Mary Poppins is Screwed

Imagine it's the year 1910. You are a middle aged white man, a financier rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams, married with two beautiful children. Only, there's a problem: you haven't the time or desire to raise these lecherous offspring. And the last nanny just up and quit for no reason! What is the solution? The sensible course of action is to use your freemason connections and perform a ritual to summon a powerful wind demon who can look after your kids for you!

That is the premise of the epic Disney tale, Mary Poppins.

I didn't read the books, but based on the film, you could argue that Poppins is some sort of unknown mystical creature, or a witch, but let's face it: there is something more sinister to her. She is incredibly vain, unyieldingly demanding, and all too interested in shaping the minds of neglected children. Although the movie is positive and upbeat, awash in everything Disney, I just ask you to consider the possibility that the story is somewhat different than how it was presented, along with unanswered questions. How did this family become so fabulously wealthy? Was it by honest means? Did they have help? Is it possibly to be involved with the highest level of banking and financing without being influenced by powerful organizations such as Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Gnomes of Zurich?

The father/financier, listed in the credits as "Mr. Banks" (what a clever name), never indicates having any connection with Poppins, and doesn't talk to his family about anything related to it, besides the obvious discomfort that comes with trying to hire a nanny. But why would he? He hangs out at the bank and Royal Exchange all day with stuffy old men, I wouldn't put it past him to put on some robes and invoke some dark rituals involving pentacles, silver daggers, silly dancing, that sort of thing. Probably a lot more fun than hanging out with his family, too.

If you are willing to accept, even ever so remotely, this possibility, then please continue reading. I proudly present to you:

Mary Poppins: Demon of the Wind, Harvester of Lost Souls

Mary Poppins flies in on an umbrella and blows all of the competing nannies,  who have been waiting in line patiently all day, away to God only knows where using wind magic, then goes in to the house and beguiles the dad in to the nanny position they have been advertising. The undertext implies she was responding to the ad which was made up by them and quickly torn up and discarded by their father. But what better way to win over their trust than convince them she is on their side? She is no lesser servant of evil, and immediately sees the weakness of the one who summoned her, their father, immediately planning her revenge on those who would dare to demand her services.

The action begins as she shows off her wicked power to the children, and that they too can invoke the harmless seeming magic.

They get on with their day and head down to the park where they meet up with Poppins' friend, a homeless drug addict. Dick Van Dyke steals the show, dancing, singing, cracking jokes; the total package. He is always ridiculously happy about nothing, anything and everything, and he really really likes to dance. He participates gleefully in Poppins' induced hallucinations, right at home with his cartoon animals and animated carnival machines. It is unclear with his drug of choice is, since crack and meth haven't been invented yet, but it could be any mix of laudanum, alcohol or some form of ephedrine. Here he is trying to walk in a straight line.

They pop into the chalk drawing and do all sorts of wacky shit, including driving some horses on the merry go round and having them pop off and ride around. The interesting part here is where Poppins animates merry go round horses. Everyone else's horse has their eyes open, but Mary's horse has its eyes closed, as if sleeping (see picture at the beginning of the article). If anyone has any theories as to what this signifies, I'd be interested in hearing your ideas.

They sing and dance some more with some cartoons, and eventually the magic journey/hallucination ends and they head home. The kids are too excited to sleep, and Mary denies that anything "magical" ever happened. The kids get upset but she easily sings them to sleep with her siren song.

The next day a fucking dog comes to tell Mary her uncle has laughed himself up into his high ceiling loft. As you can expect, hilarity ensues. When they get home Mr. Banks is able to clear the cobwebs of her charming away and attempts to get Poppins under control, but is no match for her dark magicks. She resumes uncoiling her corrupting essence over the children by telling them about a bag lady that feeds pigeons. They fall asleep again, their souls tainted a shade darker.

The next day they head to the Bank, with Mister...Banks to make a deposit, but her influence is still felt - the children rebel against their weak excuse for a father and his masonic pals. The evil power surround them like a dirty, foul blanket to such an extent that they induce panic and confusion in the crowds of patrons nearby, causing everyone to withdraw their savings. The masons sense something is amiss and dispatch policemen to capture the children, but they slip away, eventually finding an obliterated Dick Van Dyke who has been getting high inhaling fumes while cleaning chimneys all day.

