When is Spam not Spam?

Victoria, British Columbia
48° 39' North; 123° 26' West

Perhaps when it is Prem?

"Public Eye has learned the premier's new director of Asia-Pacific trade and economic development Prem Vinning, a veteran federal Liberal organizer, has quit his job - three days after being hired. That decision comes hours after Public Eye revealed Mr. Vinning used a different name other than his own when phoning in a question to a weekend Channel M call-in-show featuring Premier Gordon Campbell."

It's a story that was broken by Sean Holman that has now gone ballistic, at least in local terms (ie. it's up on the not-so Giant 98's website - with no original source citation we might add).

Now, one issue to consider here is the possibly questionable moral judgement of Mr. Vinning. But something else that could be interesting is the timing of Mr. Vinning's hiring.

Specifically, it looks like Mr. Vinning may have been hired on Monday Jan. 24th after he delivered the slow-moving softball call to el Gordo's wheelhouse on the previous weekend.

Now, if this is truly the case it might not be unreasonable for a reasonable person to ask if Mr. Vinning's hiring was based, at least in part, on a (morally questionable) job well done before he was hired.

And if that is true, should this incident not lead to some real hard questions from the press gallery being directed to the man who both responded to the phone call and did the hiring?

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Update Thurs. 7:00am: Story went National on CBC Radio this morning.....kudos to local CBC guy, Jeff Davies, for properly sourcing the story back to first Joy McPhail and then Public Eye.