Personality Cult

Take a gander at a Canadian Press story about the personality cult surrounding the Premier and you’ll notice some rather curious things.

Of course there are the cultists themselves who display the characteristic worship of the Premier, the propagation of the usual myths and the patronising and paternalistic way these people look at politics.  To wit:

“Blair”:…The one thing I can say for certain is that he has accomplised  [sic]the most possible for this province, and I see no leader that could possibly shake my belief in him and his ability to run our great Province.

…

“C”:…I can finally say that there is a premier that I am proud of.  I can honestly say that when I am represented by MY premier I'm not cringing in anticipation of his comments like so many in the past.

…

“Seriously”:…Danny Williams is successful because he doesn't need the office. He can make decisions that have better long term outcomes because he doesn't need the office.

…

By far the best example of the personality cultist view came from someone who signed with a pseudonym “Joe Blow”:

But Danny already has everything he wants when it comes to money. Now what he wants is a better future for his people, and he is succeeding in this.

[Lorraine] Michael wonders how long the Cult of Danny can endure?

Here is your answer.

Death will be the only thing that stops this man from ensuring that our province thrives.

“Now what he wants is a better future for his people, and he is succeeding in this.”  There can be no clearer statement of that view which reduces individuals in Newfoundland and Labrador to the status of children fit for nothing better than to be looked after.

Such is the essence of personality cults.

It’s also worth noting this comment:

"If anybody thinks democracy is healthy in this province just look at the voter turnout the other day," said Michael Temelini, a political scientist at Memorial University.

…

"As popular as (Williams) may be, we should be paying as much attention to the House of Assembly and its important role in upholding our democratic system. People should stop paying so much attention to the executive branch. But that's what happens when you get one party in power.

"What's going on in Newfoundland is people are just going to wait until Danny Williams retires. Now that's a problem."

There is nothing evident today that was not also evident five or six years ago but that’s really another issue.  The thing to note is that Temelini – once a very public Dan-o-phile – is now a solid critic of where the province is under Williams’ leadership.

Temelini isn’t alone in this.  There are a number of public commentators who have gone from praising the Premier to be concerned for the state of public life in the province.  Then there are the comments coming from all corners of the province that express some frustration with things in Newfoundland and Labrador after seven years of Danny.  Increasingly the grumbling is coming from within the Tory party, especially among the old townie establishment part of the Blue Machine.  it’s all still very much quiet grumbling of the sort where people are a bit self-conscious that word might spread back to Hisself and Hisself’s hangers-on. But five years ago, no one would have dreamed of even thinking of being disgruntled let alone expressing it.

Moods are shifting.

Still, some people quoted in the article seem to recognise  - albeit vaguely – that there is an issue even if they quite obviously don’t know what to do about it.

"Why do people put so much hope in one person?" wonders Lorraine Michael, the sole New Democrat in a Gang of Five opposition that includes four Liberals.

"We do have a personality cult mentality here in Newfoundland and Labrador and a lot of it is based on his personality."

That last bit is by no means clear.  The worship of an individual in the fashion seen in this province over the past few years speaks to a much deeper cultural issue  - a cultural disorder – rather than something as simple as “he is a sweet guy” or “he is a bully” or “he is very charismatic.” take your pick:  those are all descriptions of a personality but they don’t explain the bootlicking toadying of so many out there.

Nor does it explain the unwillingness of Michael and the four Liberal opposition members to resist being steamrolled by Mr. Popularity.  Just because someone is popular, even if he or she is actually that popular, doe snot make them correct in decisions. Rolling over on something like the expropriation bill, for example, simply shouldn’t happen in a healthy democracy.

Still, recognising there is a problem is the first step in finding a solution.

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Backlog

As labradore notes, while a throne is speech is supposed to be about laying out the new legislation for the upcoming session, the one delivered today was surprisingly thin in that respect.

Not to worry. 

There is plenty of old legislation that isn’t in force and unkept promises dating back to 2003 to keep any half decent administration busier than a one-armed paper hanger.

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PUB quietly imposes water management deal

The public utilities board imposed a water management agreement on NALCOR and Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation on March 9, 2010. The reasons for the decision were filed separately ,

The PUB didn’t issue a news release when it issued the order, nor did it issue any sort of media advisory or news release on the half day of hearings it held into the application.

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Maquis?

More like maquette.

or to be even more accurate a mockette. 

Not even enough of a mockery to be a fully qualified one to handle the name on its own.

More like mockery-light.

Mockery of a political party, mockery of democracy and mockery of a genuine separatist party. 

Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc:  political irrelevant. 

But damn fine comedians.

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The Money Program

Within the past 12 months, federal and provincial government sources have poured $2.0 million into a building expansion at Dynamic Air Shelters and to unspecified research projects the company is running.

The most recent injection – this time from the provincial government – came last week.

That brings the total amount of public cash in this private company to slightly less than $ 3.5 million in the four years since the company relocated from Calgary to Grand Bank. That doesn’t count what the company received as a result of EDGE status.

 

Date	Description	Amount (Cdn$)	Type
19 Mar 10	12,000 square foot building expansion plus new equipment	725,000	INTRD - unspecified
17 Jun 09	Research	50,000	NRCC - contribution
17 Jun 09	Research	30,000	NRCC - contribution
12 Jun 09	Research	30,000	NRCC - contribution
19 May 09	Research	465,000	NRCC - contribution
16 Apr 09	Building expansion plus new equipment	500,000	ACOA – interest free loan, Business Development Program
		200,000	Grand Bank Development Corporation loan
06 Nov 08	6,000 square foot expansion plus 30 + jobs	500,000	Business Oil and Gas Manufacturing Services Export Fund
27 Jun 08	Salary subsidy – hire and train 18 employees	180,000	INTRD - unspecified
01 May 07	Loan – unspecified purpose	250,000	INTRD – SME Fund
20 Dec 06	Prod. “efficiencies” and employee trg	20,000	INTRD
26 Jun 06	Construct oil industry shelters	499,926	ACOA – “provisionally repayable contr”
12 Jun 06	Hire marketing manager	50,000	ACOA - contribution
SUB-TOTAL	Provincial Federal	1,675,000 1,824,926
TOTAL		$ 3,499,926

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Le declin de l’empire

Eyes firmly fixed on the past, as if obsessed,  instead of looking toward the future.

Tell-tale sign on top of all the other tell-tale signs - Churchill hydro etc - of unhealthy obsession with the past.

In eight years time, they may find that many of the changes they hoped for like massive new industries will still be little more than the fodder for someone else’s rhetoric.

