1. No, not much that I recall. Thus,

2. pretty much, yep.

I used to say 'The faces change but the bs stays the same.' Today I would add, 'The rates have gone up, however.'

For such an unapologetic NDP hack, this is not a badly written article. However, with his masters polling at only 35% he must really be thinking about new career as Villiage Whiner.

And Bill, still snivelling about your leaky condo? Maybe you should have had it inspected before you bought it.

IMO leaky condos are a direct result of the anit-labour legislation and other policy changes surrounding the Restraint era; the advent of lots of out-of-province non-union companies and contractors on major projects. People that, well, didn't have any idea what kind of a rainy place they were building for; their building techniques would have been fine anywhere else, other than somewhere just as wet (e.g. WA or OR); maybe I'm wrong on that, but my impression of the extra-budgetary changes of the Bennett II regime was the end of the old co-existence compact Bennett I had created with at least the big construction unions, i.e. to get things done properly, not just to get them done, without quality or longevity, as was the second regime's wont.

What gets me about the Coquihalla thing is how the Russell Bennett thing could NOT have been fully investigated and ripped to pieces; as it surely would have been stateside, or even in the UK. Not just the Canadian/BC authorities, but the mainstream media, just looked the other way. As with so much else....

Wikipedia's still lacking an article on the Solidarity Crisis, Operation Solidarity, the Restraint Budget, and all that stuff; one reason I write there, even just writing stubs, is because of the opportunity for publicly-written, pubiicly-vetted history; what's interesting is what there AREN'T articles on yet (as with Solidarity) and what bumpf is in many of the articles (political bios and party histories, for example). But I'll field this to Bill and other veterans of that era: I've hesitated to start a Solidary article as my main interest in that period's political peccadillos is the constitutional interregnum which led the way to the "Restraint Election"; and of course the cold feet and the bluff that brought down the General Strike which ended that season; and an account of the editorial composition and participation of the Globe and Mail's BC edition that summer. This is all first-hand eye-witness stuff for people like Bill, so PUH-leeze someone start telling your history, since no one else will do it for you; it's one of the things that Wiki works very well for, if given a chance, and ultimately I think it will sum up more BC history and culture than you will find in any one publication....

You could have embraced all the checks and balances in the world and STILL ended up with a leaky condo so that was a bit of a cheap shot Working Man . I've got my own beef with Tieleman which stems from the referendum on electoral change but I thought this was an entertaining article nevertheless. As a student teacher at the time in October, 1983 I was unsure about my status - whether I wouild have to start a new practicum - since teachers were a part of the slow march to a General Strike. However, no government can ever afford to lose one and the advice of the day was to stand pat and let the divisions implode the movement. You can march and chant slogans all you want but unless you are really at the bottom rung with nothing to lose most working people who suffer a diminished pay packet will soon come to the bargaining table and talk terms. What were they going to do, bring down a democratically elected government? In the end Munro did the dirty work and the Socreds went on to win in '86 with very few changes to their Retraint Program.

That is very true. The basic thesis in 1983 was who ran the government, the elected members of the unions? Bill Bennett made it very clear that weekend in Kelowna was in charge. The unions hated Bill Bennett because they harkened backto their privilaged place during the short Barrett reign.

The union movment has declined steadily since then as the union bosses themselves have failed to recognise the rapidly changing work place. New industries have sprouted everywhere and unions have not even thought of getting to them. The BC union bosses still try to run the government and still fail to do it. I do have the greatest respect for the public sector unions showing that they can cut a deal with the government. They are at least bright enough to realise with Carole "I love the Liberals" James at the helm of their lobby group they will have to deal with Liberal governments for some time.

Thank for the comments on my article.

As to my leaky condo, I did make inquiries about the reliability of the builders at the time - 1994 - and there was little known about leakies or widespread use of inspections.

Regardless of that, no one should have to fear that buying a condo or house from allegedly reputable major construction companies and developers could leave you holding the bag for tens of thousands of dollars in repairs to a new building!

There has been no consumer protection for over 50,000 people making the most expensive purchase of their lives. Even a $25 toaster had more guarantees!

That's the Scored-CanWestGlobal history of it, as ad nauseam re-presented in whatever few news references there are to that strange year. The basic thesis in 1983 was "what can a right-wing government get away with under our constitution?".

Answer: constitutional hybris (Apr 1-4), outright lying (the budget vs the campaign), bringing-in outside help to win the election (Big Blue Machine) while pretending to be losing it (Bennett's apparent drunken, unshaved boorishness on the hustings) followed by a complete unwillingness to compromise or to talk to the voters who made the mistake of believing their campaign pretense of moderation, which was how ":restraint" was soft-peddled.

As for Kelowna, no one knows what happened between Jack Munro and Miniwac although one suspects it was little more than a couple of drinks. And, given the content of just-recent front page items in the Sun, and Bennett's own words, the probability that troops would be used to suppress any general strike. So what the showdown was over was a threat of force; either that or it was all a bluff from day one. "What can we get away with?" Sucessive governments have played this to the hilt, be it the Mulroney or Chretien federal regimes or any of the high-handed arrogant Premiers who've ruled BC like petty kings, while pretending to be democrats.

