The Hitchens Method #nlpoli #cdnpoli

There are plenty of people out there who pat themselves on the back for telling it like it is, for calling it as they see it.

You know they do it because they relentlessly point it out to you.

They are brave.

They are fearless in delivering their opinions.

They cannot stop telling you that.

You all know them.

Closer examination invariably reveals they are full of shite.

Not so Christopher Hitchens, as Paul Wells makes plain in his obituary for a man so wonderfully described during his lifetime as a public intellectual:

His method was simple:

1. Read everything.

2. Draw your own conclusions.

…

Expanding the range of his inquiry, digging deeper, engaging with the minds he admired most. Hitchens spent much of his life offering everyone his answers on any subject, but they would not have mattered so much if he had not also been such a ravenous asker of questions.

And the world would have been so much duller a place if Hitchens had not told us what he found out in so eloquent a way.

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Dunderdale leads from the rear #nlpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale wants everyone in the province to get involved in the fishery debate.  Doesn’t matter who you are.  Doesn’t matter what you want.  Get in and have your say on the future of the resource we all own.

CBC’s Azzo Rezzori says Kathy is staying out of the way. [Story starts at about 9:00 of this video link]

Others would call it what it is:  chickenshit.

In a scrum with reporters on Friday, Dunderdale rattled off all the penetrating insights into the obvious one can find about the fishing industry in the province.  The Telegram’s James McLeod has a neat account of it for those who want to catch up.

Yes, Kathy, we all know the problems.  And yes, we know the solutions because, yes, they’ve been talked about, discussed, debated and ignored for decades.

Yes, Kathy, we know people are using the fishery to their own ends.  Yes, we know lots of people are being manipulated.

What Dunderdale conveniently omits is that the provincial government has a role to play.  After all, the law in this province gives the provincial government considerable power to manipulate the fishery and the people who depend on it for their living.

What Dunderdale conveniently forgets is that successive administrations haven’t been shy about doing just that.  The one Kathy has been involved with since 2003 has been one of the most interfering and manipulative administrations in a long list of them.

What Kathy deliberately omits to mention is the process – the MOU – that the Tory administration started and then rejected because they were afraid of the political consequences. 

The costs don’t frighten them.  That was just a bullshit excuse the fisheries  minister used.  Kathy has more money sitting in the bank  - doing nothing  - than some of her predecessors got in total from their own means to pay for everything the government does.

Billions of dollars.

So when Kathy Dunderdale clucks about the tragedy of manipulating people and the tired attitudes about the need for everyone people to come together to find a solution, she is being worse than the worst kind of manipulative character she laments.

Kathy has the power to change things.

Kathy has the power to set things right.

Kathy refuses to get involved.

That’s not just chickenshit.

That’s immoral.

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The Traffic the Grinch couldn’t Steal #nlpoli

Muppets, lawyers and politicians.

Problems in the fishery, bad grammar and blatant political patronage.

Just another week in the live action edition of the National Midnight Star, otherwise known as politics in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Last week’s top 10 most read posts at SRBP:

1. A bad week for Penashue
2. Change in the fishery
3. The Crowd in the Dark
4. Globe and Mail goes American
5. Danger:  Lawyer at Work
6. Muskrat Falls deal will succeed:  Nalcor boss
7. Ball takes over as Liberal leader
8. Connies pork up offshore board
9. A grain of salt
10. Yes, it IS a Muppet movie, ya wingnut

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For the record… #nlpoli

Liberal leader Dwight Ball’s remarks on taking on the leadership:

The Liberal Party has a rich history in Newfoundland and Labrador and I’m proud to be a part of it.

That being said, we have much work ahead. I consider myself a team builder, and I believe teambuilding is what we need right now.

We need to reach out to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians and listen to their hopes and dreams.

I plan on spending a lot of time on the road engaging with the grassroots of our party and encouraging new interest in what we have to offer.

Additionally, we need a debt reduction plan to help rebuild the party  As a businessmen, I know the burden that debt can have on an organization and my first priority as Liberal leader will be to get our debt to a manageable level.

I like to call it the common sense approach – reach out, listen and manage debt.

These will be my priorities as I assume the Liberal leadership and help create a credible alternative to the current government. 

