27 February 2008

That would be so cool, if it wasn't going to hurt us

Ross Wiseman.

A cabinet minister whose career clock today started winding down.

Rapidly.

You can't screw up repeatedly, and in this case in such a laughable way, and expect to keep your job for very long.

Standing back a bit, one can almost hear the political staffers in government looking at Wiseman's cock-up and thinking of Ron Stoppable.

"That would be so cool if it wasn't going to hurt us."

Sitch Update:  Late this afternoon, Eastern Health started handing out reports on the physical condition of four acute care facilities in St. John's.

It wasn't just on the Waterford Hospital, as Wiseman's slip in the scrum might have suggested.

The reports take up about two feet of shelf space and come in four massive binders.

According to CBC News, the repairs would total upwards of $100 million.

So how long has government had the reports, one might wonder?

Sitch Update II:  Someone needs to let the comms people in the provincial government that when you have a scrum at 11:00 AM and the minister screws up really badly, it's not that good an idea to have him call Bill  Rowe in the afternoon pretending there's nothing wrong.

Hint:  The message track got changed in there when someone was photocopying the binders of reports the Minister wasn't sure existed or that he'd read so that you guys could release them.

And it's just incomprehensible to issue a news release at 5:00 PM which the minister rendered useless at 11:00 and 30 seconds.

-srbp-