-TSS-

An interesting article in the Economist a couple of weeks ago.

 

http://www.economist...f603b9fd9577f0e

 

Namely, should the whole idea of the electoral college be consigned to the dustbin and move to a pure popular vote? If not as radical as that should the Congress-districts be the winner-takes-all mandates rather than entire states?

 

On the other hand, changes to the current system would change the campaigning as well. When everything is not decided in 2-3 swing states the candidates should reach out to every voter across the country.

 

This would pose a problem too. The so-called big tent candidates win on being moderate. In a different system you must stand out and the election could polarise people even more.

Do you people in Canada even realise that you are sitting on something the world will yearn badly? I mean fresh water. That is going to be something there will be wars about in the future.

We in Finland have about 10% of our land surface fresh water, that is about 35000 sq km's but you in Canada have the same proportion and that is like 1m sq km.

Fresh water will one day be like we consider oil today.

I'd like to ask you Canadians as you pretty much have the same climate as we in Finland that do you get every year the same chaos with the first snow. When it really snows all traffic goes into gridlock and there are several vehicles in the ditches or there are many collisions. The media reports it that winter surprised the car-drivers.

It happens every year here in Finland and given the fact that due to our latitude winter should not come as a surprise in November, or perhaps even earlier, people who drive and don't know that it is winter should have their driving-licences revoked.

Today is the day of regional elections in the Spanish province of Catalonia. If the nationalists win a majority they will hold a referendum on whether the province should secede from Spain.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...europe-20482719

Catalonia is the wealthiest part of Spain and given the current economic problems of Spain the region feels their burden is both unfair and too much. The Catalans have their own language and also in every other respect they are just as much diferent from Spain as, say, Portugal.

I would like to know what is the situation regarding this issue over there in Canada and the USA. Namely, we in the Scandinavian countries traditionally belong to the Evangeligal-Lutheran church which levies taxes or we can opt out of it, which I have done as I turned 18, but the taxes amount to 1,00-1,70% of the annual income and amazingly over 80% of the population still pay that price.

I know that a lot of Scandinavians have settled in Canada and northern United States and they are traditioanlly Lutherans. Do their churches have this tax-collection system or do the churches have to find their finances elsewhere?

TBH, I can't really fathom out how can churches which don't levy taxes finance themselves. I know that the Catholic Church is a huge worldwide institution with a lot of wealth and it can finance its sub-branches elsewhere in the world but how do other churches finance themselves if they don't collect taxes?

Here in Finland the church-taxes are anywhere between 1-1.7% of your annual income depending on the congregation. I just can't believe that the majority of the population readily pay such an amount of money just to throw it away to things like paying the bishops' wages.