There will be challenges ahead, no doubt. But it is through these challenges that we will realize a better, brighter future for the next generation of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians 

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Muskrat Falls deal will succeed: Nalcor boss #nlpoli #nspoli

“I’m optimistic the project is going to succeed,” Nalcor Energy chief executive Ed Martin told the Chronicle-Herald recently.

The delay in finishing the negotiations means that, as the CH put it, “the details under negotiation are being tapered to fit with the announced terms [sheet].”

Tapered to fit.

Great image.

The article just relates some information most SRBP readers would already know.  It also contains one comment that would make you wince. The comment reflects the level of inaccurate or misleading information out there about who will pay what for Muskrat Falls power.

The cost of Lower Churchill power to Nova Scotia has never been defined.

Nalcor projects it will cost 16.4 cents per kilowatt hour for consumers in Newfoundland and Labrador. That’s up from the current rate of 11 cents but lower than the projected costs if the province were to stick with its oil-fired plants.

That first sentence isn’t true.  The term sheet signed last fall makes it clear:

• Emera gets a block of power guaranteed each year in exchange for their upfront cost of the link to Nova Scotia.  In effect, the cost of that electricity is zero cents per kilowatt hour.
• Beyond that, Emera gets the right to buy additional power for a cost of something around nine cents per kwh. That’s based on memory and subject to adjustment.

As such, Nova Scotians could actually see no change in their domestic electricity rates at all. 

The second paragraph compares apples and oranges.  The 16.4 cents figure is what Kathy Dunderdale cited in 2010 as the upper range of the wholesale cost of making electricity at Muskrat Falls.  The lower end of the range was about 14 cents and that’s the figure the government has cited consistently.

But remember:  it’s a wholesale price and – more importantly – it’s an estimate.  If Muskrat Falls goes the way of every other government project since 2003 it will be over budget by more than 50%.

The 11 cents figure is the current retail price to consumers.  it includes Nalcor’s blended cost from existing generation, most of which was paid off years ago or, in the most recent examples, for free as a result of government’s expropriation of private sector generating facilities.  That figure also includes money for the electricity distributor and a tidy profit for both Nalcor and the Fortis-owned distributor.

In the future, consumers in this province will pay all of that plus they’ll have to cover the full cost of Muskrat Falls.  That conclusion is based on repeated statements by Nalcor officials.  That’s why Nova Scotians are getting free electricity up front and why they can buy extra power at a sweet discount.  People in Newfoundland and Labrador will already have paid for it.

In addition to that, Newfoundland and Labrador consumers will now also have to pay a chunk to Emera plus a profit since Emera will now operate a portion of the provincial distribution system. Not bad, eh?

Well, unless you are a consumer in Newfoundland and Labrador.

And while Nalcor estimates all of this will cost less than the alternatives, the simple truths are these:

• Nalcor has never released detailed cost analysis of what this project will do to consumers.
• Nalcor hasn’t costed all the alternatives.  That became clear during the joint environmental review panel hearings.
• Nalcor can’t tell what this project will cost consumers in Newfoundland and labrador because they don’t know.
• Whatever they wind up paying, it will be a lot more than 16 cents per kilowatt hour and it will always be more than any export consumers.

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Ball takes over as Liberal leader #nlpoli

The first sign of substantive and positive change in quite a while:  Dwight Ball takes the job of leading the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The fact he is also interested in leading the party beyond the next leadership convention is also a good sign.

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Yes, it IS a Muppet movie, ya wingnut #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Just when you thought they could not get any more loopy, the fried folks at Fox manage to turn a Muppet movie into a tool of “class warfare to brainwash our kids”.

You.

cannot.

make.

this.

stuff.

up.

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A bad week for Penashue #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Poor Peter Penashue.

First, the federal Conservative intergovernmental affairs minister gets hammered for stupidly appointing his campaign manager to a position on the offshore regulatory board even though the guy isn’t qualified for the job. The SRBP post spawned a raft of comments in all sorts of places across the province about Penashue’s shameless decision to pork-up his buddy.

