Thar blows the poll

British Columbia political tides are shifting and there are unseen sandbars, deadheads and submerged rocks ahead.

New Angus Reid Public Opinion poll charts the latest waters in BC's political sea

Geezer newsrooms and political back rooms have their jibs aflutter about the poll (click here for: Angus Reid Public Opinion poll) showing the BC Liberal and NDP parties are dead-even at 36%, revealing that the west coast prefers its politics leaderless.

The numbers are telling tales of mutinies in the recent headlines.

Reading Desolation Sound; a history, by Heather Harbord, it's surprising how many captains shipwrecked in the early days on the Sunshine Coast.

When captains are left too long and fall asleep at the rudder, the ship oft runs aground. Rats scamper, as was seen when Gordon Campbell's ship started taking on water and almost capsized before he relinquished command; as is happening in the aftermath of the Jenny Kwan-led sedition that scuttled Carole James.

First to summon all hands on deck, and frantically manning the bilge pumps, The Liberals. According to the winds of change that polls track, the first to get shipshape and become seaworthy. The NDP is just now limping into harbour where it will remain in dry dock until the barnacles are scraped from its rusty hull and a new captain emerges to muster unity.

And, most critically, who will be O Captain! My Captain!... From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won...?"

At the Liberal helm, if Angus Reid's cyphering of the sextant readings holds until the convention in 12 weeks? A woman. Bad luck?

It was long considered bad luck to permit women to sail on board naval vessels. To do so would invite a terrible storm that would wreck the ship. The only women that were welcomed on board were figureheads mounted on the prow of the ship. - Wikipedia

Carole James was made to walk the gangplank - actually, more myth than pirate precedent. But tell that Jenny Kwan who, incidentally, polls even with Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson - who Robertson will not be a leadership contender for either party, so forget about it - at 27% behind front-runner Mike Farnworth with 34%.

The Liberal admiralty and officers - all-male opponents who would dismiss Ms. Clarke's seamanship - threaten to gang-up and the front-runner overboard as harbinger of an ill-fated voyage after bringing-about on the HST to set a prior course for a free vote by MLAs. (Read: Ian Bailey's story in The Globe and Mail) But Clark has been ashore for a while. She's listened and learned. There is strategy in her tack.

Aye, the HST, the tax that three-in-five British Columbians are against, is the albatross around both party's necks. But which mariner will shoot the bird dead and which will wear it dead around their neck, is a rime yet written.




  

Christy Clark shows guts; leaving one male clubhouse for another

Christy Clark - "This campaign is about offering our province
new leadership - leadership that extends beyond one person
and one way communication." 

Bridgitte Anderson, Gordon Campbell's former press secretary - who always conducted herself politely and professionally - posted on my Facebook Wall after Christy Clark announced that she was entering the race to become leader of the BC Liberals (read: Ian Bailey's report in The Globe and Mail), "... where is the female perspective on (CKNW)??"

We might all ask, where is the female p-o-v on any of the geezer media platforms in British Columbia?

Mike Smyth - CKNW's go-to fill-in host -
is interim replacement for Ms. Clark

None of the major ink-on-dead-trees daily newspapers - Sun, Province or The Globe and Mail - have a regularly read BC woman's opinion on provincial current affairs. None of the talk radio stations - and there is only CKNW - give voice to a female host now that Ms. Clark has taken a leave from her daily show to devote her energies to winning the Liberal leadership. Her replacement? A nice enough guy, I suppose. Mike Smyth - a neo-con right-wing geezer columnist from the Province. Way to mix-up your content, NW.

Ms. Clark was the one host in CKNW's programming mix that a reasonable listener did not, by sheer willpower, have to fight back from verging on radio rage (similar to road rage but much easier to break a radio than the SUV that just cut you off). Charles Adler's conservatism and cheer-leading for the likes of Don Cherry is cold and disconnected from common Canadians. Bill Good is a shill for his friend and neighbour Gordon Campbell. When Mr, Good isn't openly expressing his love and admiration for the former BC  Premier, he is quite simply boring and nap-inducing.

The difference between Ms. Clark and NW's male hosts was her liberal morality versus their entrenched, immovable, white middle-aged and male morals of conservative phobias and -isms.

In-studio on my former radio talk show.

My former producer of the talk show I had on TALK 1410 - before it was silenced by the corporate powers and replaced with a second made-for-men all sports station for Vancouver - as if one broadcasting all Canucks, all the time wasn't enough - Libby Herman, posted an insightful reply to Ms. Anderson's question:

"Bridgette clearly you haven\t gotten the memo that AM (radio) is for men - the ladies get FM - all hits radio and soft rock... not that there's anything wrong with that. And no, I'm not kidding you. Real words spoken by real people in charge."

And, I will add, the "real people in charge" of geezer media are, for the most part, men.

Men are also in-charge of the BC Liberal party. But, Ms. Clark knows the deck is stacked against her having played smoky, back room political poker with the boys. She distinguished herself as former minister of education and deputy premier when Mr. Campbell's Liberals took power in 2001.

She also distinguished herself among her male lesser-thans on CKNW. Advocating on behalf of Pink Shirt Day and anti-bullying, outspoken on issues affecting families, and proving she had the most important skill for a talk show host - a willingness to listen - Ms. Clark exhibited an honest openness to new ideas and solutions. Hopefully, she has the toughness to defend against the close-minded political bullies she will face in the leadership campaign.

She will be off-air until the Liberals choose if she or another candidate will replace Mr. Campbell as leader and Premier. During the campaign, Ms. Clarke's perspective will bring her refreshingly female perspective, ideas and solutions to a much larger audience than ever listened to her, sandwiched as she was in a clubhouse of male blowhards on CKNW.

It is a bonus for the BC public that her return to politics might divert attention from the caterwauling of Jenny Kwan and the Gang of 13 scratching within the BC NDP. I said it, so meow.

Desolation Sound: of the BC political toilet flushing

British Columbia - The BC Liberals never anticapted a scenario in which a series of events, both within and beyond their control, would lead to the party's self-destruction.

An unscientific RT poll on globeandmail.com this week asked BC: Do you agree with former energy minister Bill Bennett?

Bennett was fired from cabinet and then fired back with a believable salvo denegrating Premier Gordon Campbell's character. Some of the statements he made in the heat-of-the-moment he has since retracted.

Bennett said: "The (BC Liberal) party is going down the toilet. If we don't have a fresh start, I fear it's going to go the same was as the Social Credit party went." Eight-seven percent agree.

But wait a minute. It is widely known that friends brought Mr. Campbell to power as the leader of a, so-called, Liberal Party. It was his creation - a coalition that folded the Socreds - a party that, if we follow Mr. Bennett's argument, was a political septic tank. Campbell and Co. took that sewage and treated it with their idea of BC-style liberalism.

"It was the biggest dump of my life!"

The effluent didn't start to stink until bad politics and worse politicians - notably Mr. Campbell and his finance minister Colin Hansen - gave rise to a grassroots campaign rebellion, led by odorous and opportunist former Socred Premier Bill Vander Zalm, against the toxic idea of the HST. Campbell's popularity plunged and now the party is decomposing.

The next sound you'll hear is the Liberal caucus flushing Mr. Bennett down the drain.

The big question is, what will rise from the stench of the BC Liberal Party? Likely, more neo-con crap.

Out here, in the country on the BC Sunshine Coast, we say you can never have enough poop for growing in our gardens. Politically, the province is up to its neck in shit, its plugging up the works and, unlike gardening, political poop is not good for growth.

PHOTO CREDITS: www.theglobeandmail.com