Thin-skinned or what?

It’s the “or what” you need to think about.

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Rumours of his demise…

Ted Sorensen, Kennedy advisor, White House speechwriter, lawyer, author and Democratic activist is dead at the age of 82.

Rumours of his demise, as noted in a post at Regret the Error, circulated previously.  This time they proved true.

The New York Times obituary described Sorensen’s role for President John Kennedy this way:

He held the title of special counsel, but Washington reporters of the era labeled him the president’s “intellectual alter ago” and “a lobe of Kennedy’s mind.” Mr. Sorensen called these exaggerations, but they were rooted in some truth.

Kennedy had plenty of yes-men. He needed a no-man from time to time. The president trusted Mr. Sorensen to play that role in crises foreign and domestic, and he played it well, in the judgment of Robert F. Kennedy, his brother’s attorney general. “If it was difficult,” Robert Kennedy said, “Ted Sorensen was brought in.”

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Lower Churchill: Tshakuesh leads quiet resistance to the Old Man’s Dream

Elizabeth Penashue is opposed to development of the Lower Churchill. 

She is concerned about what it will do to the environment and what the changes to the river will mean to the environment and to the Innu people who have lived in the area for centuries.

As she put it last year in a letter to The Labradorian:

A lot of people understand why we walk. We don't want the dam like they did before to Churchill Falls many years ago. We lost so many things back then, we lost hunting areas, and so did the white people, not only the Innu lost, other people lost too. They lost the same. The biggest thing we lost, were the burial grounds. This was the most important thing that we lost. If they make another dam what else will we loose? The river will die, and all the stuff around the river, trees, and the animals and fish. And the peoples hunting areas will be ruined.

We walk, women and children together to send a strong message that we will not give up. We are strong and we want to be respected and listened to. It is for the future of our children that we are doing this for!

While some people east of the over pass might have been pre-occupied with other things last week, listeners to Labrador Morning caught an interview with Elizabeth Penashue with host Cindy Wall (CBC audio file: October 28).

Penashue is a respected elder in the Innu community. Each fall for the past 13 years, she has walked the 80 kilometres from Happy Valley-Goose Bay to Gull Island to raise awareness about the impact Lower Churchill development will have on her people.

In the interview, Penashue talks about some of the people who have walked with her, including busloads of school children brought out each day.  She also talks about the food she enjoys and about the tent prepared for her by family members and other sin the community when she arrived at Gull Island.

More than many southerners may realise, Penashue represents a powerful political voice within the Innu community that cannot be ignored. Claims made a couple of years ago about an agreement on land claims and development, for example, proved to be so much hot air.  Penashue’s principled opposition carries great weight in itself and serves as the focal point for others who share her concerns.

Elizabeth Penashue is one of the reasons why any claims that a Lower Churchill deal is imminent or that the project may start soon are just so much hot air. The so-called New Dawn agreement vanished not long after the provincial government made a great noise about it. 

What blew the deal away, was not a mountain of hot air bigger than the blast that brought it.   It was the soft voice of a woman who walks 80 kilometres every fall and who will keep walking 80 kilometres until she can do it no more.

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Elizabeth Penashue’s Blog:  elizabethpenashue.blogspot.com

Before I’m gone I want to see some change, I want to help my people and teach the children. I don’t want to see my children lose everything—I know we can’t go back to how things were, but I don’t want them to lose their Innu identity, culture and life.

Moms say the darnedest things

The big front page story on the Telegram this Hallowe’en weekend is a story about the chow served to the guests at the Lakeside Hilton, the century old and then some prison that is the centrepiece of the provincial government’s correctional system.

Her Majesty’s Penitentiary.

The piece is called “Dining in at HMP”. The front end of it is a summary of a piece in the Toronto Star that compared local prison fare with that of the jails operated in the Greater Toronto Area.  The rest of it is a summary of the menus served at the Pen  garnished with quotes as fluffy as the mashed spuds that sit on the inmates’ plates next to the roast beef au jus or fresh Atlantic salmon.