He stumbles them to safety and then decides to clean the chimney in their house, which they, reunited with Mary, who rewards their bad behaviour by having them all fly up to the roof, wander around, climb oily smoke stairs, sing and dance with a bunch of dirty men. Finally, the neighbour, an eccentric ex-military man who has clued in to Poppins' shenanigans, shoots fireworks at them, likely blessed by the Bishop of Canterbury.

Meanwhile, Mr. Banks is in deep shit with his buddies over the chaos and confusion caused by his children. He knows he needs to do something, and so tries one final time to fire Mary.

Still no match for her, she has turned his mind to limp, misshapen putty. He heads to the Royal Exchange to meet his fate. I know they have been talking about the bank the entire movie, but you can tell it is the Royal Exchange, not the bank, by comparing these photos.

Symbolically they break his hat and his umbrella. As you probably recall, Mary Poppins also has an umbrella that she uses to fly with. Clearly there is some connection between the Poppins entity and this stuffy, secrative, old organization. They fire Banks and he finally snaps.

This is where the directors' cut ends. Of course it is a Disney movie, so they somehow tack a happy ending on this, for some reason they just forget about it and everyone is happy and still rich. Mary leaves, fully broken from the weak enchantment summoning her in the first place, knowing his children will grow up to be vile minions of darkness.

Happy Days is Screwed: Season 2 Episode 13

In this series, I attempt to demonstrate that the show Happy Days follows the concept of the fantasy world of the 1950's United States, and is full of pro-US ideology and rife with heavy handed statements about morality. Happy days was made from Season 1 starting in 1974. Oh yeah, and so you don't miss anything, the clips are played at 1/3rd speed, and so are screwed, as in the technique used by DJ Screw to acquire a unique style and feel. He was called DJ Screw (RIP 2000) because he used a screw to modify the speed on his turntable. I love his hip hop mixes, and I love things slowed down. What follows is the summary of:

SEASON 2 EPISODE 13: Fonzie's Getting Married

In this episode the Fonz makes a big announcement; he, the teenage Fonz (they are never clear on his age but he is in the same grade as Potsie and Richie and Ralph, who are in high school) is getting married. The gang has a huddle with him in his office:

Yeah, that's right, the Fonz thinks that men should only marry virgins. This becomes a point of contention when, uh-oh, turns out Howard (AKA "Chips" Cunningham) saw her strip at a hardware convention. If this doesn't sound like something a family man like Howard would do, you don't know Howard very well. To find out for sure if it is her, he will recognize her laugh:

Is Howard actually joking, or just explaining what he thinks about bums? Well now Howard's worst fears have been confirmed.  He has to tell Richie:

Eventually they tell Fonzie, who naturally doesn't believe them. They go to the "strippers", 1950's style, to scope out the action:

We never find out what happened to them when he caught up to her. Howard sizes up The Lone Stripper and runs for it:

Fonz drinks in the reality of the situation, man's up and gets over it. Richie has other things on his mind:

And Howard is also busy:

At least Marion knows how to have a good time.

Are Guns N Roses still relevant?

Sometimes, I feel like the last person alive under 40 who likes Guns N Roses. Maybe it's just the nostalgia, good memories hanging out in my friends basement with Use Your Illusions on repeat. Or eleven years old getting on the full school bus awkwardly looking for an available seat while Axl Rose screamingly inquires: Do you know where you are?

Yes Axl, yes I do know where I am.  I'm in the jungle, I'm a small child, I'm going to die.

I grew up in a redneck-y tourist trap of a town, where my peers had aspirations of making good money at local Lumber Yard so they can afford to drive around big trucks and do massive amounts of cocaine. A noble calling, but my stick-in-the-ass type religious upbringing told me that was all kinds of wrong - combined with my dislike of the smallness of the area's mentality (I learned later there are many many places that are exactly the same - this is the world we live in). I left that place and never wanted to go back, but I never stopped liking Guns N Roses. I've been revisting them, as I do periodically, but with so much video footage compiled, I could see lots of different performances of their songs live, and interviews at different points of their career - mostly with Slash, I think Axl pulled permission on a lot of his personal footage, or never allowed it in the first place.

Chinese Democracy has some songs I do quite enjoy, but obviously lacks the visceral feel of the riffs in Appetite and the Use Your Illusions. Obviously the earlier life stuff is great, and much more enjoyable compared to more recent shows (2013), which is too processed and has no viscera, but doesn't sound bad at all. Since the band broke up, and Chinese Democracy took a very long time indeed, most people have forgotten about Guns N Roses.  Even my friend who was a huge fan has not even given Chinese Democracy a test listen. Without Slash, the band is nothing to him. While they left most of their fanbase heartbroken, they are still interesting to check out, and the songs I used to like still sound great to me.

