british columbia politics

Adults behaving badly

What the hell has become of the world?!

On one continent we have the adult child of a monarch in a snit because daddy (or daddy’s people) won’t let him stay at the family home while he is in town because, apparently, their AirBnB is fully booked and he missed a deadline to accept an offer to stay … or something like that.

On another continent we have a man-baby who doesn’t understand the rules of football (soccer in his country) and the purpose of red cards, who has to have another man-baby fly across the world with example cards to show to him, and presumably explain their use to him.

These are examples in the dictionary under the entry, “making a mountain out of a molehill”, with the addition that, “We’re man-babies who know nothing about living in the real world and so it’s totally OK for us to pretend that we’re playing with our toys no matter how much play money we have to pay to get our way”, except that in the real world it’s not play money.

In another country on the second continent we have a fifth man-baby who has nothing good to say about anything, whose biggest contribution to the debate about a pipeline between Alberta and British Columbia is that, “It’s not along the route that I wanted.” As you read this sentence, please use the most childish, whiny voice voice you can muster.

All those man-babies are, respectively, Prince Harry, King Charles, donald trump, Gianni Infantino, and Pierre Poilievre. This is what has become of Planet Earth in the 21st century. God help us all.

Dealing with the Boys in Blue

Jul 3rd, 2026

by Craig.

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I remember when I came to Canada how my great uncle taught me to respect the police. I don’t know what he thought, because I was not a gang member, I was doing well in school, I wasn’t a problem in school, my parents didn’t let me run amok breaking laws, and even though I had immigrated to Canada from what was ostensibly a Third World country, the strata of society in which I lived was anything but Third World.

Somewhere along the way, I had my eyes opened though.

I didn’t join any gangs, I didn’t engage in the sexual assaults some of my elementary school friends allegedly perpetrated or partake of the kinds of substances they abused, I just carried on being a “good kid”. I joined Air Cadets, excelled there, and went on to become an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces. The Forces decided I wasn’t as good as the impression I had given them in the recruitment process, and so they kicked me to the kerb. C’est la vie. A blessing in disguise, and I think if their training was half as good as they thought it was, I’d have had the full career I signed up for, and may even be a senior officer there now. Or I may not be, and I’d be a veteran with a distinguished career behind me doing what veterans do with themselves after they serve.

Instead, I’m no longer on the books of the Forces, but the books of police services around the country, in the Lower Mainland specifically.

You see, I’m known as a speeder. Yes, apparently I drive very fast in all sorts of municipalities around Greater Vancouver and southwest BC.

So what do I do? Hundreds of kilometres an hour through school zones? Stunts on the road? Come to screeching stops at traffic lights? Not quite. I’ve had a clean driving record for 20-25 years. I don’t even remember what the number is, because I don’t remember a time when I blew through a stop sign or red light and smoked that minivan full of two families heading to the beach. If that happened, I’d remember the date and time and how long it has been since then, but it never did. But despite that, you’d think that was exactly the kind of record I had judging by what ICBC and the various police forces think about me.

Photo radar

Speed and red-light camera warning sign.

My first reminder of Big Brother was an inconspicuous envelope in the mail. Two of them, actually. I’ve recently taken up driving my mother around because she was negatively affected by damage to one of her eyes (and her other eye sucks anyway), and I’m the only son left because one of her sons decided sometime ago to estrange himself from the family, and the other is focussed on himself and can’t help out on week days between 9 and 5. (It’s called having a job, but he and other family weren’t so supportive when I was doing what I needed to do to earn income and wasn’t doing so well, and he’s a hypocrite, so I don’t feel the need to be supportive of him now.) Those two envelopes were photo radar tickets. Yes, contrary to popular belief, we still have that here. The BC Liberal government took a hint from the public a few years ago and got rid of the old photo radar where a van sits on the side of the road and takes pictures of speeders as they go by, but the NDP got the idea to combine red-light cameras with photo-radar cameras, and now you have photo radar at multiple random locations around BC.

And how fast was I going? 150 km/h? 250 km/h? For one ticket I was going 80 km/h and the other 81 km/h. About 3 hours apart. On the same afternoon and evening when the weather was dry and the light and visibility were perfectly fine. Pretty consistent! This is at the intersection of 50 km/h and 60 km/h main roads where there are multiple lanes in either direction (plus dedicated left- and right-turn lanes) and the average vehicle is going at about 80 km/h. Average! That means some are going faster! I’ve since gone through that intersection at 50 km/h, and I don’t feel safe doing so. But that’s OK, as long as I’m not going through it at the insane speed of 80 km/h, we’re all safer.

At this point, feel free to shake your head.

And how visible is that sign above? Definitely not very.

