Adrian in the Bubble!

Brian Topp: SSH Adrian, Not one word!

Today comes word that the Adrian Dix led BCNDP will bring in Brian Topp to manage their 2013 election campaign.

What will this mean to BC Voters and a greater extent to the Mainstream Media?

Back in the 1990’s Brian Topp worked Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow as his Deputy Chief of Staff.

What is remarkable about this and why it is a great move for the BCNDP is this : There are three amazing parallels to the Romanow win and our own upcoming BC Election.

1) Grant Devine and his Conservatives found themselves as far behind and as reviled as The Christy Clark BC Liberals are now.

2) There were 3 main parties who had candidates in that election, The NDP,Conservatives and the Liberals

3) The NDP ran a great campaign and won easily.

What the NDP did in Saskatchewan I suspect the BCNDP will do here. They ran a campaign dubbed in the media as the Roy in the Bubble Campaign.

This meant that Roy Romanow was so far ahead when the election started, he kept his mouth shut,held on to his big lead and won.

I suspect Brian Topp will bring some of that knowledge to this campaign and encourage Adrian Dix and the BCNDP team to do the same.

It worked then and it will probably work now.

What do you think?

Christy Clark: Leadership or Lack of it? You decide.

Whether you like it or not,the people are trying to tell you something!

I used to work for a small polling company back in 2000-2005.

When I was there this is how polling worked.

The company would get hired to poll customers or voters relevant to a specific question,product service or idea.

A script would be written,approved by stakeholders and loaded into a computer so that those trained in a call center environment would phone and ask a question.

They did not browbeat people into answering but rather were instructed to be overly nice as the competition for the consumers time was unbelievable.( It’s worse now even with do not call lists)

The caller would enter the data into the computer and from there a report was generated and sent out for statistical analysis.

The person doing the analysis was an experienced statistician who had analyzed data for a number of years for a number of different polls.

From there reports were present to clients and released to the news.

Lately we have seen polling done on the BC political climate with the pollsters telling us what people think today. The most obvious question they would have asked would have been” If an election were held today,who would you vote for?”

The most recent result on a poll done by Angus Reid showed us that 50% of the people would vote BCNDP if an election were held now.

The current BC Liberal government polled at 23%.

This means that as of today, Christy Clark and the BC Liberal Government are not connecting with 77% of the electorate.

It was reported that when asked about this, Premier Clark blasted the polling company.

I can tell you from experience that it is hardly the polling company’s fault that Ms Clark and her government is not connecting with the electorate.

Had she come out and accepted the blame ( or at least some of it) she would have taken leadership of the situation.

She didn’t and once again missed a glorious opportunity to connect with the people she needs.

I recall years ago another politician missed a chance to do the same thing.

His name was Stockwell Day. He made a grave error in a speech in Niagara Falls.

You may recall he said Canadian Jobs were flowing south like the Niagara River. When it was pointed out to him that the river actually flowed north,he lashed out and said he would get the person who wrote the speech with the wrong facts.

As you know by now he went on to lose the election because of this and other gaffes. Had he taken leadership of that,the result might have been different.

My point is that through lashing out, politicians like Day and most likely Clark lose because they don’t know how to lead.

In Clark’s case she has 12 month’s to learn.

Do you think she will? ( A clue might be that Stockwell Day is one of her mentors)

What are your thoughts?

Voting: For Politics or Economics?

So there we sit, our GDP low enough to keep us out of trouble but close enough ( 90% or higher) would get us going down a lane we don’t want to go.

This gives cause for thought in that we ( The country) are facing 3 major provincial elections in the next year and a bit.They would occur in British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario.

I have lumped Ontario in the group because although they have just come through a provincial election, it resulted in a minority of tenuous proportions.

With pollsters releasing numbers here at home in BC and 48% of people saying they would vote NDP, the chart above gives me cause to wonder why anybody would even answer that question at this point in time.

With all the problems in the world’s economic situation, why would anybody say they would vote one way or another without reviewing a parties economic platform and seeing how it would affect them?

Why would almost half of the polled people say they would vote BCNDP when history speaks of all the economic mismanagement and mayhem they caused as recently as the 1990’s?

