General Ignorance #nlpoli

CBC’s Heather Barrett had a solid commentary this weekend on the recent revelations about how much young people in the province’s university don’t know about stuff.

Lack of inquisitiveness.

Well, young people aren’t the only ones who don’t know basic stuff.

Remember this cabinet minister?  As we told you in 2009,

According to Oram, the cod moratorium took place in the “early to mid-1980s”.

If you think that was a slip of the tongue consider that according to Oram, once the moratorium started,  we then turned to diversifying the economy with mining for things like iron ore and uranium.  Iron ore mining dates back to the 1890s, not the 1980s and as for uranium, there isn’t a functioning uranium in the province at the moment.  There never has been one. There are prospects but no actual mine.

The Lower Churchill will start up within the coming year (i.e. 2009) according to Oram, even though the thing had not even started the environmental review process when he did the interview.  It won’t complete the process until 2010-2011.

Oram wasn’t the only politician at the time who suffered from this problem, nor has it gone away.  Plenty of politicians today are afflicted with general ignorance.

Fortunately lack of information is a correctable problem. It just might not be correctable before the pols do massive damage.

-srbp-

There’s crap. There’s bullshit…

And then there’s natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale:

Mr. Speaker, when the members opposite sat over here they certainly had no expertise in developing deals, negotiating contracts, as we saw on a number of occasions in the fourteen years of their mandate.

Of course not, Kathy.

After all, Hibernia, Terra Nova and White Rose didn’t happen in those 14 years.

And they didn’t produce every single nickel of the billions that have raised the public treasury to unprecedented heights since 2003.

No.

And it’s not like those original deals not negotiated by Dunderdale’s boss will produce the bulk of the money she claims will come from Hisself’s efforts:

…three major oil deals that we have negotiated with a value to this Province over the life of those projects, Mr. Speaker, of $35 billion.

Let’s not even remind Kathy that the figure $35 billion is pure fabrication.

All Dunderdale did today in the legislature was confirm her profound, undeniable, astounding ignorance.

There’s no other word for it.

 

-srbp-

Twittering…

From a cbc.ca/nl discussion thread on oil exploration by the provincial government’s oil and gas corporation, a comment that gives new meaning to twittering:

It was a Liberal Government in Ottawa that sent Liberal John Efford to the Conservative Government of Newfoundland with a "take-it-or-leave-it" offer on the annual royalties from the offshore resources. It was the Conservative Government in Newfoundland under the leadership of Premier Williams who removed the Maple Leaf flag in protest of this insulting offer by the Liberals. It was the Conservative Government who finally reached a royalty agreement that is today bringing billions in to the treasury of this Province.

Was all this negotiate "prior to 2003"? It think not! The Liberals in Ottawa at that time were not interested in negotiating, but in ram-rodding an inferior royalty plan that would have kept Newfoundland a "have-not" Province. Instead we had a Premier and Government who had the intestinal fortitude to challenge their "keep them poor" attitude, and today we are a "have" Province.

Not a single thing in those two paragraphs is true.

-srbp-

Shithouse?

Down this way, ignorant has a connotation that others may not pick up.

To be ignorant means that one is unaware of facts, but to be ignorant also means taking that lack of knowledge and acting in a rude, boorish, offensive manner.

Now we can look to the dictionary and see a reference to David Angus’ comments in Lawrence Martin’s stroke piece on Peter Mackay, DDS:

"I think Peter's got the opportunity to be the regional powerhouse in taking an area of Canada from shithouse to lighthouse."

That’s the epitome of ignorance in too many ways to waste time explaining.

Let’s just let the words speak for themselves.

-srbp-