Eirin Airton's 'Corrections'

131°06'W, 53°37N
(with apologies to Johnathan Franzen)

Apparently, Erin Airton is a legend in her own mind as well as in NeanderConLand.

Heck, to hear her tell it, they even fight over her there:

"Erin Airton said she was contacted by two senior (Belinda) Stronach officials who floated the possibility of a job at $35,000 over a 60-day period. The Stronach campaign knew she had already been speaking with (Tony) Clement, Ms. Airton said, and speculated they were trying to take her out of the competition."

Locally, Ms. Airton plies her trade as the designated right-sider of the Friday morning political sparring matches on Rafe Mair's show. Last week she took a beating when she was repeatedly whacked up the side of the head by the facts and cold, hard numbers thrown her way by designated left-sider David Schreck.

It was hard to make out the gist of Airton's defensive responses through all the screeching, caterwauling and obfuscating, but it seemed to go something like this....

1) David, you always lose the listeners when you give them too many facts.
2) David, your numbers are just too darned hard for the average listener to understand.
3) David, you need to grasp the fact that complicated things are, well, complicated.
4) OK, OK, OK, when you catch me in lies and exaggerations I'm always prepared to change my tune and agree with you David.
5) But David, it's Friday and all of the union workers will be leaving for the Sunshine Coast by 4pm today anyway, which is why we're in so much trouble in this Province.
6) If you knew anything at all about business David you would know that what we really need in this Province is a Structural Correction.

The first five points mean nothing to me.

After all, they are just more of the same old/same old from those whose job it is to try and get us to drink the Kool-Aid.

But that last point has been buzzing around in my head for days now. Was Ms. Airton trying to tell me something I didn't already know? Or was she foreshadowing? Or was she talking in code? Or, and this was the part that has really been eating away at me, did she let something slip that we, the Peasants, are not supposed to know?

I figured the only way to find out was to go a-googling in search of the 'Real World of Business According To Eirin' (stay with me here, it's worth it).....

This first pass led me to this little piece of PR flim-flammery, apparently written by Erin herself:

"Uniterre Resources Ltd. has traded on the Vancouver Stock Exchange, and now the Toronto Venture Exchange, since 1967. The current directors include Michael H. Altman, Michael C Burns, Larry Blonde, Steve Sanders, David Korbin and Lou Starck. Uniterre has interests in oil and gas ventures in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Texas and is a major partner in the development of Canada's largest wind farm, Nai Kun, located in the Hecate Strait."

Hmmm.... so Airton is hacking for a gang of local old boys who are getting set to leverage a sweetheart deal that will score environmental 'greening' points for the S.S. Gordon Campbell in the run-up to the distinctly ungreen lifting of the moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling.

Dastardly to be sure, but on the face of it nothing outside of the extremely elastic moral boundaries that these folks normally operate under.

Except you also have to remember that members of the local NeanderCon Chapter rarely act alone. In fact, it is pretty much a given that they will always trade a little short term leverage (ie. cash, or in kind, injection) up front to sell the rest of us down the river later. In this case it appears that we will soon be giving it up, at least in part, to those dastardly Europeans again.

"....(Uniterrre) signed a joint-venture agreement with ABB New Ventures of Mannheim to build a 700 megawatt wind farm off Nai Kun in the shallow waters of Hecate Strait off the east coast of Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands). ABB New Ventures is a division of one of the world's largest engineering firms."

Now, ABB is an interesting company with tentacles that stretch all over the place, including shipbuilding. In addition they are also in bed with...are you ready for this.....Accenture!

"ABB and Accenture are joining forces to offer consulting, technology, and business transformation solutions, which are based on their complementary skills and common understanding of customer needs."

You all remember Accenture, right? It's the consulting arm of the that fine American Multi-National with Patriot Act connections formerly known as Arthur Andersen (yes, that Arthur Andersen....see the FBI re: Enron) that has been given carte blanche by the local yahoos to plunder BC Hydro.

So, just what are these 'business transformation solutions' that Accenture is so good at?

Could they possibly be fueled by this (from their own website):

"Accenture helps forward-thinking companies use outsourcing innovatively as a strategic tool to transform their enterprises and achieve high performance "

Hmmmm...... selling off jobs (ie. outsourcing) to transform enterprises......sounds like a 'structural correction' to me.

As I said awhile back, "The Neandercons, they're not like you and me".

And they're not working for you or me either.


Postscript....more on the ABB-shipbuilding (ie. ferry?) connection to come....