So what lessons have I learnt? It’s not to drive at exactly the speed limit, because I tried that years ago and, as with driving through this particular intersection at 50 km/h, I didn’t feel safe. No, what I do now is take routes in that area that avoid that intersection. Yup, I’m still driving as I always have, but just through different intersections. Somehow I don’t think that’s the goal of putting robots on the side of the road that see and measure everything, but that’s why I’m stupid and am not a police commissioner or the premier of the province.

I very strongly intended to fight the tickets in court, but eventually I decided, because the tickets were only monetary penalties to the owner of the car (my mother) and didn’t also come with the added sting of penalty points, I just paid them. Considering my business just failed and I have an income right now of $0.00, $342 was difficult, but that’s what credit cards are for. I’ll get back on my feet and pay back Visa eventually.

The intractability of ICBC

So what other excitement have I had with ICBC and the boys in blue? Well, as I said, I’ve been driving my mother around recently, and my 20/25-year (if not more) clean driving record was sullied. This was completely my fault (as some accidents are) when a driver in front of me suddenly hit the brakes for a surprise pedestrian and I rear-ended him. And how fast was I going? 250 km/h? No, I was barely moving, as even speeders are wont to do occasionally, because we were slowing down in a right-turn lane. I don’t know how fast we were going as it’s not my habit to glance at the speedometer as my vehicle is about to hit something, but I’d say we were barely moving. I did no damage to the other vehicle and all I have on my vehicle is an indentation on a bumper.

I reported the accident, as I’m required by law to do (I still follow most laws) to a call-taker at ICBC whose first language was obviously not English. If you want to hire foreign call-takers at your company and all you want to do is take orders for your widgets, that’s fine, but not if you’re taking statements in legal cases. So after my call I decided to log into ICBC and provide further information. This required that I re-activated my account with Service BC to integrate with my phone. I did that, and logged into my account and found that ICBC hadn’t connected my account to the “claim” (I’ll explain why that is in quotes in a moment) that I had opened. So here we are about a month after the accident, and I’ve had three (I think, Gmail is such a shit interface) messages from “CC63” at ICBC, who also seems to be challenged by English. I get between one- and four-sentence emails, but none of them make any attempt to resolve the situation in which ICBC has put me by denying me access to provide additional information about my accident. I can’t really think of anything else to say, but you can’t pretend to “resolve” an issue in one- to four-sentence emails, most of which are boilerplate. That’s just ridiculous.

(Why do I put “claim” in quotation marks? According to my education, one only makes a claim against an insurance policy if one claims a payment for something that that is covered by the insurance policy. The cars of both parties in the accident were not damaged and neither was either party injured [and there was no third-party damage], so there is no claim. But the non-English-speaking call-taker pointed out to me that by reporting the accident I had opened a “claim”, even though she heard me state that there was no claim under the English definition of the word. So either her English wasn’t very good, or she has been brainwashed by ICBC jargon to just believe everything they tell her.)

And I haven’t even got to the point where I can complain about the fact that the non-English-speaking call-taker actually said that ICBC will find out about anything to do with my driving, even if I try to hide it. First of all, WTF?! Second of all, I’m not trying to hide anything, and for someone to suggest I am — and it’s only a matter of time before Big Brother finds out — is beyond the pale unless you have evidence that I have tried to mislead someone.

I have an expletive ready to go here, and it’s one of George Carlin’s famous “seven dirty words”, but I receive complaints occasionally.

The hypocrisy of the police

We’ve all seen the police do things they’re not supposed to do, whether it’s right in front of you or on the news. It’s the stuff of legend. We write it off because there’s nothing we can do about it, because most of it is inconsequential anyway. But try telling a cop that the 80 km/h you were doing in a 60 zone was “inconsequential”, and he (or she) will laugh at you and write you a ticket anyway, because the government is expecting that revenue. I remember obeying the law recently and I was pulled over and “talked to” (I didn’t get a ticket, because I didn’t break any laws) because the cop made the assumption that I had no idea what I was doing, or that another driver would assume I had no idea what I was doing and would then act that way and hit me. It was the other driver that should have been pulled over and talked to (or even ticketed for failing to yield), because I didn’t break any laws of even rules. But I’ve had interactions with cops in unmarked vehicles where they were obviously breaking the law, but because they had red and blue flashing lights, they just flashed them at me and I quietly went about my business. I mention this now because this just happened to me on Monday.

I was driving along Steveston Highway in Richmond and I passed an unmarked (as I found out later) police vehicle, a black pick-up truck. And no, I wasn’t doing 250 km/h; I was probably doing what everyone else was doing, about 70 km/h … yes, in a 50 km/h zone, in the same lane as others doing the same speed. I have no idea if it was a Richmond RCMP officer because I never saw him or her in the flesh and got some reasonable identification. Before he (or she) revealed himself/herself to be a cop, I noticed that one of his/her headlights was out. Then he (or she) flashed his/her red-and-blues for no apparent reason (other than to intimidate me, I assume, as other off-duty Richmond RCMP officers have done in non-driving situations) and I got ready to pull over, but he/she carried on and didn’t do anything, and I continued driving as I was. However, if that cop had pulled me over, I was going to ask him/her to write themselves a ticket as well for having one headlight out. I have no idea how that would have gone, but it was worth a shot.