Finishing other people’s ideas, if you can finish them at all, is not like having ideas – and real accomplishments  - of your own.

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Jesse James and the stripper

Arguably the stupidest ar**hole in the world.

There simply isn’t any other word for him.

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Old Harry: Gulf prospect bigger than Hibernia

Old Harry is an oil and natural gas deposit in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that could be twice the size of Hibernia. As it is the current estimated size is about the same as the current proven, probable and possible oil at Hibernia.
The field is back in the news because one of the companies involved – Corridor Resources – is planning to do some exploration work on the portion of the field that is within the Newfoundland Offshore Area. Corridor has licenses for the field from Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador.
There are two major problems.  Firstly, the border in the Gulf has not been defined clearly enough in that area.  Secondly, and more importantly, nothing is likely to happen on the Quebec side of the border unless and until Quebec City and Ottawa resolve a royalty/jurisdiction dispute.
The Quebec government is looking for a deal:

"This represents a good opportunity and lot of money for Quebec, especially at a time where we are trying to limit our dependence on oil imports," said Natural Resources Minister Nathalie Normandeau. "We want to settle this issue for good. Quebec has been very patient and we're taking a firmer line today. We've been waiting for 12 years and now we want to reach a deal."

And there’s a unanimous resolution in the Assemblee Nationale to back it up.
All things considered, oil and gas development in Newfoundland and Labrador is likely to shift to the western portion of the province sooner rather than later. 

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h/t to labradore.

Seals!

Near Port aux Choix on the Great Northern Peninsula.

The pictures turned up in ye olde in-box on Thursday evening.

Okay, so it’s more like very near Port aux Choix.

Ice conditions at sea are obviously so bad, the animals are whelping on whatever patch of ice they can find, even if it is well up the beach (and across a road). From pictures circulating in the mainstream media, there is no ice at sea in some areas where it would normally be choked off with the white stuff.

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Good one there, Wente

Margaret Wente argues that bloggers are mostly male and demonstrates in the process that her argument [as to why that is so] is wrong.

[Sarah and I believe the urge to blog is closely related to the sex-linked compulsion known as male answer syndrome. MAS is the reason why guys shoot up their hands first in math class. MAS also explains why men are so quick to have opinions on subjects they know little or nothing about.]

Clearly, basing your column on an inherently fragile, sexist stereotype demonstrates that blogs aren’t the only place for instant, ill-founded opinions.  Moreover,  the time it takes to produce a column versus a blog post doesn’t -  in and of itself  - improve the quality of the thought behind the column.

Not many women are interested enough in spitting out an opinion on current events every 20 minutes.

Maybe not, Peg, but apparently at least one is interested in taking longer to get to the same place.

But don’t worry, plenty of bloggers wind up generating exactly this kind of writing:  an argument that defeats itself.

At least Peg doesn’t have to write her own sock puppet comments.

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[] denotes additions to clarify the point for people who don’t go off and read Wente’s column.

Wente Sorted Updated:  Apparently the considerable number of women who write blogs decided Peg was full of shit, too and decided to tell her in so many far more elegant words [original links from the Globe version are live]:

"When influential women are ignorant to the numerous women's voices on the Internet, when the voices of many women are dismissed as endearing, cute and girly, and when the voices of those women who are most oppressed are ignored altogether, that gender gap is perpetuated. Thank you, Margaret, for proving your own point about how hard it is to change the conversation."

Changing the conversation is very hard to do.

So the Globe has decided to have an online chat between Peg and women bloggers.  Get the popcorn.  This should be funny.

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Never let it be said: House of Assembly version

Never let it be said that your humble e-scribbler didn’t help out the governing party as it struggles to figure things out a mere seven years into its time in office.

Tuesday’s post on on the opening of the House of Assembly noted that there was a major bit of business missing from the news release issued at 11:00 AM, namely proroguing, or officially closing, the old session.

Poof.

At 4:20 PM on Wednesday – odd time for something supposedly routine, dontchathink? -  yet a second media advisory emerges giving “details” of the proceedings on March 22. Turns out the House will meet at 10:00 to prorogue the old session.  Then His Honour will show up at 2:00 PM to deliver the speech from the throne.

24 hours and 20 minutes after the BP post points out the missing bits, basic information that ought to have been known and released in the first place miraculously appears.

Shades of the ABC website.

Ya gotta wonder sometimes. 

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Births and Deaths

With a tip of the bowler to David Campbell, here’s a table showing the ratio of live births to deaths, by province, for the selected years, courtesy of of the good folks at the Dominion statistics bureau, currently d.b.a. Statistics Canada.

Province	1999-2000	2007-2008
NL	1.20	0.94
PE	1.29	1.18
NS	1.22	1.00
NB	1.26	1.11
QC	1.40	1.53
ON	1.62	1.54
MB	1.48	1.48
SK	1.40	1.36
AB	2.22	2.32
BC	1.50	1.38

Campbell explains the figures this way:  for every death that occurred in a province in the given year, there was the number of births shown in the table. So in Alberta, for example, for every death, there were more than two births.

Most provinces have been stable.

In Atlantic Canada the figures have been going down and in Newfoundland and Labrador the decline was the worst of all. We don’t have enough babies to replace our deaths on a one for one basis.

The reason is simple:  young people of child-bearing age leave for somewhere else. This has not changed at all, despite the claims that the number of live births the past couple of years has gone up. People are still croaking at at least the same rough rate. And once the economy everywhere else settles down and starts to grow the normal patterns will resume.  The folks who have come home to seek shelter during the storm will venture out once more to foreign lands, to return  - if at all – once they have retired.

There are a couple of observations on this.  First, it is a reminder that the demographic issue is still with us and needs to be addressed.

Second, as far as the number of workers goes, this is not really much of an issue. if there was economic activity here, people would be staying.  And if they didn’t stay others would come here to replace them.

But that isn’t happening.

This is where you notice the general lack of growth locally and recall the number of projects that were supposed to happen but that died.

And then you realise the number of times cabinet ministers talked about slowing down development or – in the case of Hebron – letting work go because we could never do it all here anyway. 

Sure we could;  as in Alberta, we’d open the doors to people willing to come and do the work.  But that didn’t happen.

Just think about that for a second.

We actually had people talking about foregoing development or slowing the pace of development in order to avoid something. That “something” wasn’t overheating the economy or crime, housing crises or anything of the sort.

Nope.

There must have been some other reason why people thought letting opportunity slip by would be a good idea.