( I know you are thinking the BC Liberals have made such a mess of things we need to give them the boot! We do, but there are other options than the BCNDP) )

In these coming elections, voters need to be better educated than ever. They should review the policies and platforms each of the 3 main parties lists on their web sites.

Go to BC Consertvatives, BC Liberals, BCNDP, or BC Green Party and see for yourself.

Can’t find any policy? Then you should wonder what those parties are trying to hide.

Before you cast your vote or answer pollsters, you as a voter need to decide whether you are voting for politics or economics.

In this day and age the answer should be economics.

What do you think?

Watch this space between now and May 2013 for policy and platform as each party releases it.

Premier Christy Clark in the running for an award!!!!!

Christy Clark: I am in the running for an award!

It seems every time she speaks the Premier is not only wrong but mixes the facts up.

This is the person who is supposed to lead our province through tough economic times and she cannot keep her facts straight.

Gary Mason has a great piece today detailing her ineptitude and her breath taking gaffes .

You should read it and then ask yourself two questions, namely ” What the heck is this person doing as Premier ?” and “What on earth were the B.C. Liberals thinking when they anointed her as leader last year?”

Off course if you read this excellent piece by Alex G. Tsakumis , you know they weren’t thinking at all, they were conned!

Now what?

Time to award this week’s winner and it’s a tie !

The Bonehead of the week award goes to the whole B.C. Liberal team, lead of course by Premier unelect Christy Clark!

Another Great week for the B.C. Liberal team!

Potentially on the eve before the by-elections are called the Globe and Mail reminds us how stupid Premier Clark is!

The uniform of choice for anybody that runs on the Premier's record!

Potentially as the CBC is reporting, Premier Christy Clark will finally get around to it and call the by-elections tomorrow..

At the same time Robert Matas writes an excellent piece in the Globe and Mail relating to the mess that Christy Clark caused over the building of the Evergreen Line.

Without rehashing all the furor the Premier caused over her incompetence on this file, it is astounding that the B.C.Liberal Party and in particular our stunned Premier would turn around and publish a flyer listing her goof up as an accomplishment.

Even more incredible is the fact that The B.C. Liberal candidate is proud to run on her record.

While I go out for a barf bag,could somebody run out and grab a couple of straight jackets for the Premier and her prospective underling.

Anybody that runs on her record should be locked away and committed.

Should the by-elections be called tomorrow, this will be the first opportunity for British Columbians in any riding to show the Premier that she is not the right person for the job.

Do the right thing, vote, tell the Premier we get it , and start the process of giving her the boot.

Your family will be glad you did!

BC Conservatives Climb in polls,Catch BC Liberals!

 

 

Forum research today unveiled their latest poll and it is full of bad news for the BC Liberals and their hapless unelected Premier Christy Clark.

The BC Conservatives have climbed into a dead heat with the BC Liberals while the approval rating of Premier Christy Clark has dropped to an unheard of low of 26%. ( How do you say Gordon Campbell anyone?)

This writer,along with the residents of Port Moody and Chilliwack would rather we catch a glimpse of a  poll that matters.. That would one would occur if the Premier would take time out of her busy agenda  filming videos for Hockeyville, and call the by-elections that folks have been waiting for.

It’s time Premier Clark,put families first and call the by-elections.There are enough families in these two ridings that want to have representation in the legislature.

Please get on with the job that you were unelected to,Call the By-elections now!

Premier Christy Clark’s promises mean nothing;London Ontario makes riot arrests; Clark’s team pulls a Rip Van Winkle!

So whatever happened to all those people who were going to be charged,arrested and made examples of in the great Vancouver Hockey riots?

Remember  Premier Christy Clark  on her post riot Photo Op soapbox?

She made a promise.She promised to expose these people as the cretins that they are.

What has Christy Clark accomplished? More or less nothing.

Almost a year later, 1 guy is doing hard time. What about the rest ?

Over in London Ontario where they had a riot this past weekend ( Not a  football game,just St.Paddy’s day) 13 knuckleheads have been arrested and countless others have been suspended from school.

So rather than refer to our Premier Christy Clark as the Iron Lady , you should ask yourself what the real Iron Lady would have done.

