Buffett back in the news

My mother comes from Harbour Buffett, resettled in the 1960s but once a prosperous fishing community on Long Island in Placentia Bay.

She was a bit surprised to hear this morning that a pilot boat had grounded on Buffett Island yesterday.

You can find some information and photographs about Buffett here at the Memorial University Maritime History Archive. The names and some of the people are all ones I recognized although I have no memories of Buffett myself. Masters, Butler, Wareham, Marshall, Upshall, Tulk, Hann and of course Collett, my mother's crowd.

Opposition Notes

Liberals: The party brass have anointed interim leader Gerry Reid as the new permanent leader.

Did Gerry have to pay the $10K required of Jim Bennett? Something tells me he didn't. In the meantime, check out the assessment at offalnews. I'd add to Lono's list that Gerry needs to punt Kel Parsons into the great beyond, but I doubt that will happen.

This is LCD politics at its finest. That's lowest common denominator, meaning that Reid is the guy who will make no changes to anything thereby making the entire caucus happy.

This sorry situation virtually guarantees the party will be lucky to hang on to four seats after the next election and many candidates will lose their deposits.

New Democrats: Lorraine Michael wins in as big a majority as can be imagined against a single opponent.

Jack Layton demonstrated this weekend that while he can sing, he does not have the grace and poise to learn how to pronounce the losing candidate's name properly.

Outgoing Dipper boss Jack Harris has been so cozy with his old law partner Danny Williams we may well see Harris' long-rumoured appoint coming through soon to something.

Given Jack's position lately, it was funny to hear him talk of presenting the Dippers as a "Principled Opposition". The party thus far has been neither principled nor has it offered much opposition. On two major pieces of legislation this past sitting, Jack Harris and Randy Collins voted to hand Danny Williams carte blanche to spend public money without any means of accountability. So much for principle, opposition or democracy for that matter.

Maybe the party will change its name to The New Party.

PJ Jazzy Jan

Alright, since none of you appear to be trivia nerds, here's the answer to the question about CTV reporter Janis Mackey Frayer's first television gig.

With a degree in international relations and French, CTV's journalist in Kandahar (Left. Photo: ctv.ca), started life on the Canadian cable channel YTV.


Under the name PJ Jazzy Jan (Right), she worked as a "Program Jockey" or PJ who filled the same role as a video jockey (VJ) on Much.





Janis carries on the fine tradition established by Canada's own J.D. Roberts (Left. Photo: ericaehm.com). J.D started life as a VJ on Much in the 1980s.


Today, John Roberts (Right. Photo: cnn.com) is a senior correspondent with CNN and was touted for a while as a potential replacement for Dan Rather on the CBS evening news.

So who did Workman piss off?

[Update. Original posting 26 May 2006]

In shuffling its overseas scribblers, CBC is sending Paul Workman to Kandahar for a year.

A year.

That is twice the deployment length of a Canadian soldier.

In Kandahar.

After spending a decade years in Paris, Paul's gonna have to do some serious attitude adjusting.

I mean this one is surely on the top CBC reporting gigs just like Alert is at the top of the list of places where Canadian Forces members are climbing over each other to get to.

Workman's replacement is Adrienne Arsenault who is heading to Paris having spent some time in the Middle East.

Nice reward.

Over at CTV, their reporter - Janis Mackey Frayer - in Kandahar did a stint in the Middle East. A bit less of an adjustment, to be sure.

(Friday trivia aside: Anyone remember Janis' early national TV gig? Her bio at the CTV site doesn't make mention of it.)

So inquiring minds will now be wondering:

who'd Paul piss off or otherwise annoy?

Update [27 May]: A couple of e-mails pointed out that this decision reflects a strong commitment by the Mother Corp to cover an important Canadian story.

Yep it does. It is also a marked difference between now and 13 years ago when the CBC sent its Moscow correspondent to cover Chechnya - alongside every other news outfit on the planet - rather than send anyone at all to cover Canadians in Somalia.