I've been paying special attention, first, to Axl's dance moves - he sings about being super tough through the stories of his life and being on the streets, all the while wearing more ambiguously tough clothing (black wifebeater, leather pants, bandana). With all these signs, symbols, mannerisms of a badass, he still somehow manages to happily bop about the stage, wiggling like the bait bucket at a fishing derby, chirping in a friendly manner to the audience about something that happened to him recently, or someone he dislikes, and sometimes just general words of encouragement and camaraderie - like any good host. His on stage presence doesn't quite match up, but that was a good thing.  He was "your" (the audience's) buddy, at least for the time he was up there. Sure he trash talked people on stage, but he hated on "that guy" who doesn't get down with the likes of us. Then he would wiggle some more and kick a cowboy boot heel at you to let you know he was having a good time.

Something else remarkable, and worth you and I knowing: apparently the scene in Los Angeles was so competitive for bands playing in the area, that the clubs would not hire you - instead you had to raise enough money to buy the entire roll of tickets for your show ($500) and sell as many as you could so you could recoup the money. They had to bust their asses promoting themselves enough to sell out the tickets, by flyering, postering, and probably a whole lot of selling to people they knew.  This is on top of writing songs and playing really tightly, consistently well. Schmoozing and self promoting meant their 24/7 party lifestyle was work of a sort, at least in that critical period before they made it big.  They needed to play those shows to prove what they could do, and their show got big enough with the LA music scene crowd that when the record execs put feet on the ground to find out what was going to be the next thing, they were pretty much already in.

Another key factor to their huge appeal stated over and over was their authenticity. They sang about partying as hard as a human could party, but at the same time completely different from another famous partier Hunter S. Thompson - Never anywhere do interviewers ever verbally make a connection there, but their lifestyle influenced their creative and commercial work in some similar ways. Axl's lyrics on Appetite sounded like they could have been written on a napkin, hiding out at a diner in the early morning to make sure whatever fallout from the night before had blown over. There was, and is, always an introspective aspect to it I like, while not particularly glorifying drugs (but still singing about them because they were such a big part of their lives), and simultaneously celebrating while also hating on women. It has an emotional charge, is all very believable and sound very much like their lives.  This, it has been said, is what lead to their broad appeal and gave them a more fantastic sound than other bands of the time, where they are spilling their heart and guts out to you, not only on the album, but every single time they performed. They are a rags-to-riches rockstar American story tale.

Guns N Roses has a lot in common with Michael Jackson.  Their super fast, super huge rise to fame and massive audiences, with a huge marketing campaign and promotional war machine. While they had a don't ask don't tell policy regarding drugs, and I'm sure they dressed themselves, the promoters controlled all the other aspects of promoting, tours, stage setups and keeping the hype up. The way they were run between the two sets of artists worked pretty much the same way.

Michael Jackson drew on a lot of the style and bad boy imagery, having slash-style guitar solos, taking bits of the scene and aesthetic following Guns N Roses Hollywood strip cultural scene when they got signed. MJ took it in his own direction, incorporating it with other elements he liked as well as the dancing and performance elements, instead taking it to the level of sterile art form. His look and visual style are captivating, but also belong in the "History" museum he created for himself, even as you were hearing it for the first time. Guns n Roses differed in the sense that they seemed to express themselves in a singular sense where they were distinct individuals who seemed to know who they are, while Michael seemed to flow quickly from one fad to the next, dipping in to so many spheres of influence, the constant sense of change seemed to be the only singular defining factor throughout his career.

Still, by the time the Use Your Illusions albums were created, conflict as well as differences emerging between what band members wanted had begun to disrupt their sound. Without the unifying street influence defining themselves and their music, Axl wrote about more abstract concepts about his life that had been caused by fame, wealth and unimaginable influence. The sound was good, but very different, and I think a certain amount of change is reasonable for any band to stay relevant past a few years. However, when you think about what the large part of their fanbase was, it isn't hard to imagine them being disenchanted with something that forced them to think complicated thoughts. Use Your Illusions still had enough talent put in to it by really hard working band members, but according to the history of the time, the differences had fractured the band enough to be irrepairable. Although fans wouldn't learn until years later what had been going on, insiders say you can hear the sounds of the band breaking up in those albums.  There are a lot of melodic, sad, or at least introspective songs, again what they were actually going through. They had put everything in to those albums, and they were not able to follow it up. I think even if they had tried to make another appetite, nobody would have liked it.  Unless they had all forsaken their vast wealth and gone back to living on the streets in L.A. There's no substitute for authenticity.

