinces.”

Middle Earth Safety Briefing

Air New Zealand capitalizes on Peter Jackson and his love of Tolkien:

-srbp-

Attitudes to Guns #nlpoli

Her pistol is concealable with any outfit choice.

-srbp-

Top 10 Posts for 2012 #2012

Here they are, folks, the 10 most-read posts of 2012 at SRBP.

1. When will she quit?  Now that Muskrat Falls is sanctioned, how long will it be before Kathy Dunderdale resigns?
2. Labrador mining and Muskrat Falls  JM’s commentary on the relationship between Muskrat Falls and mining projects in Labrador.
3. S-92 Incident – March 2012  CNLOPB reported an incident offshore with a Cougar S-92.  SRBP pointed out what the incident was about.  Three days later, Cougar decided to replace the gearboxes.
4. Disappeared Deputy Hired in 2011 as deputy minister of natural resources, Diana Dalton vanished in 2012 without a mention from the provincial government.  What happened to her? 
5. Up her nose, sideways  Kathy Dunderdale doesn’t like someone named JM who has been cutting the guts out of Muskrat Falls.
6. Brian Peckford’s memoir now on sale
7. Gil  Bennett won’t re-tweet this post  The water management agreement controversy
8. Tone, standards and political suicide Since 2003, the provincial Conservatives have operated an American style of attack politics.  “If the Tories don’t change the tone, if they keep the same low standards for politics that [Paul] Lane keeps displaying, then they can expect to keep suffering the death by a thousand and one self-inflicted cuts.”
9. 10 reasons to oppose Muskrat Falls  Simon Lono tweeted ‘em.  SRBP reprinted ‘em.  Readers loved ‘em.
10. Sex and the cabinet  “In Kathy Dunderdale’s cabinet, men run all the big economic portfolios while women run the big social policy portfolios.”

-srbp-

Mars Attacks!

Add this one to the New Year’s wish list:  coming in 2013 from Moebius.

-srbp-

Fertility Rates: a different perspective #nlpoli

Via Occupy Newfoundland and Labrador,  a different take on the success of the bootie call from the one presented in this corner recently.

-srbp-

If you’re serious about ideas… #nlpoli

then get serious about blogging.

From the Harvard Business Review:

Writing is still the clearest and most definitive medium for demonstrating expertise on the web. But as thought leaders like Gary Vaynerchuk have shown with video blogging and fellow HBR blogger Mitch Joel with podcasting (i.e., audio blogging), as long as your content is rich and thoughtful, you can still build up a massive following and reputation regardless of your channel. In an information-hungry world, there will always be a need for expert content. And there will always be more readers and "retweeters" than there will be creators.

If you want to have an impact, you might as well be the one setting the agenda by blogging your ideas.

-srbp-

Not with a bang, but a whimper #nlpoli

The longest filibuster in Newfoundland and Labrador legislative history ended quietly Saturday morning.

This was the second filibuster this year and the  Telegram’s legislative reported posed a simple question via Twitter before the House closed.

What does it say about current Newfoundland and Labrador political culture that we’ve had two such filibusters in a single year?

Normally a filibuster is an opposition tactic to hold up a government proposal the opposition doesn’t like.  That was the case with the Bill 29 filibuster in the spring.

As it turns out, the Muskrat Falls filibuster was different things for different parties.

JM 6 - Two Variants of the Interconnected Option

Volume 6 - 2 Variants

-srbp-

The Teens and 40s #nlpoli

As the last instalment in our survey of birth rates, let’s take a look at the group 15 to 19 and the other end of the scale for statistics, women aged 40-44 at the time of the child’s birth.

The blue line is the number of births to mothers between ages 15 and 19.  From 810 births in 1991 down to 321 in 2010.  Note, though that the low point on the blue line is 2005 at 254.  Since then the number of births to mothers between 15 and 19 has risen steadily.  The rate is lower, though:  one in 32 in 1991 compared to one in 46 in 2010.

The numbers of babies born to women between 40 and 45 remains relatively very low.  Still, it has doubled in the past two decades from the 52 births in 1991 to the 100 that occurred in 2010.

The red line is the births for mothers aged 35 to 39.  It’s there for comparison.  In 1991, women in their late 30s gave birth to 387 babies.  That is just less than half the number of children born to mothers 19 and under.  Two decades later the teenagers are not having as many babies and the older women are having more.  Notice, however, that the 2010 moms  in the 35 to 39 category still were not having as many babies as the teenagers 20 years earlier.

