Thursday, February 11, 2016

This Day In Clarkland: The Advance Man, His Name Is...


...Obvious.


Nevermind those Johnny-Come-Latelys to the LNG stenography club like the good Mr. Palmer of the VSun.

Because it was Mr. Mason of the Globe who was way out in front of 'The Death Of The Sparkle Ponies Means Absolutely Nothing!' curve weeks ago:

...The future of LNG remains at best uncertain, at worst dead, thanks to nasty turbulence in the global energy sector. There will not be a single major LNG venture up and running by the time voters head to the polls in the spring of 2017. The best the Premier can hope for is that some time this year Petronas, the Malaysian energy giant that is closest to making a final call on LNG in the province, announces it is going ahead...

{snip}

...That said, I doubt Ms. Clark is overly worried that her re-election prospects might be dimming because of LNG. The fact is, she has the No. 1 economy in the country, a privileged position B.C. is expected to hang on to for at least a couple of years, according to the Conference Board of Canada. Her government has tabled three consecutive balanced budgets, driven in part by a real estate and construction boom, making it the envy of the country...



Meanwhile, rumour has it that the number of British Columbians who are having trouble paying their jacked-up MSP regressive tax is now approaching the million mark.

Envy of the country, indeed.


______
A man named Obvious, you ask?....Well, Chichester Cathedral and all that.


.

11 comments:

Scotty on Denman said...

Christy looks like a charlatan: she's trying to hide the fact that she's not up to the job---like she never was and, as a result, never will be.

The extraordinary tumult that took out both government leaders, cabinet and Opposition, provided enough smoke to screen the considerable baggage Christy packed during her previous political incarnation (she might not have won the leadership had the Campbellites not been so busy abandoning ship); numerous other distractions, the HST Referendum and the NDP's own internal schism chief among them, covered her until she made her bid for her own mandate, a disappointing, one-note LNG pean that boosted the once modestly feasible prospect with increasingly preposterous whoppers nobody really believed (her party won by default when the NDP presented the dumbest campaign strategy ever---and she herself couldn't win a seat until the safest BC Liberal seat was vacated for her eventual by-election).

Her greatest accomplishments ever since have been to cheerlead the covert neo-right sabotage of public enterprise and to redefine the term "lacklustre" ----that is, to amplify it with regard her own performance as Premier. With an electorate numbed by an boggling litany of BC Liberal perfidy, it's the height of absurdity that the BC Liberals would contend for public trust. Thus, absurdity is what we've been getting (one must resist the urge to commence listing because that in itself would be absurdly long). Most incredible of all, it looks like the worst government in BC history is starting to campaign for re-election fifteen months from now---and campaign with an expanded, one-and-a-half-note pean boosting an expensive dam to power a nonexistent LNG pipe-dream.

Objective observers now, more than ever, question our electorate's sanity, not Christy's: how else can we label her a charlatan when she plainly isn't doing a very good job of hiding the fact?

RossK said...

But Scotty--

She just gave $15 million to Mr. B. Allen and his client list!

Given that...

How could you possibly shout 'Charlatan!' in an open brick-faced theatre?


.

Hugh said...

How can the budgets be balanced when provincial debt is growing rapidly?

RossK said...

Hugh--

Must be something magical about the 'top secret' work of Cookie Dough Mike.


(and, yes, I do have a memory that I plan to keep using)


.

krank! said...

Two weeks ago Mason "moderated" a Conference Board of Canada seminar titled "Western Canada Business Outlook". The main speaker was CBoC economist Pedro Antunes. On the topic of the LNG industry and the potential of even one plant being built in this province he was highly sceptical. When, during the Qand A, a participant posited that the only true believer in this LNG fantasy was our pole dancing Premier, the agreement in the room was palpable. Oddly, one of the four panelists, Max Fawcett, the editor of Vancouver Magazine, launched into a vociferous and sophomoric defence of da Preem. Knowing the life span of employees in the print media today, l expect to see Fawcett working for the Public Affairs Bureau in Victoria in short order. BTW, the Vancouver real estate casino was also a prominent part of this forum which may explain Mason's sudden interest in the topic. BTW, it was $295 for this two hour event: I wonder what Gary's remuneration was?

RossK said...

krank!

Gosh.

And here I thought that Mr. Obvious didn't ask for renumeration when he tried to do much more difficult things than witter on about the obvious.

You know, difficult things like trying to jump the English Channel.

____

All snark aside...Thanks very much for the report and the insight.


.

RossK said...

The official line-up to the seminar of which krank! speaks is ....Here.

Tip 'O the toque to Norm Farrell on the Twittmachine...Interestingly, Norm's post & query led Mr. Mason to state unequivocally that he was not renumerated monetarily.


.

RossK said...

Norm responded to Mr. Mason by asking if his employer, as an official sponsor, received any compensation.


.

Scotty on Denman said...

Gall!

But the shout-nouncement, "Pole-dance!!!" just cleared the open brick-faced theatre...

My sides are splitting...I can barely surf...!

Lew said...

Mr. Mason works for the Globe and Mail as a (cough...) journalist. The Globe and Mail was a partner in putting on the "event". The fact that Mr. Mason just happened to be doing volunteer work at the event is entirely coincidental, to listen to Mr. Mason.

I wonder though, how objective a journalist could be about the activities of the sponsors and partners involved in the “event” given that his belief in their cause rises to the level of free labor.

Apart from telling Norm Farrell none of this was any of his damn business, I also wonder why his response to Norm would include the hashtag of a Swedish martial arts self-defense organization.

Norm Farrell said...

Pro-media's standards should embrace modern reality and require notices to readers when news reports or commentaries are sponsored content and when they are the efforts of independent truth-seeking journalists.

It used to be easy to tell them apart. No longer.