The story is not front page fare by any means and it is only marginally less front page-y than the piece underneath.  That one comprises reminiscences by former managing editor Bill Callahan of the time he was a provincial cabinet minister back in the days when the last personality cult seized the good people of the province in its steely grip.  Incidentally that was long before anyone taped keys on walls at newsrooms, but that is to digress. Perhaps it is time for the powers that be over at the Telly to start re0running old Ray Guy columns from around the same time.  If the Mother Corp can recycle Chez Helene or Quentin Jurgens MP surely there is value in 45 year-old humour that is still relevant and savagely funny today.

Anyway, your humble e-scribbler’s mother inadvertently captured the gravitas of the Telegram’s front page Saturday evening with a dinner table comment she meant in all earnestness.

I saw that headline, she said, pointing to the paper over on a table in the living room.  “Dining in at HMP”, she read.  I thought that was going to be another Karl Wells food review.

At that, the family took a break from dinner to clean the shepherd’s pie off the walls.

Spit-takes can be messy.

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Hansard editor pens unique parliamentary novel

 

The blurb for this novel by the former editor of Hansard at the House of Assembly says it all:

Verbatim: a novel is a hilarious and scathing exposé of parliamentary practice in an unnamed Atlantic
province. Dirty tricks, vicious insults, and inept parliamentary procedures are some of the methods members use to best represent their constituents.

Infighting about petty matters within the staff of the legislature is captured by Hansard, its recording division, complete with typos unique to each correspondent. But when the bureaucrats begin to emulate their political masters, the parliamentary system’s supposed dignity is further stripped away.

Jeff Bursey reveals how chaotic and mean-spirited the rules behind the game of politics are, and how political virtue corrupts everyone. Verbatim is an inventive and blackly humorous work that speaks to the broken parliamentary practices found across the country.

About the author:

“Jeff Bursey has worked for Hansard in Atlantic Canada for seventeen years, first as
a transcriber, and then as an editor. Born in St. John’s, Newfoundland and currently
living in Charlottetown, PEI, Jeff has only ever lived on islands.”

What others are saying:

“Jeff Bursey has written a clever, highly innovative and highly readable novel about Newfoundland, specifically modern Newfoundland politics. The satire is sharp, sometimes hilarious, the language perfectly suited to the subject.“-- Wayne Johnston, author of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.

Bursey’s work also enjoyed a very favourable review in the Winnipeg Free Press.

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New book by city councilor Frank Galgay

St. John’s city council Frank Galgay has a new book out this fall, just in time for the holiday season.

Here’s a chunk of the blurb from the Flanker Press website:

“The glory days of sailormen come alive in the pages of Rocks Ahead! as Galgay revisits the old northern channels where seafarers defied death at every turn.  These past few centuries, many have perished in the bitter Atlantic waters, while others have found hope among the ruins. The 30 stories within these pages span the years between 1704 and 1944. They recapture some of the most awesome and terrifying voyages any captain has ever seen, including the heroic rescue of the crew of the Merry Widow, the oil spill off Mistaken Point from the SS Rotterdam, the SS Grampian’s fatal collision with an iceberg, and many more exciting tales of doom and deliverance.”

Rocks ahead is in bookstores now or by mail from Flanker Press.

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The Rally for Sanity and/or Fear

From Forbes online comes the story of how the Rally for Sanity and/or Fear started:

“Right after I made the post, some other reddit [sic] guys created the Colbert Rally web site,” Laughlin told me in an interview. “That inspired all of the Facebook groups.”Although growing on the web at a fast pace, the idea existed in its infancy across multiple fan pages across Facebook as support for Laughlin’s conception of a rally, but no immediate plans to make it happen. “Colbert’s staff was on a week-long break when the post first went crazy. Me and other Reddit users were brainstorming ways to get the show’s attention.”

After some Googling around, Laughlin discovered that Colbert sat on the board of directors for online charity DonorsChoose.org, where donations can be made to one of multiple charitable projects chosen by the donor (hence the name). “We thought that if we could get a bunch of Reddit users to do a big charity bomb,” having thousands of users donate money simultaneously while others publicized the cause behind the mass donations, “we could get his attention.”  attn.  [sic] In the first 48 hours, over $200,000 in donations were made.

