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.

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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.

 

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The Ghouls are back

New Democrat member of parliament Jack Harris once again shows his willingness to offer a comment based on ignorance.

Perhaps he could have the good sense to refrain from further comment rather than try to score cheap political points – yet again  - using a tragedy as his prop.

Amazing Ambulance Chasing Crap Update:  Your humble e-scribbler unfortunately just heard Jack Harris on CBC radio continuing his relentless campaign to display his own ignorance.

Sadly, Jack has obtained standing at the offshore helicopter inquiry and so will have a platform from which to spout his innuendo and political agenda in the midst of an inquiry that ought to be directed to identifying fact.

He  doesn’t want to acknowledge what has already been stated publicly repeatedly, namely that Cougar provides search and rescue service for the offshore as required by the offshore regulator.  That’s why – as he well knows – the helicopter was “reconfigured” on the day of the crash.  It had nothing to do with DND.

What’s more, the 103 Squadron aircraft were not “off station” or “away” as Jack continually stated.

There is no embarrassment within the SAR community over this, again as jack keeps trying to suggest.  There should only be embarrassment  - and huge dollop of shame shame – for people like Jack who continue to spread malicious nonsense despite having evidence that directly contradicts what he is still getting on about.

If  Jack’s appalling performance on the Cougar 491 case wasn’t bad enough, the federal Dipper defence critic then switched topics – in response to a question from the host -  critic is now chasing down the French missile bullshit and the UFO story.

The M51 flew a day AFTER the strange thing in the sky over Newfoundland.

This guy is absolutely, astoundingly ignorant.

Who does his research, ex-staffers from the Spindy?

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