Unworthy of promotion

In case we were lacking for reminders of the Cons' tendency to put self-promotion ahead of any interest in actually accomplishing anything useful while in office, CanWest reports that their latest consists of three cabinet ministers using public funds to unveil two new forms of Con cheerleading on Arctic issues:

At a press conference on Sunday, three federal ministers will unveil a slickly produced, 44-page report - Canada's Northern Strategy: Our North, Our Heritage, Our Future - and announce the creation of an official website dedicated to tracking the government's Arctic investments and policy initiatives.

The publicity blitz follows a similar spotlighting of the Conservative government's Arctic agenda last summer, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper and several top ministers made visits to the North and announced a series of projects to strengthen northern military capability, improve social and scientific infrastructure, expand mineral exploration and prevent pollution in Arctic waters.

The government's continued, high-profile promotion of its Arctic file suggests Harper and his cabinet colleagues see polar politics as a key part of a winning election strategy, despite concerns among some critics about delays in delivering on promises, the government's commitment to environmental protection in the North and its handling of occasional clashes with Russia over jurisdictional issues.

Of course, for any government concerned with actually getting anything accomplished, it should be a source of embarrassment that the best even a Con-friendly media chain can say about the report to be unveiled is that it's "slickly produced" rather than actually containing any significant ideas. And it should be all the more shameful that multiple departments apparently have nothing better to do than to unveil self-promotional materials. But the Cons long ago made it clear that they're only concerned with appearances rather than accomplishing anything of substance - making this just one more step down the road they've been travelling all along.

I'd like to thank the Academy...

Regular readers of this blog will hopefully know that I'm not big on self-promotion, and may be aware that I involve myself less in blogosphere meta-discussions than a lot of regular bloggers. But I'll take a moment to point out the results of this year's Unofficial Blogging Dipper Awards, where Accidental Deliberations was honoured as the Best Overall Blog - if nothing else to add a bit of context which I hope won't be overlooked.

While the awards may have focused slightly more attention than usual on the nominees, the more important story is that of the evolution of the Blogging Dippers as a whole. Robert, Devin, Ravi and Paladiea have put in the effort to develop the blogroll to where it is today. And roughly 100 separate blogs (some of those featuring multiple contributors) make up the content which keeps readers going to the Blogging Dippers site.

Within that collective, it can never hurt to encourage discussion about readers' favourites - both to place a bit more focus on the Blogging Dippers as a group, and to help each of us to see what readers enjoy within our blogs. And many thanks go to Uncorrected Proofs for putting together the year-end contest to enable that to happen.

But at the same time, the awards only matter to the extent that readers recognize that there's plenty of worthwhile content coming from the Blogging Dippers as a whole such as to justify talking about favourites.

As a result, I'll close off this post by encouraging all readers to take the time to look up some blogs off the Dipper blogroll which may not yet be familiar. And with any luck, the efforts of the Blogging Dippers will help to make sure the NDP as a whole is able to keep up - and indeed pull ahead - as Canadian political parties work to make their presence felt within the blogosphere.