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Best Traffic, October 25 to October 29

1. Williams announces political exit plan
2. Best Political Blog in Canada.  Right Here!
3. Lower Churchill:  What Danny actually said (with translation)
4. Cleary quits as federal NDP candidate
5. Knuckle-dragging council pissed off at hard-working recyclers
6. NALCOR:  the power of nostalgia (Part 2)
7. Emera silent on Lower Churchill talks
8. Court docket now online and Five years of secret talks on Lower Churchill:  the Dunderdale audio [tie]
9. NALCOR:  the power of nostalgia
10. Insider baseball and Kremlinology 27:  Going negative early has its risks [tie]

This is the week of big news.

Danny talked up the Lower Churchill and the possibility of a deal.  That could be the signal he is ready to take a walk. A whole bunch of Lower Churchill stories crowded into the Top 10 this week, including the story the conventional media refuse to report (tied at Number 8).

Sir Robert Bond Papers took first spot in the Canadian Blog Awards for Best Political Blog for 2010.

Ryan Cleary, long touted as the NDP dream candidate to win a second federal riding in the province decided he would pack it in and go back to writing.  Some are speculating the Indy may be coming back.  The website’s had the login screen for months and the Indy is still deader than Cleary’s political hopes.

Besides, Atlantic Business Magazine is looking for an investigative type and Cleary just finished writing a few puff pieces for them.  Maybe that’s the fit.  ABM already picked up the best scribbler at the old Indy:  Stephanie Porter so the Indy’s second death already produced the best benefit it could for ABM and its able crew.

This is the week that Bond Papers traffic took a massive leap.  On top of that, weekend traffic has been matching weekday traffic for the past three weeks or so. 

That’s very odd.

Normally, weekend traffic drops to a low as 50% of the average weekday load regardless of whether there’s new material or not.

Maybe people sense that this is going to be a hot fall for news.

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Update: Added a couple of missing words, put in caps where they belonged,, added some italics where that belonged and added a new para [Starts with “Besides…”]

Book launch for first-time local author

Jill Sooley grew up in Mt. Pearl, NL. She enjoyed a successful career in public relations first with the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, and later, at a boutique public relations firm in midtown Manhattan. She currently resides in Long Island with her husband and children. The Widows of Paradise Bay is her first novel.

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Kremlinology 27: Going negative early has its risks

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians can be forgiven this week if they thought they’d entered the savage world of American politics complete with its intense and highly orchestrated personal attacks.

While the 2011 provincial election campaign has been underway since last spring, the provincial Conservatives went negative this week with a pre-emptive attack on the Liberal party.  The pretext for the attack was the opposition office’s new communications director, Craig Westcott.

Conservative leader Danny Williams was characteristically blunt in justifying both the attack itself and the violation of the province’s privacy laws by the release of an e-mail Westcott wrote to the Premier’s office in February 2009.

I did feel it was important that the people of the province know who they’re dealing with and what they’re dealing with when this man is now an integral part of the official opposition in this province.

The task of leading the attack went to Kevin O’Brien, recently promoted from a low-level portfolio to the slightly more demanding job of municipal affairs. O’Brien noted the idea as well of letting people know what  - supposedly - they could expect from the Liberals:

It's sad really to see the Opposition take that path because what I see is a fellow that can't even contain himself with regard to expressing that hatred."

These statements stand out because they characterise something that had not occurred.  Both Williams and O’Brien drew attention to what they considered Westcott’s personal “hatred” for the Premier. 

Westcott has been characteristically blunt in his criticism of Williams, but his comments have been typically not as personal as Williams presents them.  And sure, Westcott made plain  - before he started the job – that he was concerned about Williams’ impact on politics and the potential the Williams’ Conservatives could win all 48 seats in the provincial legislature.  But at the point O’Brien mentioned the e-mail, the opposition itself hadn’t gone anywhere near negative.