CBC's decision to send Workman out in the land of Caine and Connery also reflects a competitive issue - which I hinted at - what with CTV having a presence in theatre already and having deployed both Lisa LaFlamme and Janis to the country for some time. CBC's coverage has been good but sending in Workman reflects a commitment of resources.

Still, though, it's gotta be tough to go from Paris for 10 years (albeit with overseas stints every once in a while) to living 24/7 in Kandahar.

No answers so far on the Janis Friday trivia question. What did this international relations and French language graduate do as her first gig in television?

Must be an English thing

Long-time readers of these e-scribbles will know that your not-so-humble scribbler is known to play the euphonium once in a while.

Before the format change, there was a link to euphonium.net, a site maintained by Steven Mead, a professional euphonium player in England. Any resemblance to yours truly is accidental, although he is a dead ringer for a cousin of mine.

All this is an excuse to post the picture at left, which is of a euphonium, specifically a Boosey & Hawkes model.

In the 33 years I have been torturing others playing, I have never seen the euphonium associated with anything even vaguely suggestive, let alone erotic.

I venture that my relatives who played generations before I was even on the planet never saw the horn as arousing in any way. They missed the obvious pun.

Popular culture reinforces that. Trumpets. Saxophones. Drums. Guitars. All manner of instruments and musicians seem to be associated with sex and sexiness in some way.

But not the lowly tenor tuba.

Until now.

This picture must have originated in England where the euphonium is popular.

So for a Friday afternoon in May, this is a post in a lighter mood.

Completely blind dorks Purists will note this lovely young woman is not holding the instrument correctly.

Every activity includes that sort.

Like the accountants at a party who listened as a fellow told an off-colour joke, the thrust of which involved the rhythmic movement of hips accompanied by chanting "nickel-dime-quarter-buck." The frustrated character in the joke tosses out the chant in favour of "dollar forty, dollar forty, dollar forty".

The guy telling the joke said "dollar thirty-five, dollar thirty-five, dollar thirty-five" at the punch line.

The accountants corrected his math and then laughed.

Ah well. It takes all sorts.

In the meantime, I'll just admire the raven-haired lovely, noting, of course that her embouchure is not bad and her fingers are in the right position.

Harper wants to be mayor of Vancouver

Apparently controlling street racing in a major Canadian city is the next big thing for Stephen Harper to tackle.

Stephen is the Prime Minister of Canada. If he wants to be Mayor of Vancouver or Premier of British Columbia he should quit and run for the job.

Talk about the federal government intruding on an area of provincial jurisdiction...

FPI not alone: Sanford affected by high dollar

New Zealand fishing company Sanford has been affected by the relatively high New Zealand dollar as well as international competition.

How the company is dealing with the situation is contained in the 2005 annual report, and in a story from the New Zealand Herald.

Sanford has also looked at innovative information management approaches to help reduce costs, control inventory and generate more revenue.

To listen to people in Newfoundland and Labrador, Fishery Products International is the victim of some plot.

Others, like federal fisheries minister Loyola Hearn subscribe to the view that there are no deep-seated problems in the fishery. There are just some difficulties with some companies which will be sorted out in due time.

Both are delusional, of course, albeit in different ways.

In the meantime, look at the fishery globally and then take another look at FPI and the local industry.

The bumpf that comes out of meetings like the one Wednesday just isn't as comforting any more, is it?

Another Sanford tidbit: closing areas of the offshore to trawling

Catch a Newfoundland and Labrador fishing enterprise taking this kind of stand on the environment:

The seafood industry announced today a proposal to close off Benthic Protection Areas (BPAs) to bottom trawl fishing, said the managing director of Sanford Limited, Eric Barratt. Mr Barratt was speaking on behalf of the New Zealand companies involved in deepwater bottom trawling. "This is by far the largest total closure to bottom trawl fishing within an EEZ [exclusive economic zone] ever undertaken in the world."

