I had planned to attend the Abbotsford rally for Mike de Jong’s BC Liberal leadership race, but a commitment to 5 & 2’s Seniors cold wet weather shelter had me heading to MCC’s materials warehouse to open the shelter rather than the rally.
…….BC Liberals…….does it strike anyone else as dark, twisted humour that in pot smoking, left coast, hippie BC the ‘Liberal’ party is solidly right of center? That before the relatively recent incarnation of the BC Conservatives the Liberals were the right wing party?
Reading that line put the Mission Impossible theme song in my head, as well as images of the Secretary [or Liberal leadership candidates] disavowing knowledge for reasons of political convenience and correctness.
Personally I found the throne speech a rather inventive, borderline profound, piece of satire and an astute political commentary on the campaign, election results and the state of government and governance in BC.
Recognition of the financial realities of the BC provincial government and the discipline to manage the province’s finances responsibly – within the constraints posed by the province’s income [revenue] – are key skills needed by any party leader to avoid imploding the provinces finances and economy in the short term and placing severe, negative limits on the province’s future economic health in both intermediate and long terms.
Clearly Mr. de Jong’s experience is an enormous asset in terms of effectively and responsibly managing the province’s finances. A task that will only become more difficult, especially in terms of politically popularity, as the costs of our profligate financial behaviours over the past decades come due.
However, those decades of experience clearly serve to narrow Mr. de Jong’s perspective as evidenced by his own words when he speaks of the need to re-energize [give fresh vitality, enthusiasm, or impetus to] the Liberal Party.
“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.
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.