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Court docket now online

Word-for-word, the release issued by Provincial Court:

Effective March 3, 2010, the Provincial Court of Newfoundland and Labrador began providing improved public access and greater transparency by posting its daily Adult Criminal Docket online. The dockets are found online at http://www.court.nl.ca/provincial/adult/dockets.htm

The public and media now have the capability to go online and access, at their convenience, the daily Adult Criminal Docket for any Provincial Court location in the Province.

By providing this service the Court eliminates the need for the public, and particularly the media, on a daily basis to call or visit a court centre in order to confirm that a particular matter is scheduled for the following day. This access not only benefits the public and media, but improves the efficiency of the court by reducing phone calls and visits to the Court Registries.

The Small Claims Docket will also be available online in a few short weeks. As regards Youth and Family cases, there is specific legislation that prohibits the information contained in these dockets from being published.

Chief Judge Mark Pike said, “I am pleased that our Court Services Director has taken this innovative step to improve the efficiency of the Court’s daily operation and to make it more convenient for the thousands of people who have contact with us every year”.

Prominent St. John’s criminal lawyer, Randolph J. Piercey Q.C. stated “For many years lawyers, witnesses and those accused of crimes were required to crowd around a printed listing of the schedule posted outside the court door every morning. This was cumbersome and confusing. By having the docket posted and accessible online, all parties can confirm their schedules in advance.”

Pamela Goulding QC, Director of Public Prosecutions said “All too frequently, people went to the wrong courtroom or were mistaken about when their case was scheduled to proceed. Those who work in the courts such as police officers, lawyers and media personnel upon whom the public relies for information about what’s happening in our courts every day, were especially affected. Now, anyone with internet access can check the docket at their convenience. This will make it a lot easier for everyone. It just makes sense”.

The Provincial Court of Newfoundland and Labrador is the first Provincial Court in Canada to offer online daily Adult Criminal Dockets. The open court principle can be significantly enhanced through the appropriate use of existing information technologies.

“Innovative step”?

Just goes to show how far things have to come where something as patently obvious as posting a docket online is innovative.  Still it’s a good first step.

Of course, this isn’t the first court in the province to do this.  Trials Division of the Supreme Court has had its docket online for the better part of a year or more.

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Williams to continue unsustainable spending

In his first public statement since coming back to the province after heart surgery, Premier Danny Williams confirmed the provincial government will continue spending public money at a level his finance minister has described as unsustainable.

According to Williams, a balanced budget is no longer a target for his administration.

Williams said it was important to keep “momentum” going in the province. 

Take-away:

1. We are in a pre-election - if not a pre-leadership -  period in which any sound fiscal management goes out the window.
2. Williams correctly identifies provincial government spending as the source of economic activity on the northeast Avalon.  As BP readers know, oil hasn’t been driving things in the metro area, contrary to public belief.

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Big show; big deal

Okay so it’s not like anyone doubted the outcome but take a look at the turnout.

Out of 10,189 eligible voters, only 33% of them showed up to vote.

The newly elected member of the House of Assembly got the approval of a mere 27% of the electorate in the district.

Forget the tiny opposition party votes.  They were never expected to do anything anyway. 

But look at the Tory numbers and think about it:

A party that is supposedly worshipped by the entire province – except for a couple of skeets and ne’er do wells – could only motivate 27% of voters in a riding to cast their ballot.

That’s it.

2,737 out of 10,189.

That’s about half (55%) of the vote Beth Marshall pulled in 2007.  And even that was with a smaller number of eligible voters and in one of the historically worst turn-outs (60%) for a post-Confederation general election.

This one was even worse than that and in a situation where there was virtually no opposition campaign and the Tories could pile on the cash and the bodies as they always do for these shows.

Of course, none of that will be discussed during the inevitable – and entirely routine – post-game show on Wednesday.

But while the rest of the world just drones on, take a minute and just think about everything that’s happened since last September.  Then add this rather dismal performance.

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House to open two weeks late

Surprisingly this didn’t get announced yesterday – on a government holiday – along with the news Hisself had returned to work.

The House of Assembly will open with a Throne speech next Monday, March 22.  That’s two weeks late.

If past speeches are any guide, this one will be a truly mind-numbingly hideous piece of verbal diarrhoea.

No mention of what happened to the old session which was adjourned before Christmas but not ended.  Normally the House would meet and conclude the old session.  Maybe the word normally used for that – prorogue – is not in fashion among Conservatives any more.

Anyway, the finance minister will deliver a new budget a week after that, Monday March 29.

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Loonie on the way up

The Canadian dollar is at a level it hasn’t hit since just before the giant meltdown of the economy in the middle of 2008.

And this is supposedly a good thing.

How exactly is unclear since the United States economy is still in the crapper and the Canadian economy is still full of government cash.

Productivity is up, for sure, and that’s good.  But…

While the recent pickup in productivity is welcome, “the question of sustainability still remains front as centre as firms continue to increase hours worked along with overall employment,” said Bank of Nova Scotia economists.

That’s really the warning that has to go with any Pollyanna projections:  we can’t be absolutely sure this is real.

Sales of manufactured products was down 11% in this province in January from December.  But the January 2010 numbers were about the same as the numbers in January 2009.  And that’s the opposite of what was happening nationally.

Oil production is still running about 17% below last year.  January production was about 8.7 million barrels compared to 10.5 million barrels in January 2009. That’s consistent with what you’ve been seeing reported in this corner since last fall.

 

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Quiet: Genius at Work

Those people who worked diligently to smash FPI into tiny bits can see how much their handiwork is benefitting people who don’t live in Newfoundland and Labrador:

Around the world, he could see two models of integrated seafood companies that were able to grow: They focused on being very efficient at primary production, or they specialized in value-added processing, sales and marketing.

High Liner took the second tack and Mr. Demone eventually got out of the fishing fleet business, which had been his company's, and his family's, historical foundation.

The company got another boost recently by picking up assets in the selloff of FPI Ltd., a troubled seafood company based in St. John's. That brought a strong food service business in the United States, as well as production capacity in Newfoundland and Labrador. Recent results reflect the first synergies from that purchase, Mr. Demone says.

Meanwhile in Newfoundland and Labrador, the geniuses who brought you the original fiasco are still at work offering the same old solutions to the same old problems.

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Related:

• “The FPI-competitor myth…”

Satisfaction with Williams gov drops 13 points

What’s the difference between approval and satisfaction?

Well, quite a lot according to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians surveyed during February by two polling firms.

A Corporate Research Associates poll conducted between February 9 and February 25 showed public satisfaction with the Danny Williams administration at a record 93% percent.

But a new survey by Angus Reid conducted during the same time period (February 16 to 23) showed that only 80% of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians approved of Danny Williams’ performance as Premier.