More than likely she would have rounded them up and sent them to some quaint outpost like the Falkland Islands.

Our Premier ,on the other hand,is as Preston Manning said she was, A Snowbird.

We would all be better off if she did what most Snowbirds do; go south and retire!

Do not believe the B.C.Liberals claim to be good economic managers!

Question to either of you: What is more substantial $20 million or $40 million?

Think back to 2008 when the economy started to deteriorate and governments around the world started to put plans in place to survive economic recessions.

Think a little further ahead to May of 2009 when the provincial election was on and then Premier Gordon Campbell tried to make you believe in light of the turmoil his party was the only one to lead you through tough economic times.

He told you that his government managed to hold the deficit to 495 million and that alone should be enough to garner your support.

Then a few short months after the election the same Party with a reelected Premier told you that no; the budget had ballooned to $2.8 million but that it could be kept under control by a 1.6 billion payment from the Federal government if we implemented a thing called the HST.

Remember the feeling you had as you thought through all of this and wondered to yourself ” I am not an economic manager, I am just a regular person sitting at home who knew they economy was worse than they said, why didn’t the B.C.Liberals know this and be more on top of it than they were?”

I mean after all,they are the ones with the Finance department who is paid to research these kind of things,not you or me.

Remember you also asked yourself ” Why on earth did I vote for these people?”

I throw this out there because as I read Vaughn Palmer’s excellent column in the Vancouver Sun today, I was reminded of the Liberals economic mismanagement.

In particular a couple of quotes stood out: in 2011 Minister Pat Bell said that 20 million dollars was a substantial sum of money for the naming rights to BC Place.Then one year later the same Minister said 40 million was not good value for the taxpayers for the same rights.

Without discussing all the cost overruns and deficits in the BC Place project,one thing is abundantly clear: if a Minister in the BC Liberal Government thinks $20 million is substantial and $40 million is not, how can they lay claim to being good economic managers for the province?

They can’t and never will be able to again.

Don’t you agree?

Laurie Throness:Cheating is no big deal!

Laurie Throness: I learned everything I know about how to run elections from Premier Christy Clark!

As hard as it it to believe B.C. Liberal Laurie Throness said in an interview in the Chilliwack Times that having election signs up before the by-election is called is no big deal.

Of course that is against the rules and is therefore cheating.

So to Mr. Throness cheating is no big deal.

In another act of ,well stupidity,members of his campaign team went to city hall today to pay the $500 permit to place signs during an election. They were of course refused because there is no election on.

A good politician knows the rules and also surrounds himself with people that know them as well.

These cheaters sound like rank amateurs? Do they not take the potential by-election seriously enough to at least read the rules?

Can you imagine them as handlers of the public trust?

Are you as dumbfounded as I am that Mr.Throness thinks cheating is no big deal?

Are you as blown away as I am that he openly states that on the public record?

You have been hosed Part 2

Premier Christy Clark:You don't invite me to you job announcement,I cancel your deal.

I had planned for this to be about the government hosing of the taxpayer during the teacher lockout out.

You know,Minister Abbott says we will not speed up the process the bill needs to be discussed hosing while the Premier says “Teachers get back to school your little strike won’t make a difference anyways.”

This is a hosing on a grand government scheme because the Premier could care less whether the teachers work or your kids go back to school.

This is all about optics and the longer the teachers stay out the more the government thinks they will recover a bit in the polls.This is true especially if the BCTF screws up again and pickets in front of government buildings.

This is what today’s blog was supposed to be about but this hosing was interrupted to allow the government to hose you again.

How? Cancelling the Telus arena name deal.

This no doubt happened because the premier had her shorts in a knot over being snubbed by Telus and not getting an invite to last weeks Telus announcement.( Who can blame them,Telus is a family friendly company,she on the other hand has budget speeches read in front of gangsters.)

The government now has to make up $40 million dollars they had counted on and you the taxpayer will undoubtedly be asked to pony up.

You can add that to all the other times you have been hosed by Christy,Kevin and George in the last month alone.( Think MSP,ICBC,BC Hydro and gas and carbon taxes)

So the question I leave you with today is this: Got a spare $40 million we can borrow?