Liberal, New Democrat, choose your poison. Layton, Ignatieff, Mulcair, Rae or Trudeau, makes no difference to me.
They sold me out and they sold you out in the bargain. To echo Mulroney's attack on Turner, they had a choice. Not one of them chose us, you and me.
No matter how well Steve Harper did, three out of five voted for someone else. But Steve wasn't content with winning, he wasn't even content with winning a majority. Steve had to sever the Canadian public from their own government, the public servants we pay to toil in our interests.
If the government uses taxpayer money for partisan political advertising we rightly go ballistic. Shame, shame, shame. But if the government sequesters the public service and transforms the bureaucracy into its partisan political agency, where is the protest? Where are the angry villagers taking to the streets with their pitchforks and torches?
By cutting off the public from the public service, Steve has hijacked the civil service and harnessed it to his political purposes. When the public can't freely communicate with their public service - when somebody intervenes to decide what we can and cannot ask and filters such responses as are permitted to ensure they conform to the government's message - we have lost what is rightfully ours.
And the opposition? They put up a feeble protest, way back when, and nothing more since. For all the good they do in Harper's government by fiat and omnibus bill, essentially bugger all, they should have rebelled and boycotted Parliament altogether. They should have massed in the Rotunda or out on the lawns. They should have told the Canadian people that the prime ministerial sneak thief had purloined their very democracy. Instead, running true to course, they capitulated and, in the process, sold the Canadian public straight down Harper's river.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Been considering the merits of restoring progressive democracy? Noticed the inertia of an enfeebled Vichy of federal and provincial opposition parties?
ReplyDeleteMaybe BC residents should ponder three recent articles.
http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Mining+claims+Pender+Island+alarm+residents/7640138/story.html
http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/03/24/BearMountain/
http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/04/19/CompanyGrabsMining/
The problem?
“Private land ownership in B.C. does not include the rights to minerals or other resources under the surface.” What you own is from the topsoil – up.
In the 21st century why would any democratic country or province allow such Mafiosi idiocy – what's yours belongs to us - to persist?
Explanations are welcomed...
You're preaching to the choir, Anon. There are quite a few law-abiding British Columbians who are preparing to face what they never imagined would befall them - civil disobedience and the prospect of criminal charges - to stop this madness. It's really as though we have no choice.
ReplyDeleteYou say a choir awaits the right moment to protest this latest outrage?
ReplyDeletePity. Given the diversity of political opinion in BC - from staunch libertarian, to Rand-ite, to neo-lib, to neo-con, to socialist - all supposedly defenders of property rights, I see no reason why citizen volunteers - rather than their elected representatives - should risk arrest merely to oppose a very stupid law.
However, in anticipation of just such a disaster I emailed Mr Dix, Mr Cummins, Mr Clarke of the Libertarians with a proposal.
When Mr Dix (predictably) failed to squeak up, I contacted a Ms Karagianis, my MLA.
I pointed out that with libs numbers rising it would be to each opposition party's advantage to whack the libs with a scandal they could not defend. Whichever leader spoke out the strongest in defense of home owners and demanded the end of this Mafiosi farce - would gain considerably at the lib's electoral expense.
Our valiant opposition's response thus far?
Zip. Nothing from any of them. Not even a bleat...
Next? Maybe we need to contact journalists outside BC. Cite the stories above and let them know what passes for law in this third world backwater. Invite the UN, TV networks, politicians, and journos to contact our opposition leaders and ask them to explain why doing nothing to protect property rights is in the public interest and in what possible way is it to the opposition's benefit.
Prime the pump...
How large did you say this choir was?
I can think of one useful application of this insane quirk of property title. Apparently our former premier/capo, now installed as Canadian Pasha in London has beachfront land for his cottage on the Sunshine Coast that also happens to have sub(and perhaps above)surface gravel. Someone should stake it out and develop a gravel pit. It would be appropriate in so many ways, including what his insane pirate power nightmare plan has done to so many BC Watersheds.
ReplyDeletekootcoot?
ReplyDeleteYour speculation about some rotter exploiting Gordo's cottage property has already happened.
http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/04/19/CompanyGrabsMining/
Yup. A UK stock exchange-listed company has done the dirt to Canada's High Commissioner to the UK - that being Gordo himself.
BC journalist Andrew McLeod says that for Gordo to put himself in this fix required considerable effort to be different.
"Lawmakers in other provinces have since recognized that Canada is no longer a frontier. In Ontario, for example, clashes between miners and cottage owners are leading to a rethinking of the free entry system. But Gordon Campbell chose the opposite path when he and his 76 fellow Liberal MLAs took command of the Legislature. Instead of reexamining the role of free entry in the 21st century, Campbell dynamited the barriers to free entry that had been erected during the last 146 years.”
As Frank Zappa might have said, "I'd call abandoning 146 years of legal protection for people who own property - Dumb All Over. And maybe even a little ugly on the side"