Back when I was doing my darnedest to be a law-abiding citizen and drive at or slower than the speed limit (referred to above), I was passed all the time by cops … in marked cars even! That’s one of the reasons I felt unsafe obeying the speed limit, because nobody else (including the cops!) was doing the same! Why should I drive at 50 km/h when I’m being passed by a cop doing 70?! Why should I do 50 km/h when I’ve got people rushing up my ass and pressuring me to go faster? Why should I do 50 when it’s obvious I’m the slowest person on the road and holding up traffic? So many rhetorical questions, so many hypocritical cops.

Driving mentality

I don’t have any deep analysis of the psychology of driving, but one thing I have noticed, as I avoid being hit by people doing their make-up, eating hamburgers, applying mascara, brushing their hair, talking on the phone, etc., is that driving is not the priority of many people. I mean, sure, they’re in the car because they want to get from A to B, but they’ve done it so much they don’t care, and if the kids in the back seat need a swat, they need a swat! You can’t put that off until later. (That would be sarcasm.) I’m not holding myself up as the model for good drivers to emulate but, besides cars, I have learned to pilot aeroplanes, and you don’t just jump in a plane in your driveway with a couple of screaming kids and your hairbrush, and away you go. Sure, it’s much simpler to “pilot” a car (and also easier to come into contact with other cars), but if people paid as much attention to driving as is required to pilot aeroplanes, our roads would be in much better shape.

When I drive, whether I’m going 8 km/h (5 mph) in a parking lot, 30 km/h in a school zone or 120 km/h along the Coquihalla Highway, I’m driving. I’m piloting a vehicle of a tonne or two, which would hurt if it ran into someone … to put it mildly. I’m not doing one of the activities I mentioned above, I’m focussed on driving. Preferably as smoothly as possible, whether I have passengers or not, because it’s just more pleasant that way. Sometimes I’m fiddling with climate controls or radios (which is one of the reasons touch screens in cars should be banned!) but only when it’s safe to do so, such as when I’m stopped or moving in predictable traffic, such as when I’m on the freeway. I don’t know, but controlling those things is never my priority.

Making suggestions

Isn’t this the point at which I, in all my wisdom, make recommendations? Look, we can’t all be experts on every facet of life, but it’s clear to me that “the powers that be” couldn’t give a shit about us becoming better drivers. They’re just after the money that citizens apparently have stashed … who knows where? … just waiting to pay fines. As our society evolves, we’ll find more and more ways to control the population by, as I say above, installing robots at the side of the road to record and measure our every move. Some people probably want that, and will work to get it; I don’t want that. But, as I watch the news tonight, I’m reminded of the fact that I can assault an innocent person with a baseball bat and be back on the streets tomorrow, but god help me if I do 80 km/h in a 60 zone, because there’s probably a camera somewhere recording that, and hooked up to a system that will automatically churn out a speeding ticket and mail it to me.

That doesn’t improve society.

The CFIA has also become the poster child for giving the middle finger to the law

Nov 17th, 2025

by Craig.

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Common ostrich. (Cropped and reduced, Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0)

All during the COVID-19 pandemic I sat and mocked the morons who were demonstrating in the streets against lock-downs and various other methods to control the population to reduce the spread of the disease, around the world, here in Canada, the United States, Australia, etc.

I watched the experts, who I will not demean by putting that word in quotation marks, speak sense to the masses. I decried the people who stalked doctors and nurses and other medical personnel, and besieged hospitals, in an attempt to intimidate them into stopping their vital work.

And now I’m watching the farce at Universal Ostrich Farms. As I said previously, I find it odd that I’m now apparently in bed with the same nut jobs I couldn’t believe were seemingly convinced the end of the world was near, who predicted I’d be dead with a year of the first COVID vaccine I took … five years ago.

I’m not a virologist; I will admit that up front. I believe I am a scientific and critical thinker. I don’t think that ostriches are magical animals, something that only occurred to me after reading the diatribes of a virologist. That virologist is Dr. Angela Rasmussen, who I recognised from her appearances on the TV news when she was explaining to Canadians (and anyone else who would listen) how COVID worked and why is was important to wear a mask and how to behave in groups of people to avoid transmission of the virus. She made sense to me then, so I am dismayed to learn that she is in favour of the “stamping out” policy of the CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) with respect to the ostriches.