FPI viewed from down under

Sanford is an international fisheries business based in New Zealand. The company holds about 14.97% of FPI's outstanding shares.

In the ongoing political bumpf about Fishery Products International, people keep forgetting the presence of Sanford in the shareholder pool as well as the place its managing director, Eric Barratt, holds on the FPI board.

Purely for the sake of information, here's the FPI section from Sanford's 2005 annual report. Note two things in particular. First, the major shareholders cannot support the share price in the marketplace by increasing their investment because of the limitations in the FPI Act. After all, a good way of showing confidence in the company's medium- to long-term viability is for the major shareholders to increase their holdings.

Second, note reference to the problems Sanford is experiencing in its own primary division. What FPI is experiencing is a global problem and the problem is one best solved by the business owners, not government bureaucrats and politicians.

Check out the annual report, as well, for a discussion of Sanford's investment in Chinese processing. As a successful publicly-traded company, Sanford has been able to grow and diversify over the years. It does so as a New Zealand enterprise and a large part of its success must surely be attributable to the absence of the level of paranoia and political interference that is currently plaguing the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery.

The section of the Sanford annual report reproduced below might just provoke consideration in some minds that maybe investors were attracted to FPI in 2001 not because they could break it up and destroy the company, but because they saw greater potential in what the company could become. The post-2001 FPI leadership may well have made some mistakes, but since 2003 FPI has experienced a level of political interference in its business that would have it difficult for any leadership team to operate successfully.

As a successful, diversified private sector company, Sanford offers a good model for FPI. Unfortunately, in the Wednesday Great Gab-fest, few people floated the idea that maybe - just maybe - the way to move the fishery in the province from its current state to one of a successful locally-dominated industry would be to get guys like Premier Danny Williams, Tom Rideout and Loyola Hearn out of the process.

Instead, the three politicians seem hell-bent on doing the opposite, and in the event will be repeating the same fundamental mistake of virtually every government in this province since 1949.

With rare exceptions, Newfoundland and Labrador politicians are pathologically incapable of make sound business decisions. That is because, collectively, they cannot be interested in anything beyond their political personal survival. The election in October 2007 will be ever-present in the minds of Williams, Rideout and their fellows in the months ahead. As a result, the fundamental needs of the fishing industry will go untended as their political needs take precedence over all else.

What might the assembled throng have concluded if, for once, they took a look at the local fishery from another perspective, perhaps the perspective from down under?

Extract from the Sanford 2005 annual report:

In Canada income trusts dispose of their surplus operating cash flow usually on a monthly basis and the income trust holder is required to account for the income tax on that return. In the normal equity market there is no ability to pay imputed dividends so the income trust structure provides a more tax advantageous situation compared to equity investment. Over the past three years there have been many Canadian companies that have converted all or parts of their business into income trusts.

FPI proceeded on the basis that it would convert its mainly United States-based marketing and added-value business(Ocean Cuisine International) into a Canadian-based income trust and float income trust units for 40% of the business and retain ownership of the remaining 60%. The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador believed that such a float required their approval. Although the company did not believe that to be the case it sought the provincial government'’s approval. This process took over 12 months by which time the Canadian federal government'’s review of the tax status had been announced and a float was no longer viable.

Part of the proceeds of the float would have been used to repay some of the debt in the FPI primary fishing business. This business is suffering in much the same way as our fishing business. The increased value of the Canadian dollar compared to the United States dollar is threatening the viability of their operations.

Two fish processing plants have had to be closed down and written off in the past 12 months. With the poor underlying primary division results, the write-off of two plants and the write-off of the not insubstantial costs of preparing for the income trust, the Company results have been poor. As a consequence, the limited share trading that has taken place has seen the share price fall to a low of C$4.11 but which has since been trading at C$5 per share. The existing four major shareholder groups are prevented from purchasing additional shares and supporting the share price because they are up against the provincial government legislation restricting ownership to a maximum of 15%.

