I've been waffling most of the evening, trying to decide whether this was a sarcastic quip or a serious question. In a bout of insomnia, I've finally decided on the latter. :-)
Al Bertah truly is a one-party state, in every way that really counts. As per the graph I posted above, there never really has been a provincial opposition worth speaking about; nor is there ever really any meaningful turnover in government—even those few times when the party in power does change, they've all had very similar platforms (save for when the Liberals were turfed waay back in 1921), and the change has been prompted more by endemic corruption (or widespread belief therein) than by any real desire to change policy or government direction.
Things looked (as I understand; obviously I was neither an Al Bertah resident nor a voter at the time) promising in 1993 when there was widespread dissatisfaction with Don Getty, but Sheikh Klein's ascendancy pretty much put an end to that spike of Liberal popularity.
Which leaves us where we are now. Similar current dissatisfaction with Klein, but it's unlikely this will mean widespread regime change; rather more likely just tumult within the party which will, externally, continue as before.
The upshot of all this is that the government behaves, to some extent, as do single-party governments everywhere. As there is no opposition to speak of to Conservative policies, those which are set become enshrined as a matter of course. And decisions on policy are predicate to lobbying groups (generally Big Business) promising to fill Conservative coffers in return for favourable bills. Which is more-or-less what happens.
The (place I work) has long long ago ceased to put any real faith in the provincial government, and instead operates largely via the corporate vector. Interactions with the gov't are performed mostly as a formality, with the expectation that, token platitudes aside, nothing much will ever come of them. We are rarely surprised, tho' the aforementioned current tumult within Sheikh Klein's majlis has resulted in some surprising progress in the last 6-8 months. Still, little has been finalized.
We are in a sense lucky in Al Bertah to be living in an era of (relative) corporate enlightenment, and some companies are actually quite reasonable to deal with. Shell, Husky, PetroCan and Weyerhaeuser, to name a few, are generally willing to work with us. There are of course some companies: ConocoPhillips, EnCana, Spray Lakes, that are horrible. Most fall somewhere in between.
What this means, of course, is that if there is a specific area where the only companies involved are not so enlightened, well, there's little recourse. McLellan Fen, north of Fort McMoney, is a disaster zone, and this is unlikely to change in the near future.
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branchandroot
That wacky oil-rich sultanate, Part I
Date: 2006-11-06 12:17 pm (UTC)I've been waffling most of the evening, trying to decide whether this was a sarcastic quip or a serious question. In a bout of insomnia, I've finally decided on the latter. :-)
Al Bertah truly is a one-party state, in every way that really counts. As per the graph I posted above, there never really has been a provincial opposition worth speaking about; nor is there ever really any meaningful turnover in government—even those few times when the party in power does change, they've all had very similar platforms (save for when the Liberals were turfed waay back in 1921), and the change has been prompted more by endemic corruption (or widespread belief therein) than by any real desire to change policy or government direction.
Things looked (as I understand; obviously I was neither an Al Bertah resident nor a voter at the time) promising in 1993 when there was widespread dissatisfaction with Don Getty, but Sheikh Klein's ascendancy pretty much put an end to that spike of Liberal popularity.
Which leaves us where we are now. Similar current dissatisfaction with Klein, but it's unlikely this will mean widespread regime change; rather more likely just tumult within the party which will, externally, continue as before.
The upshot of all this is that the government behaves, to some extent, as do single-party governments everywhere. As there is no opposition to speak of to Conservative policies, those which are set become enshrined as a matter of course. And decisions on policy are predicate to lobbying groups (generally Big Business) promising to fill Conservative coffers in return for favourable bills. Which is more-or-less what happens.
The (place I work) has long long ago ceased to put any real faith in the provincial government, and instead operates largely via the corporate vector. Interactions with the gov't are performed mostly as a formality, with the expectation that, token platitudes aside, nothing much will ever come of them. We are rarely surprised, tho' the aforementioned current tumult within Sheikh Klein's majlis has resulted in some surprising progress in the last 6-8 months. Still, little has been finalized.
We are in a sense lucky in Al Bertah to be living in an era of (relative) corporate enlightenment, and some companies are actually quite reasonable to deal with. Shell, Husky, PetroCan and Weyerhaeuser, to name a few, are generally willing to work with us. There are of course some companies: ConocoPhillips, EnCana, Spray Lakes, that are horrible. Most fall somewhere in between.
What this means, of course, is that if there is a specific area where the only companies involved are not so enlightened, well, there's little recourse. McLellan Fen, north of Fort McMoney, is a disaster zone, and this is unlikely to change in the near future.