What the world needs now....

....is a new blog, like I need a hole in my head (apologies to Cracker, who deserve better.)

What's this thing going to be? I don't really know yet. I have a vision-y thing in my mind about what I'd like it to become, but I'm not entirely sure yet how to describe it, never mind get there. So, in a move I would never recommend to a client, I'm just jumping in, and we'll see what happens.

The main idea is to encourage debate about new ideas for progressives in British Columbia, mainly. I don't buy the hype about "post-partisan" but I would really like to get beyond ideology, right, left or centre. It's more than past time to get beyond demonizing political opponents. When barely half of eligible voters can't be bothered to spend 15 minutes at a polling place on election day, it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see that something's wrong with the way we've been doing things.

I know, I know, we've got a corporate media focused on "maximizing synergies" and cutting costs and not on promoting a free and open debate on political ideas...but that's hardly breaking news. 

I'm no philosopher nor a political scientist (favourite Dave Barrett quote: "There's no such thing as political science...You book a room for 100, and you jam 200 people in. That's political science."). But I do think that politics should be a debate about ideas, not ideologies, and about people, not personalities, and I hope that in some small way this blog can help move us toward that goal.

I welcome comments. I just ask that commenters be civil, I prefer real names to "anonymous" but won't force the issue, and I'm not really interested in message box regurgitation...even if I wrote the message box in the first place!