The Angus Reid poll has a lower margin of error at 3.9% 19 times out of 20 compared with CRA’s 4.9%. in addition to a news release, Angus Reid also released a description of the polling methodology and details on the poll itself.  CRA does not release that information.

What this really shows, though, is the gigantic discrepancy between CRA and other pollsters in their results.  The problem with CRA polls is highlighted by the difference in results between AR and CRA for Nova Scotia.  The Angus Reid poll also highlights a huge discrepancy between the AR poll and CRA’s results on a similar question in Nova Scotia. 

According to CRA:

Satisfaction with the NDP government declined even more significantly, with one-half of residents satisfied with the overall performance of the government (49%, down from 63% three months ago).

But according Angus Reid, the Nova Scotia government led by New Democrat Darrell Dexter has only 23% approval down from 49% in November 2009.

Bond papers has contended for some time that CRA polls are wildly inaccurate measures of public opinion.

 

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Firds of a bleather: uncommunication edition

What government departments or agencies in Newfoundland and Labrador have a policy like the one at Environment Canada forbidding interviews unless they’ve been cleared by the strategic uncommunications folks first?

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Danny is still in Florida

Nowhere in the official news release is there any mention that Danny Williams is back in Newfoundland and Labrador.

CBC didn’t report that he was back in the province either, merely that he was back at work.

Ditto the Telegram and Voice Of the Cabinet Minister.

And if you listen all the way to the end of an interview with health minister Jerome Kennedy from the Morning Show on Monday you can get pretty much the same idea. Kennedy acknowledges that Williams has been recovering and “will be back to work shortly.”  He quickly corrects himself to say Williams has already returned to work.

In fact, given that Monday was a provincial government holiday, a news release saying that Williams is back at work looks highly suspicious.  The timing of the release suggests it was triggered by Kennedy’s comments on the Morning Show.

But that doesn’t mean he is actually in the province. 

Williams has been working – apparently – throughout most of his recuperation period. It’s highly unlikely that a man described by his own deputy as a workaholic could actually do anything but try and run the province from his sick bed in Florida.

There’s no word on when Williams will actually return to the province.

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Great Minds Update:  As WJM notes, Hisself has been doing official work things before the news release announcing he is on the job once more.  That pretty much clinches the conclusion that the “news” today was more a reaction to Jerome!’s comment than any actual change in Hisself’s health status.

What-no-facebook-status? Update:  Turns out Hisself is actually back and the release was cover for his campaign foray into Topsail district.  Still, he could just have easily issued the release in February when he went to Vancouver – what was that, a lark? - and said he’d be working from the Southern premier’s office in Sarasota until the snow final disappeared.

Elements of Style: Notebook…and pen

Keep your Blackberry.

Thanks for the Palm, but no thanks.

Ditto the iPhone, iPod and even the iPad when it arrives.  They have their uses, sure enough.

For some purposes, only a notebook will do.

Not a computer, mind you.

A notebook.

A book in which one writes notes.

There is the Moleskine - left, on the bottom - or a version by Piccadilly, left, on the top that is far less expensive and every bit as good.

Black cover, elastic to keep it closed, a few hundred pages of blank paper, either ruled or plain, to suit the purpose. 

Something durable enough to carry around the corner or around the world.

And to write in the notebook, there is nothing that compares to a fountain pen.

A Mont Blanc, if you are so inclined, in this case a Meisterstuck 146.  

Writing need not be without its pleasures.

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Oveur and Out

Actor Peter Graves, whose career ranged from Stalag 17 to Airplane!, died of an apparent heart attack on the week.  Graves was age 83.

Graves was perhaps best known as the spymaster in the 1960s television series Mission: Impossible. 

Known for his serious roles, Graves lampooned them all successfully in Airplane!, a send-up of airplane disaster movies.  Graves played Victor Oveur, the pilot of a doomed airliner.

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Inherent weakness: a public sector-driven recovery

Newfoundland and Labrador showed weak job growth in February with an increase of a mere two tenths of one percent compared to January 2010 and 1.5% compared to February 2009.

Nationally, the job growth in February was driven almost entirely by the public sector.

That matches rather nicely with the experience in Newfoundland and Labrador where private sector job creation has been trailing off for a couple of years. As usual you can find great details on this at labradore: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six.

Here’s a chart – h/t  labradore – that should help you get a clear picture of what has been going on.

Three things to take away from this:

1.  What you just saw is absolutely, categorically NOT what you are hearing from the mainstream media, political circles and people in the local business community.  But it is real. The happy-crappy-talk coming from places like the Board of Trade demonstrates the extent to which the Board has its head up its collective backside or can’t understand simple numbers.

2.  The corollary to the private sector jobs-slide is that the jobs growth that has taken place – akin to the boom on the northeast Avalon – has been fuelled almost entirely by the public sector.  Since public sector spending is – as regular SRBP readers have known for years – unsustainable the whole thing is built on very shaky foundations.

It can’t last.

Therefore…

3.  Stand by for some serious adjustments.  The reckoning may not come in the next few months but it will have to come.

Of course, you will hear nothing but happy-crappy-talk from politicians who are looking to get re-elected in two years.  The pre-election campaign has already started.  What’s more, in a worst case scenario, some of those politicians may be looking to become Premier in a Tory leadership fight before then. Either way, there’s little hope that any political party in the province will be able to come to grips with the real economic issues and start taking action to set the right course for the future.

To steal the words of the Lucides:

Those who deny there is any danger are blinded by the climate of prosperity that has prevailed in … recent years. … That’s the peculiarity of the current situation: the danger does not appear imminent but rather as a long slow decline. At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be any risk. But once it begins, the downward slide will be inexorable.

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Saint-Saens – Symphony No. 3

Sunday morning listening pleasure:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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2001 Moonbus in April from Moebius

You know you’ve been waiting for this.

Coming next month.

From Moebius.

For those of us who have the original Aurora release, this is still something pretty special.

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The Zen of media intimidation

If a story goes unreported, did it actually happen?

In Mexico, as in post-communist Russia, pesky reporters sometimes turn up dead pour encourager les autres.

In other parts of the world, you don’t have to shoot people to stop things from being reported.

There are other ways.

And some of the the reporters will even deny that the lesser forms of intimidation even happened.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t intimidation nor does it mean stories  - sometimes really big and important stories - don’t get reported.

But if they don’t get reported, did they actually happen?

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Telly-torial goes home

A classic Telegram editorial consists of a summary of an issue concluding with a blinding insight into the completely frigging obvious.

