“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” Mark Twain
Twain attributed the quote to British politician Disraeli but researchers have concluded that the phrase originally appeared in 1895 in an article by Leonard H. Courtney. Ironically Mark Twain is credited with saying that “it isn’t what we don’t know that causes problems but what we know for sure – that ain’t so”.
The fault lies not with the science of statistics but with what we know about statistics that ain’t so. .
“I don’t really want to get into the specifics because she’s gone, let her leave with grace. You don’t have to beat people up.”
With that statement MLA Darryl certainly provided a notable example of Orwellian Newspeak.
To make that statement after having, at length, denounced Christy Clark for having no “moral compass’; of not “always trying to do the right thing” but of making decisions “with political calculations front-of-mind”; and of having “$6 billion of surpluses and not [be] doing things for people in need”; is hypocrisy wrapped in insincerity.
While one cannot say, at this point in time, what the final costs of Horgan’s Folly will be, or how painful paying for the removal of tolls will be, one can say the costs and pain of removing the Port Mann tolls will be felt long after the political popularity purchased by removing the tolls is gone.
In blathering on about the NDP keeping an election promise, the media once again fails to ask important questions. For example: is the removal of the bridge tolls a promise that should ever have been made, much less kept.
That the NDP are keeping an election promise will not make paying the consequences of Horgan’s Folly any less costly or painful.
