Just curious

[james_davis_nicoll]

[Poll #1331765]

Comments

[gohover.livejournal.com]

D'oh! It just hit me that in parliamentary systems, "national government" refers to a broad coalition. Hmmm. I don't know what the right term is. "Unitary state government" seems unwieldy. (The wikipedia article has a nice map of the unitary states of the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_state)

[grimjim.livejournal.com]

Ruling party?

[gohover.livejournal.com]

I meant, what's the equivalent term for "federal level" for unitary states like the UK.

But you make a good point! It would be very funny if whenever the liberals were in power, drivers would have to drive on the one side of the road, and whenever the conservatives were in power, drivers would switch to the other side. I suppose the NDP and especially the Greens could ask that people not drive. People (even people in the USA) might pay more attention to Canadian politics if the stakes were raised like that.

[grimjim.livejournal.com]

In the 1970s, the Progressive Conservative party once ran with a platform plank of halting metric conversion and reverting back to Imperial measures, but they backtracked on that once elected, saying it would cost less to continue with conversion.

[gohover.livejournal.com]

Wow. If they had gone through with it, maybe the liberals would have flipped it back when it was their turn in power, ad infinitum. Canadians would have become the best in the world at converting in their heads.

[grimjim.livejournal.com]

Canadians might be already? There were several years of transition during which both measures were in simultaneous use.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Both measures are still in simultaneous use. Just for different things. Construction materials are in Imperial, distances beyond the average construction site and velocity are in metric. Height and weight of people-sized things are in imperial.

Says who?

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

D'oh! It just hit me that in parliamentary systems, "national government" refers to a broad coalition.

It doesn't in New Zealand, where for much of last century the National Party formed the government.

Re: Says who?

[gohover.livejournal.com]

Ha! That's great!

So, how would you have worded James' poll if you wanted to it to apply to NZ as well as to federal setups like Canada et al?

Re: Says who?

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

Most of the time we make ourselves clear by using (or not) the article ("That isn't a local government issue, it's a national government one". "It was a National government that introduced that.")

I don't have a good answer that works for everywhere. The national-level government?

[matgb]

Nah, you sometimes refer to a grand coalition as a national government, but not always. The Westminster govt is the UK or national Govt for most things--gets confusing in Scotland, where the Nationalists are in power, but they're referred to as the SNP Govt.