This pattern reflects - as much as anything else -  the historic inability of the editorial board to form a collective opinion on any issue unless there is already such a staggeringly obvious answer staring everyone on the planet in the face that to deny it would be to look like a total idiot.

It also reflects another local media truism, namely that if “we didn’t break, they don’t have to add to it.”  In this instance, as with any other issue of considerable substance tied to an equally considerable controversy – like say anything to do with a certain someone’s unmentionable but potentially medically related travel – there is virtually zero chance the paper would explore any side angles or issues let alone weigh in along the same line.  No sleeping dog dare be disturbed. 

If nothing else that would open the chance that a political storm hovering over another media outlet might also come hover over the Village Mall, and that would apparently be a bad thing no matter what issue or principle might be savaged in the process. 

That sort of attitude is what makes a politician’s blacklist so effective.

Well that and the fact that if the Telly was ever blackballed – don’t hold your breath for that trigger event to occur in the first place -  they’d cave so fast you’d only know there had been any problem in the first place by the hole in time and space left by the Telly retreat. Speed of light?  They’d be faster.

Notice, to illustrate the point, the Telly history between 1997 and 2000.  Once someone started getting fed, they stopped asking tough questions about things like the Premier’s travel.  But once their source left office and his spoon stopped coming over regularly from the 8th, the intrepid Telly newsroom rediscovered the wonders of access to information.

It was left to mainland media to tell us about The Source’s free-wheeling travel budget.

Plus ca change.

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Study-in-contrasts Update:  Meanwhile, the editorial board at the province’s other daily newspaper never seem to have trouble speaking what they see as truth to power.  That’s even more amazing when you consider the editorial board lives in the city that has been the home seat to more premier’s than any other:  Joe, Frank, Clyde, Brian One, and now Danny all represented seats in Corner Brook.

Here’s their take on the same issue that Telly publisher Charlie Stacy  - on behalf of them all - wussed out on.

RBC Economics: Imaginary project to drive NL economy in 2010

Sometimes you wonder if these guys actually have a clue:

The recent Public and Private Investment Intentions survey revealed that growth in non-residential capital investment in the province will be the fastest in Canada, surging by an impressive 31.2%. This increase will be fuelled by stronger investment in mining, oil and gas extraction,
utilities (related to the Lower Churchill Hydro development project) and the provincial government’s aggressive infrastructure stimulus plan.

Lower Churchill Hydro development project?

Since no one will be spending money on a project that doesn’t exist it’s going to be pretty hard for that gigantic imaginary project to drive economic development in the province.

It’s like the Matshishkapeu Accord, appropriately named around these parts after the spirit of the anus, the flatulence god.  Because that’s pretty much what the whole LC project is right now:  so much hot air that hits your nostrils with a pretty ripe odour.

Then there’s this piece of sure shite from the boys at the bank:

Employment in the province fell by 5,200, causing the unemployment rate to rise during most of the year; however, outside of energy and mining, the rest of the domestic economy fared surprisingly well.

Sure.

Surprisingly well indeed, if you don’t mention that the fishery is down 22% in landed value.

And let’s not forget that forestry, as in pulp and paper making, is in near complete friggin’ meltdown.  Mills closed.  The one remaining mill has one machine going instead of two and is slicing off workers and costs in a desperate effort to stay afloat.

The province’s finance minister admits they’ve shagged up government spending so badly that current spending patterns are “unsustainable.”  But the fin min say recently that if it wasn’t for oil – thanks BP, CKW, BT, and   RG – he and DW would be shagged up royally?  good thing there were all those give-aways before 2003 of they’d be up the creek.

But sure sure thing, there, RBC economist guys.

Everything in Newfoundland and Labrador is just wonderful.

Protected by a magic bubble.

Friggin’ loons.

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Yep, that’s unscathed alrightee

The province’s fishing industry saw a 22% drop in the value of fish landings in 2009.

So much for coming through the recession protected by some sort of magic bubble. Then again, some of us mocked that idiotic idea the moment the words slipped out of someone’s mouth.

Now you know that when a provincial politician talks about coming through the recession better than most you know they were only talking about themselves, personally. 

They sure as heck weren’t talking about their constituents.

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The seven percent solution

Mark Griffin, former traitor, spouts the new government policy for rural development which is, to be sure exactly the same policy as other every other government before (save one) that didn’t have any idea what to do to develop the economy successfully either:  shift public service jobs into town and create new public service ones.

Send us a prison says lawyer Mark and quickly too before all that “political capital” is burned up.

Mark.

Bubbie.

We are in a pre-election period.

It could be we are in a pre-leadership period on top of that.

Over the next two years there’ll be no shortage of political will to distribute scarce tax dollars around on any scheme  - no matter how useless, no matter that it has been tried and failed before - that might pay for a few more votes.

Forget a prison.

Dream big.

Think of a gigantic greenhouse for growing things like cucumbers and tomatoes.

Just because it failed before doesn’t mean it can’t be useful again to get that last seven percent.

Mark Griffin, former traitor, may well have hit on the way to get that last seven percent of people fully satisfied.

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Wonderland

 

--and then all the people cheered again, and one man, who was more excited than the rest, flung his hat high into the air, and shouted (as well as I could make out) “Who roar for the Sub-Warden?” Everybody roared, but whether it was for the Sub-Warden, or not, did not clearly appear: some were shouting “Bread!” and some “Taxes!”, but no one seemed to know what it was they really wanted.

Once upon a time, as all good fairy tales must begin, one could explain how to pronounce the name of the place by saying that it rhymed with “understand”.

But since “understand” has gone out of favour both as a word and an idea, one must now try and find a replacement.

What better choice than “Wonderland” for a place that these days most resembles the love child of Tim Burton and John Waters after consuming a truckload of the Peruvian marching powder reputedly popular in local junior high schools these days.

After all, this is a province where cabinet minister after cabinet minister admitted over the past six months that they shagged up public finances – spending is “unsustainable” – and the public response is to give them the highest satisfaction level in the history of polling anywhere in Atlantic Canada.

93%.

Higher than flag stomping time.

Higher than the January 2005 handout cheque victory.

Higher than not one but two back-to-back record surpluses that put more money in public coffers than the entire provincial budget 20 years ago.

Even higher satisfaction than the poll taken after the October 2007 election.

Without any apparent reason, people suddenly decided to be hugely satisfied.

Ah, but it was Danny’s bum ticker getting sympathy, some of you smarties are saying.

Take a look.  In a question in which people could show love for Hisself alone, he could only manage to go from 79% to 81%. Less than half the margin of error.  Hardly a thing worth noting at all, let alone label a surge. Were the Telegram story signed it could have been a job application to the Ministry of Truth.