The West Wing: the Stackhouse Filibuster #nlpoli

 

-srbp-

The Dam Filibuster - Mr. Smith goes to Washington #nlpoli

-srbp-

The 30-Something Birth Rates #nlpoli

[Note: This is a revised version of the original post.  The earlier one  was based on the wrong tables]

The 2007 provincial government bounty on live births appears to have had little impact on trends in birth rates among the 20-somethings in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The same is true for the 30-somethings.

The 20-Something Birth Rates #nlpoli

As we told you a couple of weeks ago, it doesn’t look like the provincial government’s policy of paying cash for live births produced any improvement in the birthrate in the province except for the year they announced the bonus cash.

When you look at the birth rate by age of mother some other interesting things appear.

Let’s start with the 20-somethings.  Note:  this is a revised version of the post.  The original post was based on the wrong Statistics Canada tables.

Your future is in their hands: Filibuster edition #nlpoli #scoutsdishonour

Government House Leader @King_Darin  doesn't think the standard of debate during the current filibuster over the Muskrat Falls bills comes up to his high standards.

Maybe he's right.

Here's King's fellow Conservative Steve Kent in a picture taken in the House during debate last night.  Kent  was tweeting the crap out of his claim than another member had "taken the Lord's name in vain."  He snapped this picture, tweeted it and then disappeared it faster than a ministerial briefing note under Bill 29.

If Kent was sincerely upset about the remark he should have raised a question of privilege in the House.  Instead, he went to Twitter to fart around and generally make a mockery of the legislature.

Well, Kent wasn't quick enough, as it seems:

The Internet never forgets.

-srbp-

h/t to IP Freely

JM 7 - Bill 61: a relapse of the free market society #nlpoli

Bill 61 Relapse

Perspective #nlpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale likes to pretend that the critics haven’t been able to find a problem with Muskrat Falls.

Well, that’s simply not true. 

They’ve found tons of problems with the project that Kathy Dunderdale is finishing on behalf of Danny Williams.  Dunderdale either doesn’t understand the project at all on any level,  has deluded herself into believing what she says is true even when it obviously isn’t (the PUB loves Muskrat Falls!),  or she just doesn’t give a rat’s bollocks about anything. 

That’s pretty much what it comes down to.  Take your pick but that’s it:  one of those three

Regardless of any of that, though, you can be assured of one thing.  Muskrat Falls is not a very good idea.  It is not the lowest cost option for taxpayers. 

Absolutely. 

Without question. 

Not the lowest cost option.

A closed market #nlpoli

The provincial Conservatives will guarantee that taxpayers in Newfoundland and Labrador will be forced to pay for Muskrat Falls no matter what happens to oil prices or with new technology.  They are closing the electrical markets on the island portion of the province so that consumers and businesses in Newfoundland can only buy electricity from Nalcor.

Under  changes to the Electrical Power Control Act, 1994 currently being debated in the House of Assembly, the same provincial Conservatives who fought for years for open access to markets outside the province will close the electricity markets on the island portion of the province to competition.

Section 14.1 (1) of the new bill allows that Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro – a Nalcor subsidiary – will have the exclusive right to “supply, distribute and sell electrical power or energy to a retailer or industrial customer in the province.”

Retailers or industrial customers will only be allowed to purchase electrical power or energy from NL Hydro.  Another clause of the bill prohibits companies from developing electrical power on their own land for their own use.

Anticlimax #nlpoli

So it turns out the provincial government is going to build the Muskrat Falls project.

There’s a total shock.

The one thing that came screaming out of Monday night’s extravaganza was the desperate intensity of it all.  The longer the thing has dragged on the more extreme the rhetoric has become, the grander the claim of spectacle, and the shorter the relevance of the language to what is going on in the province.

If they say it often enough, the government and its backers might just believe half of it.

-srbp- 

Dundercast tonight #nlpoli

The Premier will announce something this evening at 6 PM.

If she announces that cabinet has already sanctioned the project, no one will be surprised.

If she announces that the project is already sanctioned, then the odds rocket up that this post from a couple of weeks ago will become the big story of the coming weeks and months. 

Think of the post as a bit premature, that’s all.

Tom Marshall already confirmed he’s leaving.

And they are talking cuts and layoffs again.

When will she go?

-srbp-