Political gossip columnist Jane Taber is pushing the idea on Tuesday that Danny Williams might take a spell from his recuperation to drop in on the Olympics.
There is strong speculation the controversial Newfoundland and Labrador Premier is planning to come to the Winter Olympics for Newfoundland Day.
Jane might not know the name of the province, but she did manage to get the date right: February 26. She also missed a really obvious question, preferring instead to talk about health care.
In the spirit of the Globe’s columns, inquiring minds want to know:
If Danny wants to head out to the West Coast for the Olympics will he be going using his own tickets paid for out of his own pocket - a la Steve Harper – or will he be enjoying the sites courtesy of The Happy Province’s taxpayers? You see the provincial government dropped over $54,000 last fall scarfing up tickets to the Vancouver games. That’s on top of the $1.5 million they dropped in already as part of promoting the province.
Jane must have also forgotten DW’s great rant back in 2005 during the Equalization racket. At that time, the Premier apparently told a board of trade audience something to the effect that federal cash for the Olympics was another case of Ottawa playing favourites among the provinces.
No wonder the Premier’s office wants to charge someone thousands for copies of the Premier’s speeches. Heck if that’s the sort of stuff in some of them, no surprise they want to discourage people from asking for them by coming up with all sorts of outrageous, preposterous claims and charges.
Anyone have a copy of that speech or Paul Well’s old column from January 2005?
-srbp-