And if you deconstruct the CRA poll numbers, it is even more bizarre.  After 24 months of steady decline, support for the provincial Tories shot up enough to beat the poll taken right after the 2007 election.

But that’s not all.

Even with satisfaction levels that Sarah Palin and George Bush The Younger could only dream of, still 15% of the people polled actually want someone other than the current Premier to be Premier.  In fact, half the people who want Yvonne Jones running the place instead of Danny Williams actually think that Danny Williams’ crowd is doing a completely or mostly satisfactory job. or maybe all 15% of them do which is even weirder.

Such is life in Wonderland.

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Penashue bails; Matshishkapeu Accord in trouble

Peter Penashue decided to pack it in as deputy grand chief of the Innu Nation.

That leaves the Matshishkapeu Accord in even more doubt than before now that its chief champion is gone to the sidelines. The Accord is crucial to development of the Lower Churchill.

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90 or more Club

The result of just a quickie google scan on politicians with a voter approval of 90% or better:

1.  Sarah Palin (Republican), former Governor of Alaska.

2.  Jon Huntsman, (Republican) former Governor of Utah.

3.  George W. Bush, (Republican) former President of the United States

4.  Hisself.

Interesting.

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And if Glenn Beck says it…

Well ya know it must be true.

Glenn likes Danny, too.

 

Way freakin’ spooky

Danny likes Canada’s health care system and goes to Florida for surgery.

Sarah Palin rants and raves against socialised medicine but admits that her family has come across the border for care.

They’ve been known to share an interest in reading, too.

Interesting.

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Ron Silver: No More.

Rest in peace.

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Financial shorts – Second Monday in March edition

1.  Crack whores rebel:  Icelanders voted against a US$5.3 billion package to deal with part of the country’s financial mess.

“This is a strong no from the Icelandic nation,” said Magnus Arni Skulason, co-founder of a group opposed to the deal.

“The Icelandic public understands that we are sovereign and we have to be treated like a sovereign nation — not being bullied like the British and the Dutch have been doing.”

Sovereign Icelanders may be, but they are also broke.  If they don’t like it when people come looking for their money back – it ain’t bullying, BTW – then maybe they shouldn’t have been running the financial equivalent of a crack-house.

2.  More hidden cash turns up:  There may be a few million extra in provincial coffers when the financial year ends.  This isn’t a windfall or a gift.  It’s just what you get when you compare the actual amount of federal transfers in the current fiscal year - $1.264 billion – to the $988 million reported in Budget 2009 last spring.

Well, that’s if you use the Estimates which gives different numbers than the ones in the budget speech. The numbers in the budget speech are pretty much dead-on the actual federal transfers.

Someone should ask the finance minister to explain why he feels the need to keep two sets of books.

3. Counter-intuitive.  Okay.  Crude is up.  Gold is up and silver is is up as well. US dollar is down.  The American economy shed jobs but not as many as expected.  Some news media are reporting this as a good thing.  Basically, it’s more of the recovery-is-here-yada-yada crap they’ve been fed since this time last year.

If the dollar is down, and oil and gold are up, that’s a sure sign that not only is the US economy not in recovery, it’s virtually a guarantee it won’t recover while prices for things like crude oil are that high.

The American economy needs oil prices to be about half of what they are currently in order to see a recovery tale hold.  And when a recovery does start, it won’t keep going if oil prices shoot back up to their current levels.

In the meantime, stand by for an “adjustment’ sometime in 2010 or early 2011.  The “correction” won’t be as big as the collapse in 2008 but it will hurt.

It will especially hurt any government that doesn’t have its financial house in order.

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She’s funny even if she doesn’t try

Let’s just say that Google's translator didn’t quite get the subtle nuances of a French-language story on Sarah Palin’s speech in Calgary.

Here’s the original:

L’ancienne gouverneure de l’État américain de l’Alaska et ancienne candidate républicaine à la vice-présidence, Sarah Palin, a fait salle comble samedi soir à Calgary.

Here’s the google version.

Ummm.

Not exactly.

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KGB Connections

While some may have viewed it as politically incorrect, CBC followed up on its expose of organized crime in Canada with a documentary on Soviet espionage in North America.

KGB Connections aired in 1982 and doesn’t appear to have aired since. The thing is now in the public domain and the whole program is available on youtube.  local audiences will be interested in the reference to one Soviet spy dropped off in St. John’s when a fishing vessel arrived to change crews and pick up supplies.

This version is in black and white but the show originally aired in colour. A colour version, slightly shorter in length, is also available on youtube.

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Firds of a bleather: legislature edition

The second Monday in March.

That would be this Monday, March 8.

Why is that an important day?

Well, under the standing orders of the House of Assembly, the legislature is supposed to sit:

“in the Winter-Spring from the second Monday in March to the Friday before the Victoria Day weekend with a break from the end of the sitting day on Maundy Thursday to the third Monday after Easter…”.

Seems pretty clear.

And yet, for some completely inexplicable reason the House of Assembly is not being called back into session on Monday, March 8, it being the second Monday in March.

Anyone care to suggest a rational, sensible, plausible and/or very good reason why the House likely won’t be sitting again until two weeks after it was supposed to be back?

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Innu vow to protest, continue caribou hunt

After a while, some of this stuff gets repeated so often you could be reading the news with an early undiagnosed case of dementia and not really know for sure that slowly you are losing your grip on reality.

Penashue.

Hickey. 

Innu. 

Protest.

Caribou.

Is it 2010 or 1987?

The answer  - at least for the old Canadian Press clipping below -  is 1987.  The first clue the story is older is the reference to “Innu Indians” and if you managed to slip by that one, the dead give-away is the mention of protests at a military runway.

Other than that, the rest of the story could be from events of the past six or seven years.  A group of Innu, protesting an issue they believe involves their aboriginal rights, decide to kill a few animals from an endangered herd.

A Penashue from Sheshatshiu, in this case Greg, speaks on behalf of the protesters:

''People ask us why we don't sit down and negotiate with government,'' said Greg Penashue, president of the Innu association. ''Well, that's not something I foresee in the near future.

Meanwhile, there’s a prediction of dire consequences from someone regular readers of these scribbles will recognise as a local favourite:

However, John Hickey, [right, shovelling something else in 2009] president of the Mealy Mountains Conservation Committee, said the illegal hunting could escalate into a full-scale slaughter of the herd.

''What's probably going to happen next year, in my estimation, is Metis hunters and hunters from other communities are going to start operating in there and we're going to have one big massacre in the Mealy Mountains,'' he said.