As I said previously, “Would humanity have ever made its way out of the caves if we mindlessly executed every human that ever caught a cold?” That’s the crux of my argument against culling 400 ostriches. It’s not that I have a special bond with Speckles, one of the named ostriches; it’s that I have a bond with all … well, most … living creatures on this planet, especially those that are subject to the whims of authoritarian humans, who can decide with the stroke of a pen that 400 lives are meaningless and can be vapourised in the blink of an eye, or however many hours or days it takes to kill 400 animals. Why is life, human or otherwise, so disposable to us humans? That’s what I, and I’m sure many people, think and wonder about.

I’ve done some research on Dr. Rasmussen (which is a loaded assertion after the pandemic), which research I do for every blog post which is why I do so few of them. I am shocked at the extent to which some have gone to threaten and intimidate her. Those are the people I referred to above. There’s no excuse for that; I disagree with her, but I don’t think she should suffer the same fate as she thinks the ostriches should. I also realise that there is a huge difference between the “colds” that humans get, and “highly pathogenic avian influenza” (HPAI) that was diagnosed on the ostrich farm, so don’t bother disagreeing with me on that point.

Although it’s not the first time, I looked at her blog on Substack. The lead article there (as of 6 November 2025) is “Release The Ostriches’ Grippe“. I won’t focus on its title and the odd possessive of “ostriches”, and the use of the word “grippe” (which I had to look up, so I expect its context means more to some people than others), but when I opened it I found it odd that an “unbiased scientist” (she links to someone who goes by that moniker on her home page, so I assume she’s claiming to be unbiased herself) would open a supposedly scholarly article with, “I cannot believe that I have even used the word ‘ostrich’ this much in my life. I went into virology because I prefer studying microscopic parasites to vertebrates. I should have known better than to think I wouldn’t have to know about these terror birds. … Sometimes the hosts [of viruses] are incredibly annoying. Ostriches fall into this category.” OK, so Dr. Rasmussen has an emotional reaction to ostriches, but we’re still supposed to take her thousands of words about them at face value as being “unbiased”! So really, my emotional reaction to snuffing out 400 lives is just as valid. She goes on right after that to call the opposition to the cull “a radicalized absurdist yokelfest” after that, so she has even more biases than just the one against ostriches.

I was going to read her full article anyway, despite the fact that she goes on to demean those who disagree with the cull with more slurs. I chose a career in IT, where I can minimise my interaction with vertebrates, both bipedal and quadrupedal, but I still take interest in some of their blogs … the bipedal ones anyway. But ten days later work has overtaken me and the press has moved onto other shiny things. I’m not going to bother reading her full article because I’m sure it will be just a mean-spirited rant against the aforementioned “yokels” and anyone else who holds life to be sacrosanct. No thanks.

Updated, 2025-11-17: Immediately added that I understand the difference between a “cold” and HPAI. Also added the word “also” to the title.

Christy Clark pulls the plug

Jan 15th, 2025

by Craig.

Comments are off for this post

In a previous post I stated that Justin Trudeau had finally seen the writing on the wall and decided it was time he scurried away. It only took him a decade, although I suppose to be truthful it was really only the last year of that decade when he tried to cling to power. (I know anti-vaxxers will disagree with my timeline, but they’re idiots.)

So I suppose I should be charitable to Christy Clark for following the example of one of her successors in the BC Liberal Party (now BC United), Kevin Falcon (who folded under pressure) and give her credit for taking only a few months to come to the conclusion that her running for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada was a non-starter. Thank the gods. I wasn’t looking forward to taking on her supposed upcoming leadership race.

However, to reiterate points I’ve already made, anyone so stupid as to think that she could pull the wool over Canadian’s eyes to make them believe that she was a Liberal and not a Conservative does not deserve to be trusted with the leadership of this (or any other) country. She is, to say it again, a bullshit artist, and she only pulled the plug once her claims not to have joined the Conservative Party were found to have been false. Oops, “I misspoke. Sh*t happens. Lesson learned 🤦‍♀️ …”.

Yes, 🤦‍♀️ indeed! Your “sticking with the status quo” — i.e., misleading voters — is definitely a losing strategy! Thankfully you won’t be leading Canadians down that path!

Finally! The CBC calls out Christy Clark

Jan 11th, 2025

by Craig.

1 comment

On the CBC National last night (10 January 2025), the CBC finally called out Clark on her claim to being a “registered [federal] Liberal” and not (“never”) a Conservative. The Conservative Party apparently provided a screenshot (not shown by the CBC) from their system showing that Clark misspoke … to put it extremely politely and generously. She posted something on her Twitter/X feed trying to take back her remarks/comments in some recent (previous) interview with respect to running for leader of the federal Liberal Party. (Video in link below.) Unfortunately, as I’ve commented before, Elon Musk is trying to make X unusable and so I cannot see her recent posts on her X feed (but it was shown on the screen by the CBC), but it was full of bullshit and Clark trying to cover up her l**s — a word I believe I can’t use without risk of a lawsuit. But I believe I can safely use the phrase “bullshit artist” to describe her. (Actually, thanks to the written article on the CBC website, I now have the link to and the text from her post below.)