While the Ocean Cuisine operation has been expanding and has good prospects for the future, the FPI Directors are focused on actively restructuring the business and believe that with a net asset backing per share of C$11.00 per share that further value can be gained from Sanford'’s investment.

The Directors decided to write down Sanford'’s investment by NZ$2.2m as an expense in the current period. The shares are now valued at C$7 in our books which the Directors believe to be a fair value. Both Sanford and Ocean Cuisine continue to benefit from our marketing arrangement which has seen further growth in our trading business.

Status quo not an option: Williams

Predictably, Premier Danny Williams thinks huge progress was made at yesterday's summit/town hall/audience on the fishery.

This sort of meeting usually ends a process, capping off months if not years of private discussion, wrangling and hopefully agreement. If you're the guy calling the meeting at the start of the process, then you are usually either trying to pull a fast one or setting yourself up for a huge fall.

So what is the consensus coming from the meetings? Why that there is plenty of agreement on things that amount to PIFOs: penetrating insights into the obvious.

Take a gander at the CBC News story on the Big Meeting:

Premier Danny Williams says there was a consensus at Wednesday's fisheries summit that the industry is not in a complete crisis, but it does need major restructuring.

Knock me over with a feather. We need to restructure the fishery? Geez, these guys accomplished a lot in 11 hours of meetings at taxpayer expense.

"We have acknowledged collectively that status quo in the fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador is not an option," said Williams.

Yet more rocket scientist conclusions. This is like acknowledging that the sun came up this morning.

The premier said there was an agreement among participants that everyone has to do a better job of selling fish product on the international market and the size of the industry needs to be concentrated, with fewer plants and workers.

Now tell me you heard that conclusion somewhere before: fewer people need to be involved in the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery. This is pure gold. No one said anything like this before.

Yesterday's meeting did produce what some might consider an odd meeting of the minds. Earle McCurdy, head of the hunter-gatherers' guild, and Danny Williams, local corporatist political supremo, are in complete agreement on the need to take control of Fishery Product's marketing arm, possibly as a Crown corporation. The two guys who bitch about other people wanting to break up FPI are in fact the guys wanting to pull off the smash and grab.

Meanwhile, Fish, Food and Allied Workers union president Earle McCurdy said he is supportive of the premier's idea to create an industry co-op to take over the profitable marketing division of Fishery Products International.

There didn't appear to be much support for this sort of idea from anyone actually involved in marketing seafood, but that doesn't matter.

What matters is that the Big Giant Meeting with the Big Giant Head of Newfoundland and Labrador produced amazing results never before seen on the planet.

The official news release said so, in pre-approved, vacuous terms of bureaucrats and dissembling politicians.

Loyola Hearn trumpeted his government's capital gains tax break for fishermen as a way of helping with the crisis. Earle McCurdy wanted to see government money spent on his members. Ditto fish processors looking for cash to bail them out.

Yep all remarkably new and special and splendiferous.

And if you want to know how much wasn't accomplished yesterday?

Look at how hard the Premier and all his posse are trying to convince you that they split the fisheries atom over the course of 11 hours at a ritzy hotel. It's sadly very much the norm for Danny Williams: big flash; no delivery.

Too bad that status quo was not an option.

Ralph's idiotic last stand

Outgoing Alberta Premier has decided to make one last political stand, demonstrating he knows nothing about the Constitution in the process.

According to Canadian Press, Klein is threatening to pull Alberta out of Equalization if the feds include Alberta's resource revenues in the calculation for the federal-provincial transfer. Equalization.

Alberta is threatening to drop out of the federal government's revenue-sharing deal with other provinces if energy income is included in the equalization formula.

But you see, here's the problem. Alberta, i.e. the province Ralph runs, doesn't really have any say in the matter since the provincial government doesn't really participate in Equalization in the first place. The provincial government doesn't pay any special taxes to Ottawa to fund Equalization. The Government of Alberta
doesn't participate in this program in any way so that it could opt out.