Now aside from the novelty of seeing the old story recycled in this way, there are a few other lessons to be drawn from all this.

Firstly, the Innu  - whether from Quebec or from Sheshatshiu – are past masters at using caribou hunts in sensitive areas as a way of attracting southern media attention for their political cause of the moment.

Second, the caribou herds involved have been used like this for more than 22 years and so far the herds have not been decimated.  There is good reason to doubt either the scientists views or, by referring back to that first point, what is actually going on.  Innu aren’t stupid people, individually or collectively.

Third, the same cannot be said for the white folks who – each and every year - fall for the same schtick without fail.  In that light,  John Hickey’s prediction of a “massacre” 22 years ago is laughable.  But he is basically no different than the crowd who have played the reflexive, knee-jerk white redneck role in the Annual Media Caribou Frenzy every year since.

What’s especially sad is that some of the biggest parts in the 2010 edition of the annual knee-jerk follies are played by a bunch of politicians who are supposed to be or who should be a heckuva lot smarter than they evidently are.  Felix, Danny and Kathy should know better than to get into the racket.  They aren’t being played for saps;  they have re-written the script for themselves and in the process done absolutely nothing to defuse the situation, strip the protest of its political value or advance the Lower Churchill land claim.

Rather, with their claims that charges might be laid they are showing themselves to be extraordinarily stunned.  As lawyers of some experience, Felix and Danny should both know that the aboriginal people of Canada have a constitutionally guaranteed right to hunt, fish and trap subject only to laws about safety and conservation.  In this case, showing any conservation issue is going to be highly problematic.  The facts speak for themselves.

In the end, if Danny and Felix try a politically-driven prosecution  - a la FPI and yellow-tail flounder, right - they can only lose as a matter of law.  They may secure the redneck vote and grumble about the friggin’ courts but that’s going to be of little use once the Innu have a much stronger political position as a result of pure stunnedness. 

On the other hand, now that Danny and Felix have built up an expectation that charges will be laid against the Innu – presumably knowing there is frig-all chance of a conviction – they are going to look like eunuchs if they decide that a prosecution is a waste of time and don’t lay charges.

They got into this mess, one suspects, for a very well-known habit of one of three  - Danny, Felix or Kathy - to shoot from the lip before the brain engages.  Henley v. Cable Atlantic is just one of many such examples. The people of the province have seen it countless times since 2003 and  - contrary to popular mythology – The Lip has cost taxpayers dearly indeed.  This case will likely prove to have a similar high price-tag attached to it.

Either way, the Innu will be stronger as a result of this little escapade. Building up sympathy among the southerners is a time-honoured part of their strategy and it will work now just as it did 22 years ago.

One potentially huge difference in the political response to the Innu outside Newfoundland and Labrador now versus earlier has to do with the level of interest of other governments in the whole affair.  If the feds were as attached to the Lower Churchill  as they were to low-altitude flight training in the 1980s or if the Lower Churchill project was more than a load of hot air, the federal politicians would be less susceptible to the political pressure that is likely to be applied to them very shortly.  There’s no way of knowing for sure – at this point – how they will react.

At the same time, these recent protests and the strong words being tossed highlight the huge cleavages within the Innu communities north and south of the Labrador-Quebec boundary. The white folks in this end of the province might want to consider that in a worst case scenario, there’s no guarantee “our Indians” will side with us against “their Indians.”  None of that bodes well for the Lower Churchill.

And if nothing else, all this highlights the sheer idiocy of believing that history started in 2003 and that – in an of themselves – the current lords and ladies ruling this place are inherently smarter than any average bear that went before.

If they were, then they wouldn’t have volunteered so eagerly to play the horse’s arse – yet again - in the pantomime that is Labrador hydro development.

April 22, 1987

Canadian Press

Innu Indians, locked in an escalating battle over native hunting rights and provincial laws, set up tents yesterday on the runway of a military airport.

Five tents were pitched at Canadian Forces Station Goose Bay by members of the Naskapi Montagnais Innu band to protest against the resumption of low-level flights by NATO fighter jets.

The Innu, who believe the flights disrupt the migratory patterns of caribou, were also protesting against the imprisonment of band members arrested on charges of illegally hunting caribou.

The tents, which were not disrupting airport activities, come after a winter of defiance by Innu from the central Labrador community of Sheshatshit.

The Innu, non-status Indians native to Labrador and Eastern Quebec, say they have killed at least 50 caribou from the protected Mealy Mountains' herd on the south coast of Labrador. The Innu consider the area part of their traditional hunting ground.

Six band leaders and Rev. Jim Roach, a Roman Catholic priest, are in jail awaiting a court appearance next week on charges of illegally hunting or illegally possessing caribou meat.

''People ask us why we don't sit down and negotiate with government,'' said Greg Penashue, president of the Innu association. ''Well, that's not something I foresee in the near future.

''How can they guarantee us rights when they throw us in jail virtually every day for practicing our traditional way of life?'' The Innu claim the right to roughly 300,000 square kilometres of land in Newfoundland and Quebec, saying the tribe was hunting caribou as its way of life before Newfoundland existed and has never signed a treaty giving up its rights.

However, John Hickey, president of the Mealy Mountains Conservation Committee, said the illegal hunting could escalate into a full-scale slaughter of the herd.

''What's probably going to happen next year, in my estimation, is Metis hunters and hunters from other communities are going to start operating in there and we're going to have one big massacre in the Mealy Mountains,'' he said.

Other native peoples in Labrador have also claimed traditional rights in the Mealy Mountains. The Innu receive government assistance in the form of subsidized housing, social services and hunting trips.

''If you get right down to it, the Innu went into a section of Labrador which is traditionally used by the Metis people,'' said Joe Goudie, president of the Labrador Metis Association.

''They have impinged on our land without consultation, without anything.''

The Mealy Mountains and the nearby Red Wine Mountains were closed to caribou hunting after the herd dwindled to less than 200 in 1975 from about 2,500 in the 1950s. The Innu are allowed unrestricted access to the George River caribou herd far in the north, whose numbers have mushroomed to more than 700,000.

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The Dead Parrot of Graduate Studies

“This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker.

This is a late parrot. 

It's a stiff. 

Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed him to the perch he’d be pushing up the daisies.  

Its metabolic processes are of interest only to historians. 

It's hopped the twig. 

It's shuffled off this mortal coil. 

It's run down the curtain and joined the Choir Invisible! 

This.... is an ex-parrot.”

One could pity Noreen Golfman, Ph.d.

Theoretically, that is.

One could  - entirely in the abstract, mind you - actually manage to find some measure of sympathy for the good professor as she copes with the crisis besetting her academic charge, the School of Graduate Studies at Memorial University.