Well, I misspoke.
Sh*t happens.
Lesson learned 🤦‍♀️ …

I have always been clear that I supported Jean Charest to stop Pierre Poilievre. Not backing away from that. He’s the most divisive politician we’ve seen in years and I felt it was my duty as a Cdn [sic] to stop him in his tracks. I’m thinking carefully about running because he still needs to be stopped. But if we want to do that, our party has to accept change.

Sticking with the status quo is a losing strategy.

My god, if a seasoned politician has to excuse her stupidity and economy with the truth with the vulgar phrase, “shit happens” (and claims she suddenly learned a lesson that is taught in Politics 101 and Honesty 101), then she is quite clearly unqualified to be prime minister of the country. It’s not that I think that politicians can’t be “vulgar” (remember the “[Pierre] Trudeau salute” and “fuddle duddle”?), but she’s covering up her so-called economy with the truth by claiming “shit happens” for fuck’s sake! (Oops, sorry, I was vulgar.) This is a person who can simply not be counted on for anything even remotely approximating truthfulness and trustworthiness!

Listen, Canadians, and especially federal Liberal Party members: Christy Clark is *NOT* a Liberal! She’s a conservative in thought and practice! Sure, she’s saying all sorts of nasty things about Pierre Poilievre the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, but saying that she is against someone or something doesn’t automatically imply that she is for someone or something, specifically the Liberal Party of Canada!

And don’t even get me started on her bastardising the French language, which she was clearly reading off of a teleprompter, and probably didn’t even understand because she got it off Google Translate. I’m not a big fan of the fact that Canadian prime ministers have to speak French, but if someone is going to claim that they speak it then they do actually need to speak it, understand it and converse in it, at least to some extent! Reading (and badly pronouncing) a script does not make you suddenly bilingual!

But seriously, I started my tirades against Clark (with respect to the Liberal leadership) only last month, but it’s beyond preposterous that anyone can seriously consider her a contender. She hasn’t even actually entered the race, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to take her herself seriously! She’s falling apart before she even positions herself at the starting line. I can’t seriously consider the possibility that she will even embarrass herself to have a go.

Christy Clark Twitter/X post: “Sh*it happens.”

OMG, the entire continent of North America is a joke!

Dec 21st, 2024

by Craig.

Comments are off for this post

(OK, sorry, I had to start two blog posts with “OMG” just to show that Canada isn’t the only basket case on the continent. And I apologise for excluding Greenland, Mexico and the Caribbean from the definition, but I’m sure that in this case they won’t complain!)

USA

All I’m going to say about the USA though is that their “experiment with democracy” isn’t going so well. I’m not even referring to their electing an admirer of dictators and “strongmen” who is expected to turn his back on the rule of law; I’m referring to their inability to manage to govern their country without facing a government shutdown, seemingly every few weeks but in reality it seems to be every couple of years. I mean, I understand that the legislative side of the government needs to vote money for the administrative side of the government to be able to do the jobs defined by the legislative side of government, but really? I suppose the United States does have a record of slavery — which is the only way to describe being forced to show up to work for no pay cheque (“check” to you Americans) — so what’s the big deal with bringing it back temporarily every few years? I don’t get it.

And after 248 years — almost a quarter of a millennium — why not “experiment” with the executive side of government? This notion of a president and a vice president is so old-fashioned, so the administration-elect is experimenting with a new triumvirate: I’m not sure how to characterise it, as it seems to be rather unofficial at the moment, but it looks like it goes something like this:

Super (unelected) president: Elon Musk
President: donald trump
Vice president: JD Vance

Or maybe it’s like this:

Unelected president: Musk
Vice president: trump
Tea boy: Vance

(South Africans [including Musk] and southern Americans will nod their heads sagely at my thinly veiled racist term for Vance, which is entirely appropriate for the take-over of America by the citizen of the Third World country to which I’m referring. [And yes, you can quibble with me on my definition of the “Third World” here too, but since 1994 South Africa has been clamouring at the door of the club.])

So cute! He thinks he’s steering!.. (Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I went to their website to try to find appropriate licensing and attribution information, but they blocked me.)

Canada

The turmoil in Canada continues as well!