Interestingly, Westcott described Williams accurately in 2007:

it's impossible to avoid being negative about a leader who is so negative himself, especially about his critics and some of the people who try to do business in this province.

And Williams and his crowd took great offense at anything and everything Westcott said.  For his part, Westcott released a raft of e-mails with Williams’ communications director at a time when Westcott published a local newspaper and couldn’t get an interview with Williams. Westcott ran for the federal Conservatives in 2008, largely as a personal gesture in reaction to Williams’ anti-Harper crusade.  One of the consequences is that CBC stopped using him as a commentator after the election.

That isn’t just background for the most recent shots in an ongoing personal feud,  nor does it suggest that both sides are equally guilty of anything. Westcott started his new job on Monday morning.  On Wednesday, the Conservatives launched the assault. Until then, there was nothing other than the known animosity between Westcott and Williams. The point to note is that the Conservatives characterised what Westcott and the Liberals would do in the future. 

But that prediction – and all the negative implications – are entirely a fiction created by Williams’ Conservatives.

Going negative isn’t something new for Williams.  He likes the ploy and has used it on everyone from Stephen Harper to a previously unknown lawyer named Mark Griffin.  Around the same time Westcott sent the now infamous – and previously private – e-mail, Williams labelled Griffin a traitor.  Williams also started a lengthy battle with the Globe and Mail over a column that speculated about Williams’ possible motives in expropriating assets from three private companies in central Newfoundland.

Nor is it the first time Williams has tried to put words into someone else’s mouth.  in the most famous episode cabinet minister John Hickey sued then opposition leader Roger Grimes for defamation.  The case quietly disappeared because Hickey sued Grimes not for what Grimes said but for what Williams attributed to Grimes.

The provincial Conservatives are a tough and effective political organization.  They bring message discipline and zeal to the table. On top of that they have an army of enthusiastic sock puppets who will fill any Internet space and radio talk show with pre-programmed lines. Going nasty and negative is second nature to them.

The curious thing about the episode is that Williams could easily have waited until the first lump of mud came hurling his way. 

But he didn’t.

He sent O’Brien out as his crap flinger, first.

Taking the first shot, going negative in this way, this early in a campaign would be a risky venture in any case in Newfoundland and Labrador. Most voters aren’t engaged in politics and the overwhelming majority aren’t thinking about the election yet.  Local politics is anything but the highly competitive, ideologically-divided wasteland of the United States. People don’t like taking the battle-axe to the heads of their neighbours and friends. 

Politics can be competitive, but heavily negative campaigning doesn’t bring any great benefits.  Going negative early carries a risk of alienating people from the Conservatives and from politics generally. And it’s not like Williams has a surplus of voter support he can afford to tick off with negative campaigning.  He won in 2003 and again in 2007 with about the same number of votes, about the same share of total eligible vote.  That’s because Williams’ voters consist of a core of traditional Conservative supporters plus a group of voters who have voted for other parties, usually Liberal, in the past.  

For someone with Williams’ reputation, however, there is the added danger that yet more relentless negativity will affect his own support. Voters may not be able to stomach a full year of his highly concentrated political bile on top of the seven years they’ve already witnessed. Even Conservatives have been known to revolt against Williams’ diktats.  In 2008, Conservatives in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl voted heavily for the New Democratic Party, despite the fact that four prominent cabinet ministers campaigned for the Liberal. In other ridings, they just stayed home in response to Williams’ personal anti-Harper crusade.

There are signs that voters, generally, in some parts of the province are discontented if not slightly cranky. Williams’ Conservatives have already started trying to mollify concerns over some issues. Public money is flowing freely in announcements about spending for new outdoor basketball courts or cassettes for x-ray machines.  A news conference heralding a new case of DVDs or a packet of screws can’t be far behind. 

The provincial Conservatives have also telegraphed that they are worried about voter attitudes toward the party, generally. Maybe it wouldn’t take much to see the sort of rejection of the Conservatives that happened in the Straits and White Bay North spread to other districts along the northeast coast and other parts of central and western Newfoundland and into Labrador.