It's also difficult to measure by today's yardstick, considering how little longevity modern artists have in terms of popularity. Guns N Roses can still draw large crowds (at least internationally) by name recognition alone, but will the next big rock band have such an fascinating rise and blowout? It is the stuff of myths and legends.

Dario Argento vs Hitchcock

You can't read anything about Dario Argento without someone spouting the rhetoric that he is the "Italian Hitchcock".  While both of these directors made an impressive number of films and broke new ground in filming techniques and visual aesthetic, if you really sit down and compare their careers side by side, you'll see it isn't good comparison or even an adequate comparison.  I was prompted to look deeper in to Argento's career when I decided to watch Dracula 3D, an unbearable budgeted badly made scary movie.  Previous to that I had seen Suspiria and Inferno, definitely 2 of his best films.  Bigger than those old films with strong contrasting colors and delicate, luxurious imagery that fills your eyes to the brim with texture and color.  D3D had some of that, but lacked more noticably in aspects where Argento had a previously bad track record in like plot, character development, and the ability to act.

As the movie went on, it became very apparent that Suspiria and Inferno were not an indication of where he had taken his career.  Generally great directors are only given larger and larger budget as even their very name draws ticket sales.  But this movie, Dracula's green screened castle was flat and brightly lit and monster transformations would look scarier if they were a hand puppet.  No money to even afford an aesthetic, his hallmark and what made him famous.  If you sum up his career in a scatter plot based on production budget and box office earnings, you get shapes like this:

The blue line is the quickly cresting and dipping budgets, while the slouching red L is the money his movies took in over the years.  Not at all flattering.  Compare that to hitchcock, who made movie studios ungodly amounts of cash, with the ridiculously peaking Psycho making inflation adjusted earnings of $476,516,129, that's almost half a billion dollars.

The graph for Hitchcock STARTS with one extra zero on the first number of the Y-axis. 

Next take a look at scores based on Rotten Tomatoes scoring.  Again, pay attention to the trend lines that give voice to each man's career.  In both sets of graphs Argento is red & blue and Hitchcock greys.

At the Whim of Movie Execs: The Rise and Fall in Horror Movies

The graph below shows the number of horror movies made in the US as a proportion of all movies made worldwide.  The horror movies (blue line) may not be completely accurate because it was just my physical count off of Wikipedia, but it is still useful to measure yearly changes.  After the great surge in all movies made worldwide in 1981-1982, the trend is a slow, steady increase.  Horror movies stay most consistently around the 30 movie mark, even before the 1980's.  The relative proportions show the peak in Horror movies made in the US in 1987 and the much more enormous movie explosion in 2008 - 2009.  Interestingly, the latter happened right during the subprime mortgage crisis, which you can visibly see by the dip in movies made worldwide.  This also shows the rise in the torture porn subgenre of horror movies, initiated by Saw (2004) but kicking off a massive surge in horror movie making.  This surge is the 5-6 times as large as the horror movie average!  Even Scream (1996), the largest grossing slasher film of all time, did not kick off any kind of significant increase in movie production in this genre.  I would guess when one movie is successful enough, it draws attention and they try to pounce on the trend to make more money, but this is not always the case.  So why did Saw cause a renaissance in horror movie making in this instance, but Scream did not? 

Shortly thereafter it looks like this money making could be sustained ( as the market was saturated), audiences tired and moved on.  In 2013 actually the lowest number of horror movies were made in the US since 1979.  Most of those movies are really terrible anyway, but I'd like to think that through sheer numbers the chances of an unintentionally good movie was increased.  In 2008-09 I liked Cloverfield, Pontypool and Drag Me to Hell, and that's about it.

The other spike in 1987 represents the peak and subsequent exhaustion in the popularity of slasher movies.  Another important landmark and also resulting in audience boredom as the movies get worse and worse.  Perhaps Scream was seen as an exception to the slasher genre since they could not return to making more pointless slasher movies, but a one-time (read: 4 movies and counting) self reflective critique and rejuvination of slashers was acceptable, but could not be capitalized on outside of that series.  I wonder if someone will eventually come out with a similar satirical look at torture porn similar to what Scream did with slashers.