First of all, the antiquated electoral system of this country means that I will *GUARANTEE* that next year we will be bowing and scraping to Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre. Anyone — including Justin Trudeau! — who thinks otherwise is clearly smoking something very potent. I was talking to someone today who suggested that if the Liberals get a new leader they might do a little better than if Trudeau was leading them, but in my mind that may mean three seats instead of two. The coming defeat of the Liberals will rival or perhaps even outshine John Turner’s in 1984.
I have no doubt that perhaps, back in the day, Trudeau may have had a vision for where he wanted to lead the country, but it’s as plain as the nose on my face that today he is only thinking of himself. If he is indeed “reflecting” on his future as has been suggested, somebody also needs to suggest he give Joe Biden a call to get a lesson on humility and thinking of his country first. Of course, that didn’t work out too well for Biden and his party, so I suspect that Biden is the last person Trudeau will call for advice. Or maybe Trudeau is hoping for a snow storm this Christmas or over the New Year, and he will take a walk in said snow storm in the same way that his daddy did in 1984.
I rarely agree with anything Poilievre says, but how can one disagree with his current characterisation of the Trudeau government as a “chaotic clown show”? Someone on the CBC’s “At Issue” panel (probably Andrew Coyne) described the new cabinet, shuffled yesterday, as “Fanatics, loyalists and members of the prime minister’s wedding party.” Of course, the deliverer of the “clown show” remark then made it clear that the clown show will continue when he becomes prime minister because he also suggested that if he writes a letter to Santa Claus (or the governor general) he could get his Christmas wish of becoming prime minister sooner! God help us all.
To me the Trudeau government has become like that old, second-hand car you used to own. It’s completely unreliable, you know that the chances of it failing to get you to work tomorrow morning are far greater than 50%, but you somehow think that you can will it to get you there! Sound familiar?!

But the main issue I want to get to that has been bothering me for months now is all of the idiots who keep uttering the name Christy Clark as a possible successor to Trudeau! What are you people smoking?! (Sorry for all the marijuana references, but we’re talking about politics after all!) Yes, she was the leader of the BC Liberal Party, but the BC Liberal Party was a liberal party in name only! I distinctly remember Raef Mair questioning Gordon Campbell on this issue during an interview on Mair’s CKNW talk-radio programme many years ago, when Campbell became the leader of the BC Liberals, or was running to be. Mair asked Campbell to define “liberalism” with reference to the name of his party, and Campbell simply couldn’t do it! Mair may have been a bit of a pedant in that moment, and perhaps the definition of liberalism has changed over the centuries — or maybe it comes down to the different definitions of “freedom” that those on the left and right sides of the political spectrum use — but the fact of the matter is that in the years since Campbell became the premier (followed by Clark) up until the party folded earlier this year, the BC Liberals were — as described in the Wikipedia article on the party that replaced it, BC United:

conservative, neoliberal, … occupying a centre-right position on the left–right political spectrum … a “free enterprise coalition” [drawing] support from members of both the federal Liberal and Conservative parties … the main centre-right opposition to the centre-left New Democratic Party …. Once affiliated with the Liberal Party of Canada, the British Columbia Liberal Party became independent in 1987.

Their name reminds me of something my Grade Seven teacher (Mr. Cuttel) told the class one day, that he found it ironic that countries in the world that were widely known as being anything but democratic seemed to like using the word in their names to cover up their lack of democracy, e.g., German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), etc. Perhaps the BC Liberal Party was using that logic!

If you don’t live in BC and just can’t quite grasp the nomenclature, I strongly recommend you read the CBC article “Why the B.C. Liberals are sometimes liberal and sometimes not“, with a video with excellent (i.e., corny) sound effects by Richard Zussman, who now reports for Global BC. It’s really not that difficult; as illustrated above, people can call their countries whatever they want, and those countries are named by political leaders who lie just as much as political leaders everywhere on the spectrum.

If Clark even runs in an expected leadership race I’ll be surprised, but if she does and wins, I’ll be handing in my licence to run this blog.

BC’s Liberal Party does not equal Canada’s Liberal Party (CBC)

Updated, 2024-12-22: Some minor changes (mostly formatting), plus added the screenshot of the CBC video to which I link. Also, apparently this is the third post title I’ve started with “OMG” recently! All because of politicians!

Updated, 2024-12-26: Added Mike Luckovich’s very appropriate cartoon from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, along with an explanation of how I tried to access their website to obtain appropriate licensing and attribution information, but that their website blocked my computer’s configuration. Kinda defeats the purpose of having a website, but what can I do?

BC General Election 2024: Official results

Oct 29th, 2024

by Craig.

Comments are off for this post

Vote (cropped, Alan Cleaver CC BY 2.0).

The final results of the 19 October 2024 BC General Election are in, and the losers are the voters of British Columbia. Congratulations!