In a sense, going negative early suggests the Conservatives are particularly sensitive about any prospect that a resurgent Liberal Party might be able to capitalise on voter discontent. It reinforces the idea that Williams’ personal smear of Marystown mayor Sam Synyard had more to do with a fear of political rivals than anything else.

In the insider baseball world of political reporting in this province, this week’s drama about an e-mail and a communications director may looks like one thing to some people.  But if you look more closely, another picture may appear.

No matter what, the next 12 months could bring some of the most interesting political developments in years.

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Outside the Overpass Update:  The Overpass is to Newfoundland and Labrador politics as the beltway is to American federal politics.  In that light, consider this e-mail from the province’s other daily that puts the week’s game of insider baseball in perspective:  “Get back to work”.

Going negative this early has its risks.

Cleary quits as federal NDP candidate

Ryan Cleary won’t be carrying the New Democratic Party banner in the next federal election.

Cleary ran for the party in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl in 2008, lost, took up a job as a talk show host, quit that gig supposedly because he wanted to spend more time with his family and then sought the Dipper nod in the same riding almost immediately afterward.

Perhaps he expected a quick election call.

Cleary posted a note on his blog:

I wish to advise the constituents of St. John’s South-Mount Pearl that, effective Oct. 27th, I resigned as NDP candidate for the federal riding, and as a member of the party — severing all affiliation. I’ve written several articles in recent months for publication and hope to write more, which creates a professional conflict. You cannot be a politician and a journalist — it’s one or the other. I’ve chosen to return to journalism, my profession of almost 20 years. I would like to say a sincere thank you to the people who have supported me politically. It’s been a humbling and eye-opening experience, and my passion and drive will continue to be directed towards the betterment of Newfoundland and Labrador.

No word yet on a possible replacement for Cleary.

Several recent converts might make good candidates.

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St. John’s Planning – town hall meeting, October 30

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Contrasts 2: Quitters

When it was someone else in the Premier’s Office:

[Williams] also said the agreement in principle [on the Lower Churchill] fails to address the Upper Churchill deal.

"The Upper Churchill power project must be the most lopsided agreement ever signed in the history of Canada," Williams said.

While prominent Newfoundlanders have urged that any Lower Churchill deal address the Upper Churchill, Williams said Grimes views them as separate entities.

"I don't accept Premier Roger Grimes's position," Williams said.

"It's something you would expect to hear from quitters and we are not quitters."

And once the Old Man got the job:

The Premier has gone to Quebec, and gone to Premier Charest, and, y’know, we’ve had Nalcor visit, y’know, Hydro-Quebec, I’ve been meeting with ministers and so on, and we say to them, OK, y’know, we’ll set the Upper Churchill to one side. But, y’know, let’s sit down and have a talk about this Lower Churchill piece.

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Contrasts

There is the series on NTV’s evening news this week featuring Yvonne Jones. The Liberal Party leader is fighting breast cancer. She allowed NTV to follow her through part of that experience.

This is not something most of us would do, under any circumstances.  Jones did, however,  and in the act of openness has given people a chance to see an aspect of her that is quite different from the clips on the evening news or the sterile quote in the paper.

The segment on Wednesday night featured a group of women, some of them breast cancer survivors themselves.  They came to support Jones as she shaved her head before starting chemotherapy. Even if you did not know any of the women, you could not help but be moved to the brink of tears.

There was a prayer chain made up of sheets of paper containing messages for Yvonne.

Jones held up a blanket knit by a group of women at a church and told about it and where it came from.

There was a picture of her cheerleaders.

Here was a woman taking the first step along a very difficult journey.  Difficult is not even the right word for it.  Truth be told, unless you have faced such a thing as cancer, it’s hard to know what word is right.

Other words come to mind, though, from watching the segment. Red faces.  Cracking voices. Trepidation.  Hugs.  Prayers. Fear.  But at the same time compassion, optimism, and laughter that seemed to make all those other things  - if not disappear  - then seem not quite so enormous.