Looking at the LOG function of the data looks pretty interesting as well.  For total movies made, it shows a steady rate that movies are generally being made at since 1981-1982.  The log total horror movies made, however, is too complex for me to really comment on.  The spikes in 1987, 2008, 2009 are still obvious, but all I can say at this point is that the rate that the US makes horror movies fluctuates pretty wildly, and I have no idea why.  Obviously budgetary concerns in funding are based on a combination of "good" scripts combined with the greed of the production companies for where they think they can make money.

So let's take a look at some top grossing horror films in the past few years.  We are trying to figure out why the dramatic drop in horror movies in 2013.  That year was actually pretty good for horror movies, with the Conjuring made a ridiculous $318 million dollars.  Contrast this with Scream ($173 million) and Saw ($103 million).  So what prompted the cut in horror movie production?  It doesn't seem immediately obvious by looking at 2012 numbers.  Prometheus made over $400 million dollars, but had a huge production cost ($130 million) and was part of the Alien series, possibly the most profitable of Sci-Fi series'.  Also while it is technically horror, you could argue that the fact that it was horror was not a factor in the draw of audience. 

 

Pair that with the 2nd most profitable horror movie of 2012 (Paranormal activity 4, $142 million) and you could see that may not add up to being useful.  I actually don't fully know the film cycle, and someone in the industry could correct me, but I imagine there is a 1 or 2 year window generally in movie production.  If we look further back to 2011 things start to fit together a bit better.  Paranormal Activity 3 grossed $105 million, but if you discount it due to the fact it is a series, the next movie Insidious (positively reviewed and considered a success, I haven't seen it) grossed $54 million, a huge step down even from 1990's standards.  If movies on average have a 2 year cycle from green light to theatre release, then the numbers seem to fit.

What the fuck is Obama doing?

Ever since the State of the Union address I have seen a lot of hate for Obama.  From the US it is hitting him from every direction in the States, but I am under the impression no one outside the US seems to care much.  If I were to sum up every article I read on the topic, it's that people are disappointed that there has been no real substantial change which I guess people think was his main promise and not just a campaign slogan or catch phrase.  You, the American that voted for him, thought he actually would do something besides maintain the status quo, but that is not something he is able to do, because he is not calling the shots, really.  People were so severely disappointed in Obama's health plan thing, it almost seems like it was purposely done badly to put people off of the idea of affordable healthcare.  Pharmaceutical companies are in the business of making as much money as possible, and they have a powerful lobby in government.  What the fuck is with the lobby system?  It seems to me like it doesn't matter who is in presidency because they are just supposed to do the dirty work of telling people they are fucked and there is nothing anybody can do whups.

However, in a true effort to understand Obama's position and arguments I have to go to the heart of Democrat sentiment: Jon Stuart's Daily show.  I will watch ALL of this weeks (January 27-30 2014) episodes and see what I can learn.  Ok, wish me luck.

Hi ok I'm back, The Daily Show was not very helpful, unfortunately, but should not be a surprise, they just said a bunch of nice things about Obama and that everyone else is just upset because he tried to work with congress and got shut down and now he is evoking Executive Order to get things done because he just don't give a fuck anymore.  When interviewed, Nancy Pelosi could not explain why they could not get a proper health care website set up.

I guess it sums up what I already said.  They just have no explanation, and just nothing, nothing to say about it.  Nobody has answers and a plan to deal with problems effectively, isn't that the main problem with government?

Collaborative Leadership and Proportional Representation

It seems to me that people are sick of Canada's government as it stands today, and not just because of the Conservative Party of Canada.  While there has been more unrest  about the government than there has been since the Conservatives took power.  While people acknowledge the Conservatives are governing horribly in almost every measure imaginable, the other major 2 parties aren't trusted either, for legitimate reasons (previous scandals, lack of experience).  Still there is little talk of changing the underlying system of government we currently use.  Alternatives have existed with successful present day examples of governing democratically, without any one party having total control.  I suppose there are still a lot of big unanswered questions when it comes to proportional representation as a legitimate form of government.  Questions like, why do coalitions have a bad reputation in Canada?  Why are majority governments seen as a good thing?  What would collaborative leadership look like?