What is under discussion here is the formula being used by the feds to figure out how much money recipient provinces should get. The money for Equalization comes from the federal government's general revenues.

The CP story makes a major-league factual error by calling Equalization "the federal government's revenue-sharing deal with other provinces", but that's another issue.

Basically in one fell swoop, Ralph is showing that he understands exactly squat about federal-provincial relations.

The whole thing sounds suspiciously like Danny Williams offshore nonsense in which he claimed provincial government revenues it collected directly were being taken away by evil Ottawa. In the final agreement Williams signed with then-prime minister Paul Martin, he admitted that the entire premise for his grandstanding the previous year was, in a word, nonsense.

In Williams' case, he got a couple of billion of federal dollars for his pouting.

What does Ralph get out of this little tirade, except further evidence of how much he doesn't know about the country?

St. John's City Garbage

New municipal trash regulations make it mandatory to cover trash put at the curbside for pick-up by council crews.

That is, you have to cover your trash unless you live on the growing list of streets that have bitched and moaned such that the weak-kneed council has granted an exemption to your street.

But in the meantime, the regulations require trash be placed in polyethylene bags of a minimum thickness of 1.5 mils.

Consumer trash bags - bin liners to U.K readers - typically come in a maximum thickness of 1.2 mils. That's the really heavy duty expensive ones. Most bags are under 1.0 mils.

Don't take my word for it. Look at glad.com and check the faq on trash bags.

There are 1.5 mil bags out there. Just don't think you'll get away cheaply. Bags to meet the regulations are available online and will cost between US$30 and US$50 per box depending on how many bags come in the box.

Count on this regulation being repealed pretty quickly.

FPI: Read this

If you read nothing else on Fishery Products International, read this commentary by business analyst Bruce Keating.

For those who can't get the link, it is found at atlanticbusinessmagazine.com.

Among Keating's other observations is this one:

Finally, government doesn'’t get off the hook. Both levels need to provide substantial funds to assist with the restructuring of the primary fishery. They must accept that the industry will be a smaller one -– less people working in it and fewer resources harvested from it -– and bear early retirement program and other major costs involved.

It's good advice if for no other reason than it is the sort of solid analysis Danny Williams is hell bent on ignoring in favour of fiddling with legislation and organizing stunts like to today's "Audience with the Premier."

Breaking up FPI

Curse Hansard for being unconscionably slow posting the transcripts of debates in the House of Assembly.

The stuff from last Thursday night and the debate on the Hydro bill is still not online. That yielded nuggets for blogging mostly because not a single member who spoke on the bill had a freakin' clue what it was about. Well, at least their comments didn't suggest any comprehension of the English language.

It is way too early therefore to expect anything from Tuesday and Danny Williams little slip of the tongue in which he revealed a bit of his "plan" for Fishery Products International (FPI). He said something to the effect that if a group of local stakeholders came forward with a plan to buy up the company, then he'd put government money behind them.

Couple that with the changes to the FPI Act currently in front of the House and you have the Williams' plan for FPI: break it up and sell off the bits. Sound familiar?

Remember the Rule of Opposites. In this corollary, take what he accuses someone else of plotting and apply to the Prem himself.

In the absence of any deeper plan for the fishery as a whole - let alone a deeper understanding of what the issues are - the provincial government is falling victim to the quick-fix bail out approach. That's why when fish minister Tom Rideout (right) spoke on the FPI Act amendments Tuesday, he referred to the current situation being like 20 years ago. FPI was created out of a massive bail-out scheme.

The bail-out scheme we may see applied in this instance would have the fish plants in the province sold off, most likely to the Barry Group.

Meanwhile, Ocean Cuisine and possibly the European division would be retained and run by a consortium of the smaller operators out there whose product it already flogs. The European division might also be a way of getting local shrimp under the European Union tariff barrier.

Remember Danny's comment about selling off FPI at fire-sale prices? Well, consider that the current bill in the legislature gives the cabinet control over the break-up: that's the goal of the legislation. The Premier was likely only concerned about someone else buying up the assets at a fire sale - one with flames fanned by his own government more often than not - not necessarily about the idea of a sale and a break up per se.