Then, on Wednesday, Liberal member of parliament Scott Simms outs Penashue for personally calling federal employees in Penashue’s riding to assure them they are safe from job cuts or transfers. Penashue apparently didn’t call any other federal employees in the province.

You know Penashue got caught doing something wrong.  As CBC reported:

Penashue walked past reporters after question period Wednesday and did not comment.

Since bad news comes in threes sometimes, it all makes you wonder what little rocket Penashue will get up his derriere next.

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The Newfoundland Spring #nlpoli

Pay attention to some of the comments about the fishery the past couple of weeks and you’ll here talk about how we need to change the model. 

For example, labour federation boss Lana Payne has talked about the failure of what she called the “corporate model”.  When OCI boss Martin Sullivan says the fishery is broken, he’s basically talking about the “model”, too. 

What they both are referring to is how the government deals with the fishery.  The current “model” is not corporate as Payne claims so much as it is corporatist:  heavy state control irrespective of  economic rationality or public morality.

What frightens Payne and McCurdy more than anything else is that the change they and their predecessors have fought against relentlessly is finally here. What they have been able to rely on for so long is the threat of political catastrophe for any politician who dared to think about cutting the number of fish plants and fish plant workers down to a level where the workers could make a decent wage from their hard work alone.

Don’t believe it?

In a stint Wednesday on the province’s morning radio call-in show, McCurdy stated flatly that given his druthers he’d rather see people in Marystown and Port Union squeeze out enough work to qualify for employment insurance rather than have the plants close.  He tossed in full-time work for the plant in Fortune knowing that it isn’t really possible to do the two things together.

But just look at the front end of that.  It’s the essence of McCurdy’s position:  keep everything the way it is, even if  - as everyone including McCurdy knows – that idea isn’t really viable any more.  Keeping a few hundred people stamped up, collecting employment insurance for most of the year and bringing home poverty wages is better than any realistic alternative.

McCurdy wants to keep a system that promoted the overfishing that decimated the industry in the first place.

The people McCurdy expects to pick up the tab for his little scam are the taxpayers of Newfoundland and Labrador.

One can hardly imagine a more morally bankrupt position.

Thankfully, it seems like some politicians are finally getting the message. Sure you have guys like noob Liberal member of the House of Assembly Jim Bennett who is pushing another pile of outmoded, outdated ideas.  Bennett needs to stop hanging out with Jim Morgan and his buddies.

But another gang of politicians is finally standing up to the union shakedown and the bullshit conspiracy theories from people like Gus Etchegary.

Give the guy his full due: fisheries minister Darin King maybe be looking stressed but he is sounding tough. Maybe he is heartened by the people in Fortune who turned up on the news Wednesday night attacking McCurdy for undermining their chance at full-time work. Chainsaw Earle is apparently discovering that chainsaws buck when they hit a knot.

A couple of weeks ago, Ocean Choice International decided to close two fish plants.  They change the company started is long overdue.  The union and the provincial government have had plenty of time to come up with a workable plan to deal with fisheries reform.  They failed.

Expect the change that OCI has started to sweep the province.  This could wind up being the most significant political transformation in the province’s history.  The fishery, after all, is tied inextricably to the political and social fabric of the province.

The only real losers in the changes that are coming will be the people who profited from the old order.  You can tell because they are fighting so savagely against change.

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Globe and Mail goes American #cdnpoli

From the Globe’s blog and a post about American comedian Jimmy Kimmel:

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel recently asked parents to give their kids lousy presents a couple weeks before Christmas….

There’s a little word missing there.

“of”

As in “a couple of” something.

You will hear that sort of construction all the time, especially from Americans, and increasingly you will see it in print as well.

But it is grammatically wrong.

And no, it is not concerning to your humble e-scribbler.

It is of concern to him, as in the abuse of the language pisses him off, just as it might be of concern that the Globe has fired its editors or hired people who do not know about proper English.

Here endeth the rant.

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Chainsaw Earle #nlpoli

Fisheries union Earle McCurdy took a political chainsaw to the provincial government on Tuesday, accusing the governing Conservatives of buying “right into [OCI’s] sales pitch without there being any evidence of trying to negotiate anything better.”

McCurdy claimed that if OCI gets permission to export fish for processing, then the province is “on the brink of a major loss of control over public resources.”