But that sympathy could only exist in the absence of the facts.

You see the university administration froze the grad studies budget for new students.  Starting this fall new graduate students won’t get any fellowship cash from the university.  According to Golfman, about half the university’s masters and doctoral students rely on the estimated $12,000 to $15,000 to help pay for their studies.

Grad Studies is facing a budget shortfall of about $2.0 million a year.  Supposedly the shortfall is the result of a 60% increase in enrolment within the past year.

Note the word:  enrolment.

That is slightly different from the words that appear in the Telegram story on the mess where the word “application” is used. A 60% increase in applications wouldn’t matter since those applications could be turned down in the absence of funds.

A problem exists because someone – maybe Noreen Golfman as dean of graduate studies – or some group of someones allowed enrolment to increase at such an insane rate in a single year.

Freezing spending is not, as Golfman claimed, “sending the right signal about being fiscally responsible.” Rather it sends a signal that someone or some group of someones was so utterly incompetent that they let the situation develop in the first place. The university administration had to freeze the thing in place or face catastrophe. 

As an aside:  what are the odds, incidentally, that Golfman didn’t make this decision all by her lonesome?

The implications are far more serious for the university than the mere inconvenience to a few thousand students. 

"It means that it will be very difficult to attract graduate students to the university this coming year because when you're a graduate student you apply to different universities and see who is going to offer you the best package," [faculty association president Ross] Klein says. "It affects the stature of the university because the graduate programs are one of the things that raise the stature."

You can tell Golfman understands the magnitude of the shag up because she has been bullshitting so heavily in the Telegram and to other media like the CBC:

“We will get control of our budget and hope to move forward with more support, but we couldn't in conscience go forward at the growth rate we are without knowing if we've got the money to do it.”

As Golfman knows, though, she and her colleagues did "go forward at the growth rate” knowing that they didn’t have the cash.  There isn't any indication anywhere that the funding levels were cut, tightened or otherwise altered until after the enrolment part of this fiscal fiasco.  Make no mistake, though: if there is a mess,  Golfman made it.

That isn't what you will see her acknowledge anywhere, though.  Nowhere does the bullshit about this flow more heavily than on Golfman’s own weekly blog Postcards from the edge. 

Golfman tries blaming the media for the current flap:

A freeze by any other name would not be a freeze. That’s of course why the media love to use the word: it signals exactly what freezes are, an act that seizes everything up.

She tries a minor play for sympathy:

“Forgive me, but I am somewhat preoccupied with the word freeze right now…”.

She tries to obfuscate by relying on the extracts from the Standard Book of Bureaucratic Bullshit:

Our staggering growth in the last couple of years has outrun our more limited capacity to support it, and so we are doing some intense focusing on how best to move ahead while staying committed to both the university’s Strategic Plan and the many students who are currently in our programs and require reasonable, long-term funding through the healthy front ends of their programs.

There is a mysteriously capitalised pair of phrases that seem as if they were cut and pasted whole from someone’s hastily typed notes on how to torque the whole shite-pile:

NOT SUCH A BIG DEAL, REALLY. IT’S CALLED GOOD FISCAL MANAGEMENT.

She tries to blame the media – slow news week – and then turns the whole thing into a commentary on “how basic communication works in our society”:

In a world of tweets and twerps, you know just how quickly the facts can be distorted. Just put a few nouns and verbs out there and watch how suddenly the message gets transformed into something quite different from its original meaning and context.

Ah yes, the ever popular “I was misquoted”, not by the usual culprits the news media but by the faceless crowds on facebook and other social media.

Golfman only accepts responsibility for a poor choice of words:  “I admit the memo used the phrase ‘temporary freeze,’ and if I had my time back I’d trade the word in for something softer, like ‘temporary hold’ on fellowship support for new, incoming students.” 

However in her bass-ackwards version her mistake was for telling things as they were – it really is a freeze – rather than employ the sort of mind-numbing drivel one used to find in news releases from Eastern Health about breast cancer testing.

And of course, Golfman would be remiss if she didn’t resort to the old academic stand-by, the supposed ignorance of those who have not been exposed to the rarefied intellectual environment of the average graduate school:

The whole world of graduate studies, as is the domain of research, is also a bit mystifying to the general public who, if they haven’t done a graduate degree, understandably find the whole notion of giving students money to study a little odd.

Only someone with the unadulterated arrogance to believe that could also try the extensive line of sheer foolishness Golfman has been peddling the past day or so in an effort to deflect attention from the rather obviously unsound fiscal management that led to this fiasco in the first place.

Golfman, of course, is the only one who has been avoiding facts, let alone distorting them. Her efforts to massage the message have been so amateurish, so lame, so pathetic that anyone with the IQ of a cup of warm spit – let alone the crowd at the university – could see what is actually going on.

The only thing Golfman succeeds at doing is giving the people of Newfoundland and Labrador a textbook example of how to bungle.   If she didn’t cause the problem in the first place – and she shouldn’t be off the hook for that one yet -  then she has certainly buggered the response to the crisis. 

But what is perhaps the most unforgivable sin in a string of Golfman’s unforgiveables is her mangling of the sacred canon of Monty Python:

(I am starting to feel like John Cleese defending his not-so-dead parrot, but I digress, again.)

Fans of the show will appreciate that while Golfman may like to think she’s playing Cleese’s part, she’s auditioning  - rather badly - to replace Michael Palin.  Cleese was the customer who;d be sold a bill of goods.  Michael Palin was the shopkeeper who tried every manner of deflection and bullshit to dodge responsibility for the fraud.

Oh yes, and the parrot was, unmistakably, and without question, dead.

One can only hope someone in the university administration will step in, like The Colonel, and put an end to Golfman’s miserable efforts at sketch comedy before more damage is done to the university.

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Norwegian Blue bonus:

The audio of the dead parrot sketch from the Live at Drury Lane album.  Those with a penchant for trivia and other things will note the sketch originally appeared in a Python episode titled “Full frontal nudity”. [dead link deleted]

Revised 27 April 2017 to correct typos,  clarify sentences,  and to advise that,  after the Grad Studies Fiasco, Golfman won a lovely promotion.

They are speaking his language

What I said before and I said going in, this is about principles, but it's also about money as well. At the end of the day, the promise and the principle converts to cash for the bottom line for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

That’s Danny Williams talking about the feud with Stephen Harper.

And now the Quebec Innu are looking for compensation for any development of the Lower Churchill.

This one should be easy to resolve.  Both sides are already speaking the same language:  the language of money.

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