The Grecian Formula and mineral rights #nlpoli

In the late 1990s, the provincial government faced some tough financial times.  The debt and the size of the economy were the same number. The government went through the usual rounds of layoffs and cuts, and the sorts of things they needed to keep the budget under control.

One of the things government did to help deal with the financial state was to get rid of a batch of provincial parks that it had built up since the development of the provincial roads system in the 1960s.  They weren’t parks in the sense of the national systems in Canada or the United States.  They were campgrounds and picnic sites.

In 1997, they billed the 21 sites as “business opportunities” for private sector or local not-for-profit groups.  By the end of the year, they’d manage to get rid of the lot.  “These parks were made available to the private sector, tourism minister Sandra Kelly told the House of Assembly, “because they offered viable business opportunities for rural Newfoundland. Government also realized that it no longer needed to play as large a role in the recreational camping industry as it once had in the 1970s.”

Recreational camping industry.

The Importance of Appearing Earnest #nlpoli

Once upon a time, not so very long ago,  your humble e-scribbler noted the importance the provincial Conservatives placed on the appearance of things.

The idea came together neatly in a celebrity interview not by someone in the private sector media but by a representative of the state-run broadcaster.  “Government by Fernando” it’s called and it is worth going to read even if you read it back in 2006.

It will be worth your while since a front page column by Telegram editor Russell Wangersky this Saturday is likely to have the local chattering class chattering up a storm for the next few days.  You see Russell uses the column to tell Kathy Dunderdale that it is time she resigned. 

Stalwart Tories won’t care about Wangersky’s opinion anyway.  After all he is not one of “us” in whatever way they want to define “us”.  While everyone else in the province is likely to be taken up with the fact he called for her resignation, it’s far more revealing to look at why Russell thinks she ought to go and go now.

Plain English: he’s a bully

As the province’s Reform-based Conservative Party gathers in St. John’s for its annual rally, the editor of the province’s major daily assesses its leader in the plainest English yet used in the conventional media:

So, are you fighting for the little guy when you deliberately use your power and position to insult and belittle any opponent, or are you just another bully?

How long is this going to go on, and who else is the premier going to tag as a traitor or a nothing or a zero?

Here’s my opinion — this kind of behaviour is petty and childish and an abuse of power.

He’s more than willing to sit as judge and jury over the rights of ordinary citizens to speak their minds. Let’s hope he’s not looking for the third part of that triad.

It’s now only a matter of time before the pitchfork and torch mob take to the Internet and elsewhere to denounce this kind of penetrating insight into the obvious. 

That’s not to diminish in any way Russell Wangersky’s comments.  He’s right on every point of the editorial.  What Wangersky said long ago became obvious to a great many people in the province.

It’s just to say that seven years in, Danny Williams can count on unquestioning support and public defences of him from all quarters in the province, including  - scarily enough - some newsrooms. 

Whenever their god is challenged, they’ll set fire to the heretic in a moment.

And right now, Wangersky just nailed his theses to their front door.

- srbp -

Related: The video that has turned out to be a minor Internet success.

 

Outrage

Ink-stained wretches of the world unite!

Telegram editorial page editor Russell Wangersky spreads the ribs on the latest racket and puts all the bits  - and that would be all the bits - where they belong.

One particular bit is rarely expressed these days but it is very true. 

Wangersky tackles the issue of the recent boycott of CBC over comments made by an on-air guest and then offers a suggestion:

If we were less competitive and self-serving, and more committed to the right of free access, the media in this province would stand up to this particular bully.

We’d set up our cameras and digital recorders for some Williams command-performance media event — some event that he felt was of critical importance for him to speak on, and when the premier appeared, all of the media would pack up their gear and leave him standing there. You’d probably only have to do that once, because Williams is no fool. Why do it?

Because every media outlet in this province will eventually feel the same premieral lash, unless they are so hopelessly hero-worshiping and fawning as to never come close to experiencing the same opprobrium.

Will it happen? I don’t know. I’m not sure that the media in this province realizes that today’s gain might be tomorrow’s servitude.

He’s right.

On everything.

-srbp-

Shut up and go away: the editor's reaction

From Russell Wangersky comes a clean dissection of the provincial government's attack this past week on former premier Brian Peckford:

It was a knee-jerk communications strategy, and it was a bad one at that, if the idea was to try and counteract the statements.

It just turned on the bright lights and lit up the issue on the national stage.

There was no reason even to react, unless the message you’re actually trying to send is not that Peckford was out to lunch, but instead that, in the New Newfoundland and Labrador, no one should expect to be allowed to comment on the emperor’s new clothes.

Perhaps the message was supposed to be, “If you disagree, we don’t want your input. Keep your mouth shut, even if you’re members of our own party.”

And maybe reacting so harshly to Peckford’s comments was just the easiest way to pointedly deliver that message to all the rest of us.

-srbp-