In my latest Loonie Politics column I praise Mikhail Gorbachev for the fundamental decency that led him to permit the peaceful dissolution of Soviet Communism. But I insist that he was no statesman, and no thinker, and that credit for ending the Cold War properly belongs with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and their supporters.
“Economics, for instance, is a collection of occasionally useful truisms. As prophets of the future, economists are about equal to witch doctors.”
Val Sears in Ottawa Sun November 3, 1999 [I do not agree, at least about sound economists, but sometimes I quote something because I consider it an instructive error, including for being widely but wrongly believed]
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the only thing our Prime Minister knows about a “business case” for exporting LNG to Europe is that he’s going to make sure it stays closed.
“Economists’ work is often criticized as being ‘useful as a chocolate teapot,’ The Economist magazine wrote.”
Ottawa Citizen October 25, 1997 (though it has occurred to me since that (a) you could eat a chocolate teapot and (b) what’s really wrong with economists’ work isn’t that it’s not useful, it’s that people don’t want to hear about it... but it’s still a lovely metaphor).
In my latest Epoch Times column I say Ontario’s supposed plan to save our “crumbling” health care system is a bunch of vague arm-waving wishes that the world worked differently than it does that couldn’t be less creative, bold or useful if the people in authority were being dull, timid and pointless on purpose.
“I do not object to people looking at their watches when I am speaking. But I strongly object when they start shaking them to make sure they are still going.”
“William Norman Birkett (1883-1962), British lawyer” quoted in Cy Charney The Salesperson’s Handbook
In my latest Loonie Politics column I welcome the youth of tomorrow’s future back to the dismal reality of today’s schooling with an assignment to write an essay on what they’d really do if they were in charge, and why it would be so different from what they promised and expected to do.
In my latest National Post column I say we can’t rationally decide whether we want “strong” mayors for our cities until we decide what mayors are for, and what they are.