According to the Telegram:

McCurdy argued that corporate greed was behind the plant closures, and the government should be pressing more aggressively to protect processing jobs in the province.

For his part, fisheries minister Darin King accused McCurdy of playing games. 

As CBC reported:

"Playing games, spreading propaganda and not keeping the best interest of the people in mind is not the way to go about it," King told reporters.

"I think that this is exactly what the FFAW is doing, and I believe wholeheartedly that it is inappropriate, irresponsible, and not certainly in the best interests of the members of the union."

King is right on everything except one point.  McCurdy may not be acting in the best interests of the plant workers or the people of the province.

But Earle doesn’t get paid to act in his members’ best interests, nor  does he give a toss for the best interests of the fishery or the province.

He can take a chainsaw to anyone and to anything he wants.  Facts don’t matter.  Worst case scenario:  the plants close, a few of his members are out of work but another bunch are working full-time to pay dues.  McCurdy looks like he fought for the guys on the unemployment line. He gets to keep his job.

All we are seeing is lowest common denominator politics of the worst kind.

And McCurdy’s good at it.

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A grain of salt #nlpoli

Around this time of year the country’s major banks issue their economic assessments of the current year and their forecasts of the coming one.

Royal Bank issued the most recent one.  Not surprisingly, the bank’s economists are forecasting that the provinces that are most heavily dependent on natural resources will do quite well.  Saskatchewan and Alberta will lead the country in economic growth, with Newfoundland and Labrador in fourth place.

RBC’s forecast for 2012 and 2013 has Newfoundland and Labrador in the same relative position.  Natural resource prices and capital construction are driving things.  Over the next couple of years, new mineral developments will offset declines in oil production, according to RBC.  While their reasons may be slightly different, BMO and Scotiabank’s forecasts are all generally similar to RBC’s view.

There’s nothing surprising about any of that.  Newfoundland and Labrador has enjoyed phenomenal economic growth for most of the last 15 years.  In 2002, for example, the provincial gross domestic product grew 8.2% and in 1998 and 1999, the province led the country in economic growth for two years in a row.

There’s also nothing about the current economic growth that has anything to do with the party currently in power either. Some people would like you to believe otherwise.  A great many people in the province believe otherwise.  But they are wrong.

What you really need to do when looking at these economic projections is go beyond the short-term and the superficial.

Like oil prices.  Current thinking is that oil should be $100 a barrel on average.  In 2011, oil prices operated within a pretty narrow band, so if things stay like that, the world should be fine.

But…

The biggest, and more bullish, tail risk is of heightened turmoil in the Middle East and north Africa and, increasingly, in Russia, the world’s second-largest oil producer. An attack by Israel on Iran, for example, could push oil prices briefly towards $250 a barrel, according to some estimates.

Now with production in this province forecast to drop by 20-odd% from 2011, that might get a few people really excited.  Russia could be Kathy Dunderdale’s best friend, someone quipped.  Oil at $250 a barrel for any length of time would deliver a pretty sweet financial reward into the provincial treasury.  Some people might even use it as an “I told ya” moment to justify Muskrat Falls.

Just consider the cost of living with oil at around $100 a barrel, as it is now.  Look at the cost of living in all sorts of places, including Labrador West where housing prices are already at crisis levels for a great many families.

Now think of what it would be like with prices driven up by the costs of shipping just about all major consumer goods into the province.

Not pretty, eh?

And for those people who imagine the Americans desperate for cheap hydroelectricity at that point, well, the picture is even less rosy for them.

ExxonMobil produced an interesting energy forecast recently that looks at what the energy world might look like out to about 2040. Electricity demand will grow globally.  But in the United States, expect to see more electricity produced by natural gas.  There’s plenty of it and new natural gas plants are much more efficient at producing electricity than existing methods.

As for price, well, take a gander at this forecast of the cost of producing electricity in 2030:

Electricity produced from natural gas will be less than half the cost of Muskrat Falls electricity.

Forget about those export sales, gang.

But just imagine carrying the huge debt from Muskrat Falls, paying the electricity prices in this province because the provincial government forced you to pay for it and trying to cope with all the other increased costs coming because oil is more than double what it is today.

