tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1400574.post111645758034785791..comments2024-03-28T04:04:03.006-07:00Comments on Paying attention: Next steps for STV, Greens and a look at the rural-urban divideUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1400574.post-1116697027768891452005-05-21T10:37:00.000-07:002005-05-21T10:37:00.000-07:00Bill Bennett's my MLA, and the prospect of him per...Bill Bennett's my MLA, and the prospect of him perversely benefitting from Kootenay voters' extermination of Campbell in the other three ridings didn't cross my mind until Wednesday morning. And it's not a prospect I'm particularly excited about.<BR/><BR/>But if you're right, and he gets some token region-appeasing position as Minister of State for Duck Hunting or something, may I suggest the press gallery get to know this guy closely? Never in my years of watching politics have I seen a more unstable nutbar in any office on either the left or right. There's a the perfect combination of factors for this guy to become a press gallery fave--severe anger-management issues, a loose tongue, unabashed neanderthalism that would make the likes of Darrel Stinson blush, and a general lack of any kind of professional qualifications to be in cabinet whatsoever--I figure he'll have brought some scandal upon himself within the year, assuming he isn't too busy doing nothing.<BR/><BR/>In just four years of local media coverage, he's already gotten nailed for having started a shoving match with health protesters while invoking Dick Cheney's famous Senate floor phrase, told completely contradictory accounts of the government's service consolidation plans a couple of nights apart at the different ends of the riding, attacked a twentysomething proponent at a public hearing about expanding Waterton Lakes National Park for--I kid you not-- having left the town to get university education where they filled his head with ivory tower rubbish (this was in front of five hundred people, and contrary to some views of the interior, did not go down too well), and, most recently, organized a rally of local rednecks to tell a visiting American senator opposed to cross-border water pollution that he was unwelcome in our country. The "Git off mah land" principle writ large, I suppose.<BR/><BR/>He'll be fun. Trust me. If he raises that much hell in four short years from the back of the backbench with only the most-of-an-English-degree local weekly reporters tailing him, wait until he gets a bigger sandbox and a bigger spotlight.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1400574.post-1116650668127175502005-05-20T21:44:00.000-07:002005-05-20T21:44:00.000-07:00"Spoken like a true Green." Huh? Maybe you might w..."Spoken like a true Green." <BR/><BR/>Huh? <BR/><BR/>Maybe you might want to read that first comment again.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1400574.post-1116539358443494132005-05-19T14:49:00.000-07:002005-05-19T14:49:00.000-07:00Spoken like a true Green. The liberals bad, the ND...Spoken like a true Green. The liberals bad, the NDPp are bad, yet both parties like it of not have run the province. Just what has the Green's done so far.In this last election they seemed to have no sense of direction and some of their antics made for comic reading. One of their candidates, a small time developer cut down a bunch of Garry Oak trees on his property, not because they were diseased but they were in the way, then he goes around telling us just how pure the green's intentions are. So with their 9 percent of the vote, and their nusence values, the Liberals end up with majority and the Greens now have to decide if they want to spend more time in the wilderness. My gosh their leader came in third in the local election. after five years of campaigning. a record similar to the old Communist Party of BCAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1400574.post-1116475598763593292005-05-18T21:06:00.000-07:002005-05-18T21:06:00.000-07:00About Green votes as strategic votes: I voted Gree...About Green votes as strategic votes: I voted Green, although I don't especially support their ideas (other than a vague sense that the environment should be taken into account when political and business decisions are made).<BR/><BR/>I would not have voted Green if I wasn't sure that the Liberals were going to be re-elected. Awful and clumsy and meanspirited as they have shown themselves to be, they're a better choice for BC than the NDP would have been. <BR/><BR/>I also would not have voted Green if I wasn't sure that the NDP was going to be elected in sufficient numbers to make a strong opposition. Incompetent and amateurish as they were as a government, the presence of the NDP in the Ledge helps keep the right-wing party from forgetting about those who are less fortunate.<BR/><BR/>I voted Green because my two important conditions were met, but I didn't want either the NDP or the Liberals to think I actually approved of their policies, records, or behaviour.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com