Of course, in the larger picture Rideout is dead wrong. He and Williams may well manage to cobble together a quick-fix here involving a bail-out and government money but they are really looking at a situation which is fundamentally different than the one 20 years ago. What Williams and Rideout will be doing - if the FPI break-up evolves out of the Great Wednesday Meeting with the Premier - is avoiding the tar-baby by taking the province headlong into the political and financial briar patch.

And just like 20 years ago, neither of them plans on being around when we find out how prickly the briar is.

Goose Bay battalion is crapola: I knew it!

While it may be premium content - i.e. they want you to pay for it - the Ottawa Citizen is reporting today as I contended for months now: the Connie defence "plan" developed by Gordon "Driver Advance" O'Connor is considered by the real defence planners to be pure shite.

For those of us in the Far East of the western World, the last two paragraphs are pure gold:

David Rudd, president of the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies,
said the military leadership is also concerned about the government's
plans to station a rapid response battalion in Goose Bay and other
units in places like Comox, B.C. He noted there is ''absolutely no
military reason to station troops in Goose Bay.''

Rudd said some officers have suggested increasing reserve units in
Goose Bay and other locations to deal with the Harper government's
election promise.

Rudd is right. O'Connor's people know it too since they have already started to soften their commitment.

The Rule of Opposites

Premier Danny Williams is one of those politicians who make it easy to understand what he is up to. Sometimes you just have to look at the opposite of what he says.

Take Fishery Products International (FPI), for example.

Williams said he is worried that the current board of directors and management of the company want to split it up and sell off the bits and pieces. He has expressed concern the company's quotas might be moved outside the province.

He has been somewhat cagey in his wording on occasion, referring to the directors taking decisions that are "contrary to the best interests of the people of the province." What those interests are and what would be contrary to them are left undefined. He has also said all options are on the table, including the sale of some FPI assets to the Barry Group. But make no doubt, when it comes to FPI, the Premier has identified individuals from outside Newfoundland and Labrador - foreign demons - as being a problem to be addressed only through legislation.

Therefore, he is pushing amendments through the House of Assembly which will change the way FPI is governed and managed.

But here's the thing. There isn't a shred of evidence that John Risley, George Armoyan or any of the directors of FPI are looking to do anything other than continue the company as a viable, profitable enterprise. The talk of plots to destroy FPI are just rumours pumped by the open line crowd and from time to time encouraged by Danny Williams' own remarks about decisions contrary to the province's best interests.

But even if there is some conspiracy, under the existing FPI Act, clause seven prevents the sale of all or substantially all of the assets of the company. That restriction is there in black and white.

If Premier Williams was genuinely worried about the breaking up of FPI and the sale of its assets he could have slept soundly knowing the only way that could have been done is with his consent and subsequent changes to the FPI Act in the House of Assembly for all to see. After all, the Premier used that very clause to stall allowing FPI to set up an income trust from its Ocean Cuisine marketing arm.

If the Premier still had qualms, he could ask his deputy premier and fisheries minister, Tom Rideout (left) who told the legislature in late March this year that: "[w]e believe we have plenty of legislative authority to make sure that the interests of the people of this Province are protected, and we will not be hesitant to use it, Mr. Speaker, if we have to."

Under the changes to the FPI Act now before the legislature, the break up of Fishery Products International goes from being very difficult to being very easy. The new clause seven allows for the sale, lease, exchange, mortgage or other disposal of the assets of the company with the approval of cabinet. If FPI presents two proposals to government for the sale of any of its processing plants, for example, it will be Danny Williams who chooses whether or not to accept either offer or who makes the choice between the two. A simple order-in-council will bless the deal.

What appears to have troubled Danny Williams is not that decisions would be made but rather who would make the decisions. In the changes to the FPI Act Williams has assured his personal control of FPI and, in the amendments, ensured that neither he nor government can be sued for any financial consequences of their actions.