You really need to take all this talk of wonder and glory with just a grain of salt.  Things are good these days, better than they have ever been.  But if we make mistakes today, if we don’t look at the big picture, we can be paying for them tomorrow.

Big time.

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Danger: Lawyer at work #nlpoli

The public utilities board review of the Muskrat Falls project may be a set-up but the lawyer for the board is certainly making Nalcor pay for every single inch of ground.

Here’s one of her recent letters for the record straightening out Nalcor’s counsel.

Again.

This is the kind of lawyer you want to have on your side:  relentless and meticulous.

Imagine if the board had real teeth again to manage the province’s electrical system.

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Rumour management and Twitter #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Via crisisblogger.com comes a link to a Guardian feature on the role Twitter played in rumours about riots in London.

The site gives seven specific rumours and tracks the life-cycle of the rumour from inception to death.

From the Guardian:

A period of unrest can provoke many untruths, an analysis of 2.6 million tweets suggests. But Twitter is adept at correcting misinformation - particularly if the claim is that a tiger is on the loose in Primrose Hill.

This is a fascinating study that uses technology to help tell the story in a compelling way.

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Rendition flights and Gander #nlpoli #cdnpoli

A story moving on Tuesday about aircraft logs, Gander and rendition flights reminded your humble e-scribbler of a post around these parts from 2005 titled “Even spies contract out”:

A Canadian Press story in the Sunday Telegram reports that two aircraft with alleged links to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have passed through St. John's on their way to Iceland and points beyond.

The aircraft, registration numbers N-168D and N-196D, are owned by North Carolina-based Devon Holding and Leasing. The two CN-235, like the ones illustrated here are Spanish-built turboprop light transports. Devon's livery is illustrated here, in this photograph taken at Kabul, Afghanistan earlier this year of another Devon CN-235, registration number N-187D.

The story that’s currently on the wire doesn’t include references to specific aircraft. The 2005 story – based on Icelandic reports at the time - includes a string of registration numbers as well as links to pictures of the aircraft.

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The Crowd in the Dark #nlpoli

Dwight Ball will become the new leader of the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador this week.  Expect an announcement on Thursday.

There’ll be no “interim” about it.

Ball is the leader until the party’s executive board decides on whether or not to find someone else to fill the job.  They won’t do that until some time early next year.

There’s no real news in any of that, by the way.  Variations on that theme have been in the news for a couple of weeks.  The only new information is when the announcement takes place.

What will be news on Thursday will be the announcement of a reform committee comprising Kevin Aylward, Siobhan Coady and Dean MacDonald.  They will do something  - it hasn’t been nailed down, apparently - at their own expense and bring back a report or recommendations or something – that too is apparently up in the air – on how to get the Liberal Party back in fighting trim.

Word of this committee sends a clear message. Party president Judy Morrow can talk all she wants on CBC’s On Point about how the Liberal Party just went through “a horrific time“ of an election campaign.  Such talk would suggest that people running the party know they can’t keep going on as they have been going. This committee is all about avoiding change.

The executive board picked Kevin Aylward to replace Yvonne Jones last August because he promised very little change. Kevin fit right in, touting an archaic fisheries policy as the centrepiece of the campaign. He started out wanting to endorse Muskrat Falls and only came around to opposing it once he realised that it might get some votes here or there. 

Some have tried to claim Kevin added two seats to the Liberal roster.  He didn’t.   What the party actually did was lose two seats it already held – not Kevin’s fault – and failed utterly to capitalise on possibilities in several others.

Kevin didn’t bring anyone along who might have changed the party’s direction. Nor was he, himself, inclined to do so.  And that is the bony nub of the problem with Kevin Aylward on a committee about renewal, reform or rebuilding. a fellow selected because he represented no threat of change cannot be an agent for change.

As for the other two members of the committee, their selection suggests the same thing. In her brief political career, Siobhan Coady has shown herself to be mind-numbingly conventional.  She seldom offers an observation on anything that has not already been offered in a thousand other places. Take her recent remarks on the provincial fisheries mess as a classic example of that.