An experience that can only be singularly personal transformed in all its dimensions through camaraderie.

Some people lead by saying: “Follow me!”

Others say: “let us go this way together.”

Life is full of contrasts.

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Insider baseball

What is interesting to people on the inside is often of no interest to people outside.

That idea, in a great many more eloquent words and with a bunch of other ideas, may be found in this 1988 article by Joan Didion.

Some people will get this.

Most will not.

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No House sitting until December

The House of Assembly won’t be sitting until December and, as a result, it likely won’t sit much more than a dozen days.

No word on why the House is being delayed so long. 

Maybe the Premier’s Office is a wee bit preoccupied replacing all the carpets chewed up since last week.

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Best Political Blog in Canada! Right here!

The votes are in.

The tally is done.

And Sir Robert Bond Papers is the Best Political Blog in Canada for 2010!

Thanks to all those who clicked their fingers to the point of osteo to make this possible.

Imagine what could have happened if the Premier’s Own Clicking Team decided to get behind this blog and vote their little hearts out as they do over at VO massaging Question of the Day results.

All jokes to one side, this is something that will proudly go on the masthead.  In the five and a half years or so since BP started, there are times when it has been an effort to keep going.  What does keep one typing away is know that there is an audience out there  - consistently bigger than some local independent newspapers enjoy or enjoyed - that finds something of value in these e-scribbles. This award reflects their continued support and interest and for that, they have one humble e-scribbler’s eternal gratitude.

Now it’s back to the daily job of ensuring SRBP is deserving of that recognition.

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Lower Churchill: what Danny actually said (with translation)

From the text of Danny Williams’ speech to the provincial Conservative convention:

And of course, also looming large on the horizon right now is the development of the Lower Churchill project.

Right now, we are in discussions with Emera Energy and the folks in Nova Scotia who are anxious to be our partners as we move forward.

Imagine how exciting a day it would be if we could see that power avoid Quebec altogether and use the power ourselves or send it our neighbours in the Maritime Provinces and New England states. And it could happen my friends - just wait and see!

[BP:  How nice of Danny to tell you how other people are feeling.  He’s done this before and it turned out to be complete nonsense.  The most important words here are the verbs:  “would” and “could happen”.   It could happen but then again it could not.  And yes it would be exciting, if it happened.  Then again it wouldn’t be exciting if it didn’t.]

With this potential new and mutually beneficial partnership with Emera Energy which builds upon our existing partnership with them on our recall power from the Upper Churchill, we are embarking upon an exciting journey that has never before been seriously contemplated and pursued by those seeking to develop the Lower Churchill.

[BP:  There’s that conditional language again:  “potential”.   Of course, the idea of selling power to the Maritimes is as old as the Lower Churchill itself.  Most of what Williams seems to be doing here is thinking inside the box of what happened when he worked at the House of Assembly in the 1970s. It was very seriously contemplated back then, but abandoned.  Incidentally, remember about the claims that turned out to be total crap?  Well, there’s another one

We are saying "thank you Quebec, but we simply do not need you to develop this project". We are going to bring that clean, green power down from Labrador to the island and then sending power across to Nova Scotia.

[BP:  Funny but that just rings hollow in light of the news  - still unreported by any conventional news media - that Williams spent five frackin’ years trying to convince Hydro-Quebec to take an equity stake in the Lower Churchill, with redress for the 1969 contract put “to one side.”  It’s hard to get beyond the idea Williams is just talking this up to soothe his jangled nerves over last year’s series of Churchill Falls embarrassments or to replay Joe Smallwood’s 1964 strategy.]

Ultimately, some of the power could also end up going into New Brunswick or the hungry United States market as Emera has assets in Maine as well.

[BP:  Hungry?  Interesting choice of words given that the province’s energy corporation hasn’t been able to interest a single one of the hungry mouths to buy a morsel of the Lower Churchill food.  Now Hydro-Quebec on the other hand…]

How about that folks? Our power developed and managed by the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and sold to market for the first time in history without having to beg Quebec for a piece of the pie!