Yet, in all of this, there is no requirement for Williams to bring his decision into public and justify it before the public, let alone seek approval of the elected representatives of the people of the province.

Under the old legislation, any sale or disposal of the company assets required amendments to the FPI Act, which inevitably meant a debate in the House of Assembly full public view. That is the route Williams took with the income trust proposal.

If anyone thinks the Danny Williams' administration is changing the FPI Act to make sure the company continues to exist as it is now, that he is preventing the break up of the company and the sale of its assets, they had better look again.

Applying the Rule of Opposites will reveal what is actually occurring. A careful reading of the proposed changes to the FPI Act also make it clear that the goal here is to ensure that the Williams administration will be making the decisions for FPI and they will be doing it with as little public scrutiny as possible.

Definition!

1. Town hall meeting anywhere else in the civilized world:


- an open, democratic meeting of residents of a community in which all residents are entitled to voice their opinions freely.

Derives from the practice in New England communities of holding public meetings to discuss significant public issues in the seat of community government, namely the town hall.

2. Town hall meeting in Danny Williams' Newfoundland and Labrador:

- A closed meeting at an undisclosed location with only invited participants attending and the only reporting on the discussions coming from the Premier and designated political officials.

Enemy at the gates of the park

Ah yes, the Glorious Victoria Day weekend.

In Newfoundland, it is the time of the year when people who would never think of going camping in the winter race to the nearest provincial park of gravel pit to freeze their goolies off in the damp misery of the weather that hits like clockwork this time of year. There was some guy on CBC last night who has been going to Butterpot faithfully since the 1970s. He takes two hours to string up electric lights all around the camp site. He slings tarpaulin overhead in case it rains and strings other lengths of tarp across the gaps in the trees to keep the wind out. By the time he has done, the only thing missing from his great adventure "outdoors" is the brown velour couch with giant flowers all over. This guy is no more outdoors "roughing it" this weekend than he would be looking out his living room window.

Anyway.

People of desert cultures think hell is really hot. The Norse considered hell to be a cold place. Newfoundland mythology should have labeled hell a damp one in which you were doomed to an eternity spending the 24th of May weekend in a tent, with a Coleman stove but no way of lighting the friggin' thing because while you brought along enough beer to keep Ontario awash for a month and eight 40s of Lambs between the two of you, some rocket scientist in the group forgot the lighter.

My memories of this weekend revolve around fishing, but that's for another time.

Just so as to keep your sense of humour just think of Jude Law and Rachel Weisz in the 24th of May weekend scene from Enemy at the Gates.

Go on.

Wrack your brains wondering what a story about some Russian sniper at Stalingrad could possibly have to do with you huddled in a pup tent.

Stumped?

Think about the part in the bunker when young Vasili and his paramour struggle to copulate in among a pile of snoring, smelly bodies without waking their exhausted and likely inebriated companions.

If that isn't the definition of the 24th of May weekend in this province for many young couples, I don't know what is.

But don't worry. I know what threw you off. In Enemy at the Gates, they were in a concrete basement in the middle of winter...

but they were warm and dry.

Everything old is new again, part deux

Danny Williams is beseiged by problems with the fishery, for which he has no solutions. He is fighting, as he puts it, a lot of battles on a lot of fronts.

So, from out of no where he announces that there will be a fisheries summit - or as he just told talk show host Randy Simms, it will be a town hall style meeting. It sounds like something is being done while it is obvious nothing is happening. It will be a nice little show and, with any luck it will buy some time until the issue can slide off the radar screens or someone comes up with a brilliant solution.

It's a nice job of shifting the focus of the discussion from government's obvious impotence to its apparent ability to bring something off.

Sounds familiar.

1997.

Health care.

Brian Tobin, pounded day after day in the legislature about hospital bed closures, suddenly announces a health care forum. His cabinet colleagues and health department officials had never heard about it until Tobin announced it. People were pulled together to discuss "the issues" and work toward "solutions".