Proportional representation is an extension of the parliamentary government system originating in Britain in 1707 which is used by many countries today, particularly those of the British commonwealth.  In this government system MPs are elected in proportion to the percentage of votes that a political party receives, resulting in several political parties working together to form a government, because no party can form a majority on their own, and encourages many small instead of consolidated to big parties that don't really know where they stand on most issues.  The government lasts until the next election or until the parties can no longer work together and the government collapses.  At this point a new coalition must be formed or a new election commences.   This makes for better, balanced laws because no one party can ram through legislation without serious debate and revisions, so people must reach consensus, more closely matching what the countries' citizens actually want and expect from their government. 

In fact, the vast majority of countries that use the British parliament system actually now use coalition governments, including the majority of European and Asian countries, many more than use the winner-take-all dominant party system that is in use by Canada and the U.S.  And in fact in Canada a coalition was actually used back in 1864, so it's not like Canada has never employed this system before.  It is strange though that now in the collective thought, coalition is seen by many as bad.

The main criticism of coalition is that the government seems self destructive and ineffective, unable to carry out their responsibilities of passing legislation and keeping the country functioning.  But we know from our own experience that our supposed "sound, stable majority" has done nothing in the past year but ram through an omnibus bill that no sane person would normally have passed without debate and revision.  Not only has the Canadian Conservative government shut down democratic dialogue by using their heavy handed majority to ram through legislation, but since they have been accused of wrongdoing and scandal, they have blocked and prevented efforts to answer questions about what was really going on regarding the scandal, and they are shutting out the media and other political parties, even to the point of proroguing parliament 3 different times since they have been in power.  There are also many things the government has done that most people are not even aware of, such as the 2013 FIPA agreement, containing guarantees that Chinese buyers would have the legal right to sue Canada in private settlement of inhibition to its activities by that government (including provincial or municipal for whom the federal government would be liable).  Does that seem like a more effective government to you?  The main obstacle is the parties need to learn to work together, but is that a bad thing?

Although I don't know the answer for certain, it seems like many Canadians are opposed to a coalition government because they don't want to think about and deal with government and politics as little as possible, and keep it out of their day to day life.   With coalitions they would expect things to be more uncertain, and politics would be more in your face.  This is the only reason I can think of, other than that Conservative ads may have just beaten their opinion in to the collective consciousness of Canadians. 

What we should want from our government, any government, is that they follow through with promises they make during the election, to research, discuss, debate critical issues and current events to improve the functioning of our country.  We obviously want our governments to be transparent and accountable, and what better to hold people to account than the other parties who at least share in more power, when their hands are not tied and they are able to access the resources they need to answer questions and solve problems as they arise such as the senate scandal.  Imagine how differently that would have played out if all three political parties took a share in power and were able to properly conduct inquiries and come to a consensus on what the problem is and how best to approach and solve those problems.  Shutting down parliament solves no problems only kicks the can down the road when the issue has then snowballed further.  The senate scandal would not have got to the point where people are writing cheques to cover incorrect expenses, because the audit would be conducted sooner and senators held to public scrutiny sooner.  The problem with majority governments is that it only serves one group - the political party that holds the power.  We need to move power away from parties, because they do not truly represent the will of Canadians, just one aspect of it, and twists away from doing the will of Canadians to serving their own interests.  Political majorities do not work effectively because the government essentially becomes the political party ideology, and no one persons beliefs are completely in line 100% with a political parties ideology.  Only by having the parties hold each other in check and to account can you be sure that what they are doing is on the level and serves the public benefit.

Coalition government falls under the greater umbrella of an emerging management concept in business - collaborative leadership.  For example, Valve software has no management hierarchy, and what does that do?  It decentralizes power, encourages creative thought so people are more likely to experiment.  The ultimate form of collaborative leadership is to the point where power has been distributed to voter participation.  With massive amounts of technological power already being in the hands of the average person in smartphones and computing, the next logical step is to increase voter participation.  With an established, secure system of ensuring one vote per registered citizen, online referenda where people can at least voice their opinion to MPs and at most actually vote on issues, similar to Swiss voting system of direct democracy.  Done via smart phone and streamlined to accommodate constant verified voting on all issues, the current technology can minimize costs and our billion dollar spy agency can provide counter intelligence to prevent hacking, and include CSIS involvement in doing something actually useful.

In 2011 CPC was found in contempt of parliament, and the government fell, but were then re elected to a majority government.  Why did this happen?  This is an important question and needs to be addressed first before we can begin to mend