Thursday, December 4/2008

Try to catch up on the Canadian political scene at the internet but the consultation with the governor general scheduled for later today. BBC World, which doesn't usually mention Canada, has it pretty well summed up when they say that Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper has taken the unusual step of asking to have parliament suspended in order to avoid defeat.

Over past the mairie to the post office. Dark blue sea and tall palms, red Tunisian flags much in evidence as always. Post office inaccessably crowded and outside there is a fair sized streetmarket taking place over block or so. Mostly local supplies - clothing, kitchen knives, mobile phone chargers. There are some fairly attractive salad bowls close to 2 feet in diameter and a sort of tin hibachi affair. I finally acquire my comb, a not particularly nice pale aqu one. I buy it from woman at a table outside the supermarket but all the other sellers are male, as they seem to be in all but official goverment shops or little family run ones or supermarkets. One stall at today's market includes, amongst other unrelated objects, 3 padded bras of different colours in the care of a man no woman would dream of consulting about measurements. Nearby a boy about the size of Kieran is shouting enthusiastically "one dinar, one dinar" as he offers a variety of things for sale at 90 cents CAD each.

The male dominance is even more pronounced in the outdoor cafés, which are many and often large. Among the dozens seated at one of the biggest - men of all ages wearing fezzes, baseball caps, woollen hats, the occasional Arab headdress or bareheaded - we only once spot a female, a very small girl with her father. In the more touristed spots there is very occasional woman. But unemployment is fairly high and men have quite a bit of time for coffee, even young men.

We're about to go down to dinner when BBC World announces that the governor general has agreed to suspend parliament. So there we are in the BBC news along with the international drug cartels and the war crimes of former African presidents nd Khmer Rouge leaders. Somehow "suspend parliament" has the sound of suspending democracy, a deprivation not implied by the faintly ridiculous "prorogue." So we're back to the Stuart kings who would much have preferred not to deal with parliament at all, were it not for the grubby necessity of getting money.