Wait, what? Oh, you were expecting that I was going to celebrate the winner?! Nope, with every election we have I become more and more convinced that the electoral system we use in this province and country was designed by morons. I mean, on the face of it, winner takes all just makes sense, right? You and your friends are deciding where to go for dinner. It has long been my contention that the bigger the group, the more likely it is that you’re all going to end up at White Spot in this part of the world. (Probably Wetherspoons in the UK.) White Spot is a good, run-of-the-mill, middle-of-the-road restaurant, with something to please just about everyone so, just as I said, the bigger the group the more likely it is that there are going to be people who reject a pizza place, a steak place, an “ethnic” place of one stripe or another, or whatever someone in the group will vote against. So someone in the group says, “What about White Spot?” “Yeah, OK, I guess,” grumbles just about everyone. The steak guy can get a half decent (but overdone) steak, the pizza guy can probably get a flatbread thing, the person who wanted something “ethnic” can probably get something resembling a curry or that has had some curry powder waved in its general direction, people can get burgers, and off you go. Ain’t majority rule great?!

Final 2024 BC general election voting results

And so here in British Columbia the NDP have just squeaked by with a 47-seat majority, an absolute bare minimum majority required in a 93-seat house. (And already the Conservatives are promising to bring down the government! Way to read the room guys!) The 46 seats they had until the recounts were completed over the weekend — actually, they weren’t really recounts, they were the counting of mail-in, out-of-district and other miscellaneous ballots — was one seat short of the majority, and they would have required at least one MLA from another party to pass legislation.

Of course, the NDP are happy! Phew! We can get our agenda done! But the fact is that 55.13% of the province voted against the NDP, the majority of voters! (Sound familiar?! 56.73% voted against the Conservatives.) Don’t get me wrong, of the two main parties in the contest I’d far prefer the NDP to win over the Conservatives who, as I said in my earlier post, are led by a mentally and socially deficient anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist who would be premier of the province had the Conservatives won! So thank the gods that they didn’t win, but the issue I have is that everyone seems to think that a minority government is “bad”, when in actual fact a minority government is the absolute best we can possibly hope for in a first-past-the-post system, where it’s usually one dictatorship after another! If you’re using a system where the majority of voters do not get what they voted for, how can you possibly think that that’s the best possible voting system?!

But I’m farting into the wind, because BC voters have twice (or maybe it’s three times, I’ve lost count) rejected some kind of proportional representation system because the maths were “too hard”!

Initial 2024 BC general election voting results

Let me go back to my White Spot example. Based on my own experience I’m not a big fan of the various food-delivery services out there, but here’s a possible variation on the example I gave: The majority of the group would probably vote against White Spot, not because White Spot is crap (I do love some of their dishes, so I don’t want you to think I have a hate on for them), but because the steak guy would kill for a good steak, and the pizza guy really wants a meat-lover’s pizza right now, and someone really wants a good goat curry. So head for some venue where you can have fun and that will allow you to call in a food delivery, and order from the places that specialise in those foods and eat what you actually want! Maybe it sounds a bit too “pie in the sky”, but you all get to vote on what you want to eat and you all get what you want! In PR, if 40% vote for the NDP, 40% vote for the Conservatives, 10% vote for the Greens, and 10% vote for the Rhinoceros Party, that’s exactly how the seats are divvied up in the legislature (or parliament).

If a group of friends can come up with an arrangement that suits all of them for dinner for the evening, how can a province or country not come up with an electoral system that actually pleases all of the voters all of the time?! I’m not so stupid that I think I know better than Abraham Lincoln but, my god, just about anything has to be better than this farcical first-past-the-post system in which we find ourselves every election cycle where (in this case) 55.13% of the electorate get told to suck it up for another four years. That won’t end well when the revolution happens.

I just wasted my vote in the 2024 British Columbia provincial general election

Oct 13th, 2024

by Craig.

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Vote (cropped, Alan Cleaver CC BY 2.0).

Yesterday I went to the District Electoral Office in my area and voted in an advance poll. I did it there and early because I expected an issue with my ID, but thankfully I didn’t have one. (At least that part of the provincial government was working properly, as opposed to the part responsible for my ID.) Anyway, since we’re still using the FPTP voting system inherited from middle ages England, I knew that my vote would be wasted because I voted for the Green Party headed by Sonia Furstenau instead of one of the two main parties, one of which is headed by a mentally and socially deficient anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist.

But oh well. I’ll just consider myself on the vanguard of proportional representation in a province that has its head buried firmly in its ass, having rejected PR in two referenda!

Far-right business hacks at the “National Post” / “Financial Post”

Feb 16th, 2024

by Craig.

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The National Post: “Who’s the biggest fool, Eby or Trudeau?” (No author.)

With respect to my comment on Eby on Tuesday, I noted a piece in the “National Post” (apparently in the “Financial Post” section) by some nameless entity (see screenshot above) — perhaps the Post itself, or perhaps an individual named “Corcoran” (see second screenshot) — but not marked as “opinion” (see first screenshot) even though it clearly is, titled “Who’s the biggest fool, Eby or Trudeau?” It’s hilarious that anyone who disagrees with the almighty Bell is considered a “fool” or an “ignoramus”. That’s what’s called an ad hominem attack; if you can’t explain why you disagree with someone, call them a name. The words “fool” and “ignoramus” work. And if you run short of names to call people, just pull up a recent campaign speech (or any speech) by a guy named donald trump to get some more words … although not that many, since the guy has a very limited vocabulary.

