Showing posts with label voice of the cabinet minister. Show all posts
Showing posts with label voice of the cabinet minister. Show all posts

29 August 2011

Robots in Dead Heat

As labradore notes, the latest question of the day online poll at Voice of the Cabinet Minister comes close to setting a record for vote totals.

It is second to another question about Muskrat Falls from last December.

Just so everyone is clear:

  • Both the “Yes” and “No” votes are the result of someone deliberately dumping huge numbers of votes in here using computer programs.
  • The governing Conservatives have been at this foolishness for years and used to get paid political staffers to sit there and manually click the button whatever way they wanted to see the vote go. It seems they’ve now deployed computers.
  • Someone else has been auto-voting for the past three or four years likely just to frack with the Tory staffers.
  • As labradore notes, VOCM disabled the “Yes” option over the weekend so that the people trying to push the vote against the government’s preferred answer to the question couldn’t get any more votes in.
  • VOCM will report these results as if they were news.  Call-in hosts will use them to prompt calls, most likely without mentioning that the thing is complete bullshite.

 

- srbp -

10 August 2009

Wannabe candidates and nose-pulling

Ryan Cleary’s departure from voice of the cabinet minister came as a surprise to most.

There was speculation he’d been fired for campaigning with Jack Layton.  Cleary supporters came forward with other views including one version, reputedly straight from the horse’s mouth, that he left to spend more time with his family.

Here’s the way Cleary’s closest blogger-buddy put it:

However, he [Cleary] did say that the toll on his family was too high.  He was missing way too many sports matches, PTA meetings and was not home to put his kids to bed.  He told me that he could not make a long term commitment to Nightline.  He was having trouble reconciling his love of family with the hours of the job.  I think we can all understand that.

Tonight he told me he simply made a decision to put his kids first, despite the fact that he enjoyed talk radio and has great respect for the team he leaves behind at VOCM. He just could not make the long term commitment needed by his employer to keep doing the Nightline program..so they parted ways.

Well, that last one seemed like a real politician’s nose-puller.  How many times have you heard a politician quit a job of leave politics claiming it was to spend more time with the wee ones?  It’s used a lot but it’s seldom the story, the whole story and nothing but the story.

Turns out the bloggerated version from Cleary’s pal was a nose puller worthy of the love child of Karl Malden and  Jimmy Durante.

Cleary told a gathering of local New Democrats over the weekend that he will be looking for their nomination in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl in the upcoming federal election.  The Steele crowd wanted a long-term commitment, it seems, and Cleary couldn’t give such a commitment and run for the Dippers too.

Now if any of you know anything about politics, especially federal politics, you’ll know it’s not a venture for a guy who wants to spend more time with his life-partner and offspring.  To the contrary, federal politics can be brutal on home life. 

Missed birthday parties come with the territory.   Putting the kids to bed would be something from a fantasy world.  Getting to hockey games or school plays will also be dodgy and that’s even if the whole clan ups-stakes and moves to walking distance of Hy’s. 

Add in any considerations of more complex family situations and you can see that politics would not be the life for someone who found it problematic to spend a few hours at night sharing pearls of wisdom with the likes of the Moon Man rather than helping the wee ones snuggle down in their Spidey jammies.

Now on the other hand, Cleary may have nothing to worry about.  He might wind up with plenty of time on his hands.

The other New Democrat buzz from last weekend concerned an unnamed – but reputedly high profile  - candidate who is also eyeing the seat Cleary wants.  Unlike the relative walkover he faced last time in getting the nod, Cleary may have to organize to win the nomination in the first place.  He’ll have to start banking some cash, assembling the team and indentifying supporters.

And then he would have to win the election.

In the meantime though, that story about leaving Nightline to spend more time with the kids sounds like the kind of stuff  you get from certain kinds of politicians.

Bullshit isn’t an auspicious start to a political campaign.

-srbp-

30 June 2009

Still goose-able after all these years

So voice of the cabinet minister reworked its website.

Lots of changes, but the thing looks like a supermarket tabloid on acid.  In the dictionary, next to the word garish, there is now “See VOCM website”.

The one thing that hasn’t changed is the question of the day.  This has become rather notorious in local political and news circles as not merely unscientific but also as a poll which someone connected to the current administration actively gooses as need be.

The way to do it has been explained publicly.  It would be a simple fix if VOCM wanted to stop churning out crap.

No way did it get fixed; the poll is still goose-able to the point of absurdity.

And VOCM still reports the rigged poll results as if they were real, let alone news.

No wonder they get called voice of the cabinet minister.

-srbp-

21 February 2009

Chutzpah

The old definition of chutzpah was killing both your parents and then seeking the mercy of the court because you are an orphan.

The new definition of chutzpah is signing a deal for less research and development money than the regulations required  - Kathy Dunderdale and Hebron - and then claiming credit for all the new research and development money that came from someone else’s initiative.

-srbp-

01 February 2009

Do they give awards for non-news?

Presidency position goes public.  The provincial government decides to posts ads for people interested in being head of the status of women council.  Voice of the cabinet minister runs a news story on the event.

It’s not news that provincial government is running job ads for cabinet-appointed jobs.

The provincial government advertised for a new chairman for the province’s public utilities board in 2007.

They held a competition.

Then cabinet stuffed Andy Wells into the job even though he wasn’t in the competition.

Of course, then again there’s the offshore board boss job. 

Competition, complete with ads.

Danny tries to stuff Andy into the thing anyway.

Competition dies.

They appoint a panel to pick someone.

Andy still doesn’t get the job.

It would be news if the provincial public service commission held a competition for a cabinet appointment and the cabinet appointed the person who actually won.

Oh yeah, and that PUB story turned out to be a masterpiece of unaccountability in the public service.  Simple question:  no answer.

-srbp-