[BP translation:  And if they’d accepted the secret deal without redress, I’d be standing here kissing French ass.]

This partnership with Emera would be based on another previously untested development option, and that is a phased development of the project. As you know the Lower Churchill River system is comprised of Muskrat Falls with 824 megawatts of power and Gull Island with 2250 megawatts.

[BP:  There’s that conditional language again:  “would”.  One of the reasons why people didn’t think of phasing with the small dam first is that the first dam can’t really generate the cash to pay for the huge transmission infrastructure and make cash at the same time.]

Our discussions with Emera and Nova Scotia would result in a partnership that would see us proceed with the development of Muskrat Falls first. The power from Muskrat would be used to help us displace expensive, dirty power from Holyrood which in itself justifies the project, and then the remainder would be sold to our partners in Nova Scotia and beyond.

[BP:  Displace isn’t the same as shut down entirely, is it?  That’s good because there is no plan to close Holyrood.  And as such it doesn’t justify the multi-billion project in itself.   It sure doesn’t justify the project when you have plenty of juice on the island to meet anticipated need without spending all that cash we don’t have.]

By using the Lower Churchill power here in the province, we will be able to provide stable rates for generations to come and an appropriate return to the treasury.

[BP:  Ratepayers will enjoy stable rates anyway, without the Lower Churchill.  If Williams builds his legacy project taxpayers will likely be saddled with prices that are much higher than the need to be.  The environmental assessment panel already told NALCOR that their submissions don’t justify building the Lower Churchill using exactly the same rationale Williams just used.  he knows that yet he is sticking to the same old – disproven – line.  makes you wonder what he is really up to.]

We would share the transmission with willing partners, unlike those in Quebec.

[BP translation:  Yeah and I’d be kissing their asses if only they’d have let me.  And thank heavens nobody remembers April 2009 when I cut a deal with Hydro-Quebec. ]

The larger Gull Island development would be a separate phase to follow, and would provide opportunities to attract industry to Labrador, should commercial partners be prepared to provide appropriate economic benefits.

[BP translation:  We could use the power for any company that would be foolish enough to come here knowing I’d expropriate their asses back to the stone-age just because  I woke up one morning without enough wood to finish the job. And frig AbitibiBowater too while we’re at it.]

Needless to say, there are still details to be worked out before and if a final agreement falls into place. But we are extremely excited about the prospects of developing this project in a way that brings real and meaningful benefits to the people of the province, to our partners and to our customers.

[BP translation:  That’s about all we have to get excited these days – the idea that something might possibly happen at some point down the road.  Anyone got any other conditional language?  I’ve used all mine up]

Of course, it is never over til it is over but we are cautiously optimistic that we will be able to announce something sooner rather than later.

I am hopeful that with your support we can finally see this project get off the ground.

[BP translation:  If by something “we” mean just enough to let me get the frig out of here permanently.  Put a few bucks in the retirement coffers when we have the going away party.  In the meantime, keep the Citation turning and burning, boys.  We’ll be wheels up before you know it.]

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Knuckle-dragging council pissed off at hard-working recyclers

Put aluminum cans and other recyclable beverage containers on your front doorstep in some parts of St. John’s and they’ll be gone before morning.

The aluminum fairies are busy.

Think of it as a form of curb side recycling.  These hard-working men and women have been trekking the streets since the provincial government introduced the beverage-deposit system to encourage recycling. Why they do it is of no concern.  The fact is that they have helped to cut down on the amount of garbage in our city.

And they’ve been doing it for years.

Rain, sleet or snow.

The same years that the knuckle-draggers at city council resisted running a curb side recycling program altogether.  Sure they had money for other stuff:  Wells-Coombs memorial money pit.  Cruise ship junkets.  Council was willing to spend other people’s money  - yours and mine, that is - on anything, by the bagful.

But something like recycling that is fundamentally part of what the city should be doing. anyway?  Too expensive, supposedly.

And so it fell to the people some affectionately call aluminum fairies to do what the crowd downtown would not bother to do.