A brilliant shifting of the debate focus.

And a complete waste of time.

The whole thing was formally announced in the House of Assembly by then-health minister Lloyd Matthews but Tobin had blurted out the commitment in Question Period a few days before under pressure in the House. The episode stands out so clearly since I worked at the time for a health care group. We spent two days trying to find any information about the forum. Once it was announced, we were told we wouldn't be invited because there was a shortage of chairs - I kid you not. We offered to bring our own fold-outs.

Lloyd Matthews.

That's Liz's Dad, by the way. You know. Liz Matthews. Gerry Reid's comms director at fisheries under the Liberals. The one who late one Sunday night packed up her office and skulked to work for Danny Williams.

The similarities in these two fluffy forum ideas are just a bit too much for comfort.

The results are likely to be equally vacuous.

Pulling it out: Williams and the fishery

This week Newfoundlanders and Labradorians saw proof that Premier Danny Williams and his administration have no idea what to do with the fishery.

For one thing, Williams announced there will be a summit of key players to discuss what ought to be done. Whenever a politician organizes a meeting in this context and calls it a summit, you know right away this is a politician without a single desperate clue about what needs to be done. This isn't a meeting with a purpose. This isn't a "task force", as some groups like to call them, with a specific mission to sort out a special problem.

No.

Williams' "summit" is basically going to consist of a bunch of people trying to first of all agree on what is wrong so that they might then, possibly at some unforeseen point in the future, actually be able to start working on what might be done to fix the problem now that they have agreed on a definition. Consider this to be a form of collective bargaining. Odds are very high that in the divergent worlds of the union and the companies, there will be no agreement on the problem any more than the union has shown it grasps the scope of the fish problem already.

That said, there is a good chance the two parties (three if one considers the inherent conflict of interest in Earl McCurdy's outfit) will agree on what they have always been able to agree on in situations like this: shag figuring out the question. Public money is the answer. The government must pour hundreds of millions of dollars into their collective pockets to keep everything just as it is.

"Save us!", they will cry in unison, yet again, so that once this crisis has passed, the industry can resume the same wasteful, unproductive and ultimately destructive work it has been doing since the 1950s. Williams will then look at Loyola Hearn who will look back and shrug. There will then be further talks between Ottawa and St. John's and further shrugging.

We are in for a long summer and a painful fall.


For the second thing, there is Williams' plan to further interfere in the management of a private sector company, namely Fishery Products International. Williams' excuse for making this move is a concern that two of the directors are working against the "best interests" of Newfoundland and Labrador. He has nary a shred of evidence of anything evil here at all. There is no proof that John Risley and George Armoyan - wealthy Nova Scotians both and by definition evil to the townie brood from which Williams springs - are doing anything other than trying to keep the company going and restore it to financial health.

Williams claims he is afraid they will break up the company and sell it off. Therefore he must add a government agent to the board and making other unspecified changes to the legislation governing FPI. Of course, that legislation already prevents Risley and Armoyan from doing what Williams claims he is afraid of, so, as with so many thing, there is a huge gap between what Danny Williams says and the reality.

All this demonstrates that Williams is pulling his fish policy out of some convenient bodily orifice. In the absence of a sweet clue of what to do on any of these files, Williams is making it up on the fly. Check to see if he says, yet again that "all options are open". All options are open only to someone who has not or cannot make a decision. Think about it.

Made up on the fly? You better believe it. This summit was cooked up along with the FPI legislation in a mere two weeks. The fishery crisis has been looming for most of the two and more years Williams has been in office; the problems with FPI alone date from the very first moments of his administration. If Williams and his cabinet had a grip on the fishery, they would have pulled together the key players years ago, not so publicly but in private, to sort through the issues.

Where will it end? When will it end?

No one can say.

If we knew that, we'd know what government was up to.

But that is impossible since, as Danny is fond of saying, all options are open.