More crap from the Globe

As usual, Christie Blatchford gets it right.

A front page story in the Tuesday Globe excoriates an Ottawa judge for remarks he didn’t make in the decision on the O’Brien influence peddling case. There’s another column that carries on with the same nonsense.

In his decision, Justice Douglas Cunningham assessed testimony from one Crown witness and found that the portion of her testimony on which the Crown was relying was not really central to the conversation she was having at the time. 

Even during the portion of the witness’ evidence led by the Crown, there were sufficient variations in the statement to raise questions about her recollections.  On top of that, the defence was able to demonstrate that, having had many significant events in her life at the time of her statement to police, the judge concluded that the witness’  “recollection of a brief, casual portion of her conversation is so imprecise that, through no fault of her own, I must assign it little weight”.

There is no reference by the judge to the sex of the witness or anything of the sort.  There is nothing but a straight-up factual synopsis of the evidence, which is what you’d expect from a judge.

And out that, the legion of professional Irks has launched into an incredible pile of nonsense.

Shame on Toronto’s national newspaper for giving such crap such prominence.

But, as usual, Christie got it right.

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If a little knowledge…

is a dangerous thing, reporter Brian Callahan’s comments this evening about search and rescue response to the Cougar S-92 accident is proving what you get from complete ignorance.

Morning after update:  Asking questions is one thing.  Making accusations directly or by innuendo is quite another.

Questions about search and rescue in the aftermath of the crash aren’t confined to Callahan.  One caller to CBC Radio yesterday afternoon and again the morning and a radio talk show host on another network tried to turn SAR into some kind of  “us” versus “them”, Newfoundland versus the mainland political racket.

“Irresponsible” would be the most polite word for these sorts of ill-informed or ill-considered comments.  Obnoxious might be a better word for it.

The North Atlantic is a cruel and difficult place.  Working offshore in any industry is inherently dangerous and even with good training and excellent standards and equipment tragedies will occur. That doesn’t mean we accept the tragedies;  it merely means we have to always bear in mind that reality.

The people who work SAR – private sector, coast guard and the air force – are highly trained and they work tirelessly to provide the very best search and rescue service that is humanly possible.

The ones I know are anything but as cavalier and irresponsible as the people making the comments about SAR over the past 24 hours. 

 

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