Ditto Dean MacDonald.  A smart guy, without question.  Personable and enthusiastic for sure. A go-getter, definitely.  But Dean comes across as someone who is unfocused politically and generally unaware of the inner workings of the Liberal Party.  As such there’s no sign he has any inclination for substantive change.

If the committee travels around and meets with people, individually or in groups, odds are they will hear all sorts of things.

Lots of people will talk about district organizations, for example.  Former candidates will talk about the need to get nominations done earlier so they can organize themselves.  Others will talk about the need to have “grass roots”.

The problem with those ideas is that none of it means that people are actually attracted to the party and will do the ground-work any party needs to fight and win an election. The party can get names on paper,  just like it has been able to find token candidates for the past three elections.  Getting people to do anything is another matter.

The problem with those ideas is that the party runs itself as though every district belonged to every candidate.  There is no continuity.  There is no party organization.  There is – in truth – no party in the sense of people who all belong to a group built around a shared set of ideas or values.

The Liberals Party does not speak to anyone about anything any more. Until someone from the party can offer a compelling reason why someone should get involved with the Liberals, nothing else matters.

The problem with those ideas is that – ultimately - there isn’t much chance that three people not known for their interest in change are likely to find secrets no one else found.  And if, by some miracle, these people do trip over the odd good idea, odds are better the idea will get buried under a pile of other stuff that is all about staying the same, not change.

After all the same people responsible for deciding are themselves a committee.  Committees, you see, are what people set up when they want to make it look like something is happening when it really isn’t.  Or they set up a committee in order to delay making a decision because they don’t know what to do. 

While the committee is out looking, stuff happens that sets the course.  The stuff that happens could be accident or it could be a petty intrigue here or there.  But incrementally things happen while the committee is meeting such that whatever the committee decides, their work is irrelevant anyway.

If the Liberals knew what to do or had a general idea of where to go, they’d do it.  Instead, they have adopted – in essence -  the fisheries MOU process.  That was a committee by another name and look at how successfully that worked out. 

In the meantime, the Liberals are like a crowd in the dark.  No one can see beyond the end of his or her fingers.  They wander around groping for something. Some of them stumble off and run into other people and don’t come back.

None of the rest will stray too far from where he started or than he can see.  As a result, they all wind up no more than a few feet away from each other shuffling around the ground they all know intimately from having trod on it over and over again for years.

None of them know where they are going.  They all keep asking each other what to do next.  And around and around in circles they go. None of them really knows where the rest of the community is, either.  They  still cling to the memory of a time when they were part of a huge group.  In truth, everyone else in the community has gone off in other directions.  The Liberals just can’t see that.  The room is dark, after all. 

And while the Liberals can hear noises in the distance, the crowd of them won’t – not can’t, they will not  - move toward the noises.   Instead, they stagger around in the dark, their numbers dwindling, waiting for someone to show up with a flashlight.

They have formed a committee of three, we shall learn on Thursday,  to check to see if anyone among them found a flashlight or maybe a few old batteries with some juice left in them.

What are the odds that will work?

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Accessing more government information #nlpoli #cdnpoli

The Telegram editorial last Thursday (December 8), complained about the practice some government departments use of releasing access to information requests from one media outlet to all outlets.

The trigger for the editorial was a decision by Nalcor Energy to release salary details on it senior executives to all the local news media even though the initial request came from just one media outlet.

Part of the problem for media outlets is that – as the Telly notes – “access to information journalism is neither easy nor cheap. Requests take months to come to fruition and can cost hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of dollars.”

When the agency releases the information to everyone free of charge, the media outlet winds up taking a gigantic financial hit in addition to just getting scooped on a story.

It’s all true.

To be frank, one of the reasons a government department or agency would release information like that is to take control of the story away from the particular news room.  By releasing the information generally, the department or agency can ensure its version of events, its side of the story, gets out there without the particular filter applied by the news room that originally pursued the story.

It’s not “petty revenge” as the editorial describes the practice.  It’s called protecting your interests and your reputation.  In dealing with  some “news” organizations, it would be called common sense.

There’s no news in reporting that government departments handle media and opposition party access to information requests differently from those from ordinary mortals.  There are even academic studies that show just exactly how some federal departments have done exactly that and the reasons behind it.