Now some people are complaining about the aluminum fairies.  And some other people are trying to figure out ways to stop the aluminum fairies from plying their chosen trade. Plenty of crap-talk has been tossed around as well, likening the people who collect beverage containers to gulls or suggesting they are all people on social assistance. Hardly socially progressive talk, one would think, but definitely indicative of the bigoted attitudes held by some people in this town.

The only obvious reason is that the knuckle-draggers at city council have been counting on people tossing out beverage containers so that the city could pick up some spare change.  But that would just cut into the legitimate business of a whole bunch of people who are not – as city council clearly is – a bunch of johnnies-and-janes-come-lately to being environmentally responsible citizens of an otherwise stinky planet ee-arth. 

They may be grubby compared to the tonier lot at Tammany at Gower but at least the aluminum fairies work hard for their nickels.  And it would be exceedingly bad form for the crowd on council to do anything but change the recycling program they’ve started up to allow the aluminum fairies to do their business unhindered.

Chuck the stupid blue bags, for starters. Next time Doc O’Keefe can spare a moment from gallivanting around with cruise ship folk or hobnobbing at the local Connie convention, he might try hitting up his Conservative confreres for a few bob to supply the good folks of St. John’s with blue boxes. 

The colour should be appealing to their Connie sensibilities, for starters, so they should look favourably on the idea. And as for the cash, the provincial Conservatives have bags of it, thanks to the beverage recycling program. Blue boxes are also a damn-sight better than the blue bags, as well, since they make it easier for residents to put all their recycling in one container.

With a blue box at the curb, the fairies won’t have to make a mess to get at the stuff they are interested in.

But fines or tickets? 

Forget about it. 

There’s not a city councilor in St. John’s fit to look on one of those people shoving a shopping cart full of cans and tetra packs around our streets let alone shag with their work.

- srbp -

NALCOR: the power of nostalgia (Part 2)

From Jason Churchill’s paper on Labrador hydroelectric development for the Blame Canada commission, a few paragraphs on Lower Churchill development (numbers are for footnotes in original):

The story of the attempted development of the Lower Churchill River begins in September 1972 when BRINCO, using the Upper Churchill model, made a formal offer to the Moores’ government to develop the Gull Island and Muskrat Island sites. The Moores’ administration refused to accept the idea of being tied into a long-term contract with Hydro-Quebec. In 1974, after two years of failed negotiations, Moores decided to nationalise the CFL Co. portion of BRINCO. (45)  Nationalisation was presented as a matter of principle; government needed control over resources in order to mould the province’s future. At a cost of $160 million, nationalisation of BRINCO was an expensive exercise in political philosophy. The key argument underlying the move was that the public interest of the province could differ from the private interest of the company. However, Section 9(5) of the 1953 BRINCO legislation prevented the export of any power without the explicit consent of the government.(46)

A former Conservative member of the Moores’ administration, the Honourable William Marshall, considered the initiative to have been a great mistake as it “compounded the mistake” of the 1969 power contract. While costing an enormous amount of money, it did not improve the province’s bargaining position. Marshall stated that the only thing accomplished was provincial money being used to buy out private shareholders. Each year, the province continued to pay the interest on the money borrowed to finance the deal while the Lower Churchill remained undeveloped.(47) The measure failed because Newfoundland and Labrador’s core problem of access to markets without terms being dictated by Quebec remained unchanged. 

By the mid-1970s, negotiations had become increasingly complex due to inflationary pressures, the energy crisis and the overt inequities of the 1969 Churchill Falls Contract. In February 1975, after lengthy negotiations, the federal government committed to provide $425 million towards a $1.842 billion Gull Island project. While issues related to electrical transmission were not secured, the federal government was illustrating a strong willingness to provide financial assistance to Newfoundland and Labrador. However, by August 1975, inflationary pressures had forced the cost of the project up to  approximately $2.318 billion. As a result, the Newfoundland and Labrador government had to order a complete re-examination of the project and associated costs. (48)

- srbp -