Kim Darroch, British ambassador to the United States, resigned after Donald Trump lashed out at him on Twitter describing him as "wacky" and a "pompous fool" after leaked documents revealed the envoy's dim view of Trump's administration.The Canadian Press
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Sir Kim’s exit, recycled?
Re British Ambassador To U.S. Resigns In Wake Of Leaked E-Mails (July 11): All ambassadors to the U.S. – except, of course, those of the Israelis, Russians, Chinese and Saudis (interesting grouping) – should place a signed, full-page ad in the Washington Post with a big, bold statement: What do you think all of us are telling our home governments about Mr. Trump?
Duncan MacKenzie, Guelph, Ont.
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I suspect that in the case of U.K. ambassador Kim Darroch’s “leaked” citical remarks about the Trump White House, the loose lips were intended to get rid of an anti-Brexiteer, and to intimidate the British civil service in general into unquestioning, tight-lipped obedience to the future King Boris. No truth-telling by diplomats – no truth-telling to power in general – seems to be the message and the trend these days, part of the ongoing destruction of disinterested and expert advice, a trend to which Canada is far from immune. And so the Ship of State sails on, without radar or binoculars. A ship of fools, indeed.
Gilbert Reid, Toronto
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Boris Johnson’s refusal during the Conservative leadership debate to support Kim Darroch gives us a clear indication of the role a Johnson-led U.K. government would aspire to: lap dog to the Trump White House. Sir Kim is guilty of nothing, other than doing his job. Those Conservatives who care about Britain maintaining its stature as a great nation should take note when voting for their party’s next leader.
Peter Love, Toronto
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If and when Boris Johnson is elected by the Conservative Party to be its next leader and Britian’s next prime minister, the U.S. ambassador to the U.K. will be able to recycle the leaked correspondence about the Trump White House to describe Mr. Johnson’s performance. After all, the only difference between the Donald and Boris is that Boris is an articulate bore with the ability to string words into a sentence. Recycle, reuse.
David Bell, Toronto
In charge …
Re Military’s Second-In-Command To Resign, Citing Norman Case (July 10): Second-in-Command Vice-Admiral Mark Norman is wrongly accused of leaking secret information, and Lieutenant-General Paul Wynnyk is asked to take on the No. 2 job. The charges against Vice-Adm. Norman are dropped, and Lt.-Gen. Wynnyk is asked to step down, and now resigns. The person at the centre of both of these mishandled situations is Chief of the Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance.
How long should Canadians put up with this man?
David Chalmers, Ottawa
What’s deplorable is …
Re Did Canada Have Its ‘Deplorables’ Moment? (July 11): Konrad Yakabuski juxtaposes a poll showing the Tories with a 12-per-cent lead over the Liberals among Canadians with a high-school diploma or less, with the idea that “most Canadians with a postgraduate degree would no longer dream of voting Conservative.”
In my view, this is fallacious – but it does say something about the Liberals. They and the so-called urban elites are so focused on redressing the grievances of minorities, they’re ignoring our large working class.
Catherine Sinclair, Thornbury, Ont.
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The right’s use of the phrase “urban elites with college degrees” reinforces the sense that higher education and city living somehow provide undue political power. In Canada, 54 per cent of the population has a postsecondary education, a figure that is growing. We’re moving to a knowledge economy requiring ever-greater levels of higher education. As for “urban” elites, more than 80 per cent of Canadians live in urban areas. Rather than representing an elite, urban-living, postsecondary-educated people are what is commonly termed “the majority.”
Elites are those whose power is unfairly out of proportion to their numbers. In Canada, that doesn’t tend to follow Eton-like private education, but rather money.
The right wants to talk about “urban educated elites” to hide the fact that the real elite is the tiny group that controls the greatest proportion of Canada’s wealth, because they do not want us to ask which parties and which policies that group is using that wealth to support.
David Mutimer, chair, Department of Politics, York University
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What is truly deplorable is the fact that politicians represent parties that have to play games and be disingenuous to get elected into positions of power. They then do what they want, including handing out patronage, in direct contrast to their promises. All parties recently in power seem to be guilty of deceit and hubris.
The predictable result, a lack of trust in politicians, spurs sectors of the population to vote out of anger at the status quo, rather than on the basis of honesty, history, or good party policy. As voters, we are in a situation where we are either taken in, only to be disappointed, or hold our noses and check the box for the least deceitful, hoping for something in the way of an improvement.
It can make one weep – both for the present and the future.
David Hughes Glass, Saugeen Shores, Ont.
Riddle me this
Re The Answer To Low-Inflation Riddle Could Be Found In Low-Income Households (July 10): Perhaps the low-inflation conundrum lies in the too often-accepted definition of inflation: Too much money chasing too few goods. This implies a large part of the population sharing in the prosperity of an economy that can’t keep up with the demand for goods and services.
Since the emergence of “globalization” and the “off shoring” of employment, a large segment of society isn’t partaking in any economic growth. This would help explain the incomes of the top 0.1 per cent’s income increasing by 17 per cent from 2012 to 2015, while 90 per cent of earners’ income rose just 2.2 per cent. Seen in that light, the average “Joe” might well define inflation as the declining value one gets from our dollar.
It becomes a bit hard to stomach then when inflation is talked about as being so “low,” since viewed as the shrinking value of our dollar, inflation is one of the reasons a large segment of the population is struggling to afford housing and put food on the table.
Leslie Martel, Mississauga
Free play: kids and cattle
Re A Quebec City’s Game Plan (July 11): This story brought back two pleasant memories. First, playing road hockey on our street in the village of Lambeth when I was a hockey-crazed kid, games complete with our own commentary, à la Foster Hewitt, of “Rocket Richard has a breakaway. He Shoots. He Scores!” Often, the action was temporarily paused when someone yelled “car,” and the nets were pulled aside. No one minded.
Second, the Larson cartoon of Holstein cattle standing upright in a pasture, when one of them yells “car!” Alerted, they quickly drop to all fours, until it passes. Hey, it could have happened.
Good on you, Beloeil, Quebec!
Al Woolnough, Collingwood, Ont.
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