The Telly editorial writer finishes off with a worthwhile suggestion:

if releasing specific access claims is really an example of accountability, release them all, including information requested by private citizens, businesses, unions and law firms.

The Department of National Defence has been doing something like that for the last decade and then some.  The current DND web page on access to information requests goes back to 2006, but your humble e-scribbler has been using it, on and off, for a decade or more.

A chart of the web page lists the request number a description of the request and the outcome.  You can find released information by year and month.  All you’d have to do in order to receive the same information is contact the department and pay the costs of copying and mailing, just as you would have done if you’d asked for the information yourself.

Scan the list and you can see information requests that came from one newsroom or another.  You’ll see requests from private individuals, researchers and, in some instances, from companies providing temporary employees or other contract service to the department.

If you want to get a sense of the scope of the access to information challenge in a department like National Defence, you can check out a 2000 article by then Lieutenant Colonel Brett Boudreau in the Canadian Military Journal.  Boudreau notes that the number of access requests went from 67 in 1983-84 to more than 1,000 by 1998-1999. 

But within that number, one of the recent reports Boudreau mentions was a 35,000 page report that took six months to review and “sever” for information that had to be withheld under access laws.

Automatically releasing  - that is distributing - all access requests would be practically very difficult, even in an age of scanners, pdfs and the Internet.

But providing a list of access requests that are available?

That’s certainly possible.  More federal departments would probably consider it as a practical approach to the administrative demands of access to administration. 

That’s the federal government, though, where access to information is a well-established system.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, they’d have to accept the idea of public access to information in the first place.

- srbp -

Christmas Science-Geek Gift Alert

About three weeks ago, your humble e-scribbler wandered into The Tickle Trunk on Water Street and discovered some neat new toys.

Pathfinders Designs, a company from British Columbia makes kits of working catapults and trebuchets.

The Leonardo da Vinci catapult is based on a design by the great artist himself.  It uses the energy stored in two bent lengths of wood to crank the catapult.  The marketing materials say it will fling a ball made of modeling clay a distance of about 15 feet.

The kit is complete.  For $19.20 (taxes in) you get pre-cut wooden pieces, string, dowels, glue, a small piece of sandpaper, some modeling clay and a detailed set of instructions.

Allow about an hour to put the thing together, no matter what age you are.  The instructions are clear and written so a child under 10 could understand them.  That doesn’t matter though as one of the great potential values for this kit is a bit of bonding time between adults and children over the holidays.

There’s some information on da Vinci included with instructions.

Get it all together and what you wind up with is something that looks like the picture at right.

The finished model is about 33 cm (16 inches) tall, 25 cm (10 inches) long, and 14 cm (5.5 inches) wide.

Your humble e-scribbler bought one and then a second one.

And if that isn’t enough for you, they also have a trebuchet.

This one is a wee bit bigger than the catapult  - 26 inches (67 cm) tall by 18 inches (48 cm) wide  - and it can potentially hurl a ball of modeling clay out to about 20 feet according to the marketing literature. 

Again, you get pre-cut parts and all the stuff you will need except in two key areas. 

This kit supplies lengths of wooden dowels you will have to cut according to the instructions.  The dowels help to hold some of the parts together and give the finished model strength.  Since you need to use scissors, a hobby saw or similar tools, this one may require a bit of adult supervision or preparation, as well as some care with the measurements and markings.

But hey, as with all kits, this is a chance to learn.

Assembly time should be roughly two hours.  As soon as you are done, you can start flinging.

Well, once you add the second ingredient, namely weight for the big box on the end of the throwing arm.  This form of throwing device gets its energy from gravity acting on the weight.  You can use stones, pennies, old lead fishing weights or anything you’ve got laying around. 

Your humble e-scribbler used about 500 grams of pennies.  The box would easily hold about a kilogram of pennies.  Don’t worry.  the construction is strong enough to handle it.

These are safe enough for indoor use.  Flinging a five gram ball of modeling clay in the house didn’t case any damage chez Scribbler.  The trebuchet at full weight tossed the projectiles into the ceiling, producing a few scuffs that could be easily repaired. 

