28 February 2006

Pot? Meet kettle

Andy Wells, arguably the rudest mayor in Canada, described the behaviour of some homeowners in St. John's this way:
"It's so ignorant. I can't think of anything more ignorant or ill-considered."
Wells is miffed because some residents of the capital city are supposedly parking their cars in such a way as to keep snow from being pushed into their driveways by council snow clearing crews.

Some simple observations:

1. The city already has an overnight parking ban. If cars are on the street during the ban, tow them and stop the bitching, Andy.

2. If the cars are on the street during the daytime, odds are good that people are trying to shovel out their driveways. Excrement occurs. Get over it.

3. Given that city council hasn't increased the size of its snowclearing fleet in the past four years despite growth in the number of streets to be ploughed, then the real problem council is having keeping the streets cleared might really be due to ...wait for it...an infrastructure shortage.

Part of the problem in clearing streets might have to do with a lack of proper planning by Wells and his amigos at the little bandito factory on Gower Street. Gee. There's a surprise. It's not like water mains didn't explode in the downtown during the last municipal election much to Wells' embarrassment. It took council a week to fix it and they really didn't get around to it until the thing was splashed across the television screens thanks to the efforts of at large candidate Simon Lono.

Oh yeah. In the "ignorant" category. Let's add Wells calling Lono "some little twit" for daring to point out that Wells' comments that everything was rosey in the city was sheer nonsense.

4. Why bandito factory? Well, Wells is fond of tossing rules to the winds as he sees fit. He's like a parody of the guys in the old Westerns who supposedly uttered the line "Badges? We dun need no stinkin' badges." That just leads us logically to...

5. The raging hypocrisy in Wells criticizing other people for taking the world on their backs to the detriment of all. Maybe Wells is really just annoyed that people are horning in on what, to now has been his exclusive territory: be ignorant and doing things that are grossly ill-considered.

6. As for the mayor's own personal familiarity with things ill-considered and ignorant, may we humbly offer the following examples:

- Trying to ram through a hefty pay raise for himself and fellow councilors that would not only fatten his current bank account and which broke the rules for setting council pay, but would also swell his pension. We'll call that one ill-considered.

- Gerrymandering the terms of reference for the consultant hired to look at the pay raise after
his little pay hike was outed by The Telegram. Let's call that ill-considered too.

- Ignorant? I have too many examples from Well's career to list here, but let's just settle for his boorish comment to a former mayor and current councilor that in a battle of wits with Wells, she was unarmed.

Wells' penchant for bullying and insulting his opponents suggests the opposite, of course.

But that's another post.