We speak, dear friends of Danny Williams former law partner – Steve Marshall – who apparently came out of his self-imposed Internet retirement this week to leave a comment on a column by Telegram editor Brian Jones.
Now others have taken a few smacks at Steve as you can see from the stuff after his little rant, but for this post let’s look at his words from another angle or two.
For starters, there is nothing in Brian Jone’s column that should leave Steve evidently so overwrought that one would suspect a youtube video cannot be far behind.
Besides, if the wind beneath Steve’s wings is really enjoying the “the highest of approval ratings from us out here in that real world”, Steve should hardly be so distraught he must not only pen a comment criticising a Telegram editor for a column but also drag in another fellow who wasn’t mentioned in the column, and who does nothing more exciting than clack out a few words on a small corner of the Internet.
No, he wouldn’t.
So what gives?
Simply put, Steve is like Tony the Tory.
He is a barometer, if you will, of the mood in certain circles.
The mood is evidently quite black.
You can tell it is black not only because Steve is haunting the comments sections again but also because Steve uses all the classic Fan Club arguments – hugely popular, tireless toiler for the peons like us blah blah blah – and the usual direct personal attack using equally shop worn invective against those who are, in Steve’s World anyway, defilers of the Kingdom.
Yes friends, those of us who dare to speak our minds do not live in what Steve considers the real world.
Yet consider this: for the past three years or so, your humble e-scribbler has faithfully and regularly warned that provincial government spending was unsustainable.
What with the known pressures on spending for health care that are already here and will grow, with the changes in the work force and all the rest, it would be folly to raise government spending to incredible heights in such short period based solely on highly unpredictable oil prices and without doing something significant to pay off debt. That is a opposed to masking it with an assets and liabilities statement about the “net debt”.
That’s what has been one of the major themes here in what Steve would regard presumably as the unreal world.
These are views that Steve would likely characterise as being “negative, pessimistic, constant, repetitive and downright boorish”.
And incidentally, your humble e-scribbler was not alone in his wicked contentions. The Auditor General said the same thing, in slightly different words. According to finance minister Tom Marshall, even one of the province’s bond raters even asked about sustainability.
How odd then that in the past few weeks, the Object of Steve’s Affection and his key ministers have acknowledged that provincial government spending is …wait for it… “unsustainable”.
This is what happens when unreal world lawyer/businessman Steve lives in meets head-long the world the rest of us toil in to earn our crusts of bread.
You get that sort of jarring disconnection in which Steve leaps to the defence of someone who – by his own account – would [not] need any defence whatsoever from the peanut gallery.
Then you hit that arresting moment when he winds up attacking with such vicious personal slurs the very person he supposedly defends.
And above all else, you see not so much what Steve wants you to see, but really a hint that maybe some great upheaval is about to take place; okay, well at least that some people are shit-baked their world is about to come to a crashing end.-srbp-