Tom Rideout has decided to pull pin on a political career that spanned three decades and two political parties.
Remember that you read it here first: John Efford is working on getting the Liberal nod in an effort to win Baie Verte -Springdale.
Meanwhile, in the Tower, hypocrisy reigns.
Note that this release contains that name of a different "press secretary" for the Premier's Office than the one issued just an hour and a bit before.
And for all that, it still lists a "communications director" for the Premier's Office as a media contact as well.
Two media contacts for one office.
Dubya doesn't need that many.
Gord has a first rate news page which, as you may notice doesn't append the names of all the media handlers to each utterance, either.
[Secret bonus: notice the "jargon buster" link with lots of jammy background information. Backgrounders, you see, aren't there just so that the yokels outside the Centre of the Universe can have some nice stuff to cover.]
Even Steve doesn't have a laundry list tacked on the end of missives from his office.
Note here, though, that his web page sucks. There really isn't another word for it. It just sucks. Well there is another phrase for it involving a fully grown ursus arctos horribilus and the opposite of suck but this has become a family space so we'll refrain from being quite that blunt.
Steve's web presence is just smelly.
The Canadian PM's site went from looking like the web page of a world leader to the web page for the guy who runs the discount car dealership on the concession road just outside ButtCrackville Corner, Ontario, with the programming done by his second cousin twice removed on his father's side using a Commodore 64.
I mean - seriously - what leader of a country needs to have his name and title across the web page for his office.
Is he that insecure?
Anyway, back to the story.
Rideout's gone.
Again.
Efford's trying to come back.
Again.
Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador these days is like NTV in the summer time: endless reruns of stuff we watched 30 and 40 years ago.
-srbp-