Cut back the weight in the box and adjust the sling and you can easily miss the ceiling and hurl out to the 20 to 25 foot range consistently (five grams with a 500 gram counterweight).  Note those ratios, by the way.

Aside from fun – and that’s the best part of it -  these kits are a good educational experience. 

One of the things you can do is experiment with different weights for the projectiles and, in the case of the trebuchet, of the counterweight that makes things fly.  You can also vary the length of the sling to see how that changes the flight characteristics.

Your humble e-scribbler found some information on line and made a modified sling.  Attached to the catapult with some minor modifications to the kit, the sling made some dramatic changes to performance.  Without a sling, the catapult would reliably toss a five gram ball about 17 feet.  With the sling, the catapult easily hit 27 feet  - we measured - and sometimes more.

So far, the oompah-loompahs at the scribbler household haven’t modified the sling on the trebuchet to see if they can boost its performance.  The results might not be as dramatic as with the catapult but the flinging distance should go up noticeably. The new sling design has a more effective pouch layout, attachment configuration and release.

The kits have turned out to be mighty popular.  A shipment of catapults that arrived last week went quickly but there are a few left.  As for the trebuchets ($21 plus tax), there are some left.  The manufacturer’s website notes they have sold out of the pre-Christmas production run.  More are on the way for January.

You can find the Tickle Trunk at 318 Water St, St. John's or by telephone at (709) 726-2535.

- srbp -

Photo credits:  (Tickle Trunk – google maps),  catapult and trebuchet illustrations from Pathfinders Designs)

Change in the fishery #nlpoli

Ocean Choice International’s Martin Sullivan was the guest this week on CBC’s On Point. That’s a link to a CBC story that includes the whole program.

The most obvious point about Sullivan’s argument is that it is – essentially – simple and sensible.  The company needs to export fish in a form the market wants.  The company was losing money in the two plants it closed.

The second segment of the show was an interview with fisheries minister Darin King.  The most obvious thing about King’s comments is that he now  - i.e. after OCI announced closures - sounds like someone who understands the need for fundamental changes in the fishery.  That’s something no one has said before, including Premier Kathy Dunderdale and her remarks blaming the union for not accepting a mere 18 weeks of work. 

In the political panel, former Tory cabinet minister Shawn Skinner suggests that the MOU process fell apart and that now OCI has pushed things forward. No surprise there for anyone who has been paying attention, but for some people this will be a smack in the gob.

No surprise either that Lana Payne had nothing positive to offer in either her assessments of the situation or possible solutions.  Siobhan Coady was marginally better, suggesting that the correct role for the provincial government was to squeeze the processors to ensure people in this province got work in at-sea processing.  That’s really just continuing the approach that created the current mess in the fishery and it’s not surprising that Lana Payne could chime in and agree with the idea.

Ditto Coady’s suggestion that the provincial government should be assisting the companies with marketing. That might have been a possible option a couple of years ago, but no longer.

But to then have Payne and Coady suggest that the provincial government needs to get on with the restructuring process was bordering on the laughable.  They just don’t get it.

All you have to do is go back and listen to Skinner again:  the MOU is dead and the government and the union are left to play catch-up as the companies drive the restructuring agenda.  That’s the reality and both Coady and Payne are woefully out of touch.

When you’re done with that, flip over to a commentary by fisheries broadcast host John Furlong:

Change is always hard. Even 'good' change. When you buy a house or have a baby or get a new job. Change is still hard.

It's even harder in the fishery. If you ask most people in the fishery today how they would like the fishery of tomorrow to look, they'll say "like it was yesterday."

That's not the way it's going to be.

Heck, the fishery of today isn’t the fishery of yesterday as much as some people have been trying to pretend otherwise.

- srbp -

Related:  “Building the fishery of the future”, one of the 15 ideas series (June 2011)

Thunderbirds still go!

Those who remember the 1960s television series might be surprised to know that an original Lady Penelope marionette from the series sold this past summer at auction in the united Kingdom.

Originally expected to bring 10,000 pounds Sterling at auction, the puppet actually went for 33,600 pounds including buyer’s premium.

A bookcase from the series went for 1,200 pounds and a desk and chair also from sets for the Lady Penelope character sold for 1,440 pounds.

- srbp -