But hey, I get it, people disagree! So I’ll raise the bar a little and respond intelligently instead of calling the “National Post” (or Corcoran) “fools”.

I don’t believe anybody — Eby, Trudeau or anyone else — is suggesting that BCE should subsidise their subsidiaries until the end of time. But big business(es), and those on the right in general, are big on the fact that people should take responsibility for their own actions. What a concept! But that only applies to poor people on skid row and drug addicts, not big business. It’s completely unreasonable, foolish even, for us idiots that don’t run BCE and other massive companies to think that BCE should take responsibility for their own misguided, stupid and even foolish decision to attempt to buy up the media industry, and their own foolish decision to run said media industry into the ground with their ignorance! It’s foolish for us to believe that BCE should pay back various levels of government the money that they/us — Canadian taxpayers! — will pay in (un)employment insurance to the unemployed journalists, cameramen, teleprompter readers and various other human beings that will become unemployed.

Of course not! It’s their own fault they’re unemployed! The fools! And if it’s not their fault it’s the big bad government’s fault for forcing us to work within the confines of decent, modern, civilised Canadian society!

“Bullshit”, as described by the “Financial Post”, is quite clearly the domain of big business press releases (viz. “moving forward”, at least for the employees that won’t be moving backwards in lifestyle) … and the fools at the “Financial/National Post”. I hereby award the “Harry G. Frankfurt Award for Demagogic Bullshit” jointly to Corcoran, their shitty newspaper and BCE Inc.!

The Financial Post: “Who’s the biggest fool, Eby or Trudeau?” Corcoran?

Updated, 17 February 2024: Made notes about the possible author of the article in the captions of the screenshots.

Encrapification: My vote for word of the year, even though it’s only February

Feb 13th, 2024

by Craig.

1 comment

David Eby. (Picture courtesy of BC NDP. CC BY 2.0 Deed. Cropped.)

The frustration of David Eby, premier of British Columbia, was palpable in his “2½-minute tirade” on Thursday (8 February 2024) against BCE Inc., parent company of Bell Media and therefore CTV News and all of its many holdings. But it was his invention of the word “encrapification” that stole the show for me. My web search for the word turned up the above CBC report as the first search result on Friday.

The great thing about the English language is that it is constantly evolving, and that it has building blocks to create words like this. I can’t speak for other languages, of course; I’ve studied several over the years, for which I’m grateful (especially Latin), but besides English there’s only one other (French) that I can say I could speak reasonably well in a pinch, but I don’t know it well enough to invent words in this way.

But Eby is completely right. I used to be all in favour of companies like BCE doing whatever they reasonably could to make more and more money but, as we’ve seen over the years with the likes of Facebook, Google, Microsoft (remember them?!), Amazon, etc., real people are hurt when companies become too big to care about both the people they employ and the people to whom they sell their products and services. I don’t imagine that the CEO of BCE woke up one day and decided to gut the media landscape in Canada, but he has. Eby’s characterisation of what BCE has done reminds me of what Canada Post did on a much smaller scale years ago: When I left college I expected to be quite movious — another great addition to the English language courtesy of Zambian English meaning to move around a lot — and so I rented a post office box. I rented it at the Vancouver International Airport because, working in the aviation business, I expected to be there often and so it would be convenient to be able to collect my mail there when I happened to be at that airport. It was going to become my “permanent” address.

Canada Post had other ideas, of course. They stopped renting new mail boxes at the “Airport Postal Outlet” (as it was known) and then, in a remarkable turns of events that nobody without an MBA could ever have predicted, they then claimed that there was not enough mail going there to support the existence of said outlet! Despite my attempts to “Save the APO“, it was taken away, and thus began my never-ending quest to set up new “permanent addresses”. What a gong show. I have had no fewer than seven “permanent addresses” in thirty-three years, when really, I should have had ONE!

A few random logos of the involved entities. Trademarks of the respective corporations.

Anyway, back to BCE. The day after Eby made headlines there was another politician who was evidently jealous of the attention that he wasn’t getting, so Justin Trudeau got on the horn (apologies to those of you for whom that phrase has a more lurid meaning!) and called it a “garbage decision” and said he was “pissed off”. Good effort Justin, but not nearly as cool as Eby! 🙂

At least CTV’s newly unemployed former employees will be able to count on Canadians’ thoughts and prayers for a day each year when Bell does their annual “Let’s Talk Day“. Thoughts and prayers certainly helped Lisa LaFlamme a lot when they fired her for letting her hair go grey, just as they helped me when Bell ripped me off for $11.27 for a one-minute phone call!

british columbia politics

Adults behaving badly