Campbell upped the ante one further over Bennett's refusal to abide by the constitution (Apr 1 1983) by refusing to complete the Privy Council by appointing a Leader of the Opposition. And there was no recourse to anyone concerned, because under our supposed democracy once a guy has been elected, he can do whatever the F88K he likes; even if he outruns his mandate (as Bennett did in 1983). We have no tools to get these bastards out of power once they run amok - THAT's what Kelowna/Solidarity taught us, not that the government has more power than unions. Hell, the government has more power than God, and when it's a right-wing government, it's even got worshippers (like Working Man).

Why do I feel I'm reading an old Social Credit election brochure?

Look, Working Man, the unions couldn't even run an NDP government, other than into the ground. But would you mind tell us WHO [I]is[/I} running the government? Because it sure as hell ain't the electorate.....

Meaning, of course, that you're apparently happy with the government being run by the half-dozen people who orchestrate its monies and campaigns and backroom schlepfests, right? If not them who IS running the government? Certainly not the people....

But ten years down the line, after ten more years of BC Liberal rule (gaaaaaaaa!), types like Working Man will still be blaming any problems on the NDP; just like Miniwac and Van derZalm were still blaming the NDP 72-75 regime for their own foibles in governing (or, rather, voodoo book-keeping, a Socred tactic)

I was in that crowd as well. As we passed the Htel Vancouver assorted Socreds were looking out the window laughing at the peasants. As federal employees we were due to go out in a day or so and were already warned that we would be fired for attending. The stadium event had federal workers, in uniform, parading. UNlike provincial employyess we had no allowances in our collective for political protest, but were there because the socreds were trying to set back the clock.
But what ever happened to Bennett junior and his inside trading charges? It seems folks are now presenting him as a real good guy.

"Folks" are not presenting him as a real good guy; the establishment media and associated partisan hacks have managed to put a spin on such events that has nothing to do with the facts or the events in question; only with the spin as to how they perpetrators WISH the events to be seen. This is why it's important for people to make sure such spin-washings don't go unchallenged in Wikipedia and other online information resources.

One problem with Wiki, by the way, is that because ultimately everything has to have a cite, things that were only in broadcast media and largely are untranscribed (unless you paid a boodle to get a transcript); print media, on the other hand, despite its obvious biases and foibles and outright misreporting, is taken as a valid source, which of course it's not. So a Vaughan Palmer analysis of the Solidarity events, which we all know how it would read, will hold more water in citability than first-hand experiences, which are considered "original research". Palmer's and Plecas' and other's accounts of events like Solidarity, however, are more like "original fiction"....well, not that original, and kinda predictable. What would really help in the case of the Solidarity events is access to the aforementioned Globe and Mail BC edition that was in publication during the Pacific Press strike, but those are by and large inaccessible.

Other events which have gotten the short shrift and spun-rewrite include the Charlottetown Accord: thte Wiki pages, among others, trot out the usual media spin about the ROC voting against women, natives, Quebec, but anybody who was watching the broadcasts the night of the vote or the pundit jawboning of the next few nights or weeks knows that the media and professional pols were forced to admit that the public hadn't done their bidding and voted the way they were told; and that, even to the media, it was obvious people hadn't voted on tthe contents of the Accord, but on the way the First Ministers, the big parties, and the big media (public and private) had tried to shove down our throats. But finding print cites of those discussions.....hard to do, so theoretically uncitable; much the same problems with the Oka Crisis and other politically-volatile events where the spin is now treated as though it were fact.

So whatever did happen to Bennett Jr. and his insider trading charges? He was acquitted, as I recall, but for some reason the media never flayed him over it the way they later flayed Glen Clark for something much less sinister (and for which he was also acquitted). If it had been an NDP Premier on insider trading charges, and whose brother's company had finagled some amazing insider-trading on real estate because the sibling had clued him into the Coquihalla plans, or who had overrun his right to rule (Apr 1, 83), the mainstream media would have never let their teeth go, even if he was acquitted.

Hell, even Van der Zalm has been getting spin-doctored in retrospect....

Bennet, VanDerZalm, Campbell, is there a factory somewhere that makes these people? And let us not forget Gracelss McCarthy.

Living in B.C. is an experience for sure.

Saw Grace on TV, seems she has been raising money , working wth kids who have some disease I can't pronounce. So at least one socred is doing something of value for the sick.

is there a factory somewhere that makes these people?
could it be the Fraser Institute that spits them out at regular intervals

Clark, Layton, James, Ujal, Dicks, Teilman, is there a factory somewhere grinding them out like The Centre for Policy Alternatives ?
It's sad to put down Grace. She is a good person and always has been.
I loved those days of the Bennett regime. Those were the days when we could all call a spade a spade.
I heard a campaign add from a BLACK Republican, running for Congress in N.Carolina. You would not believe what is brought up during an election campaign in that particular part of the world. The poor guy is referred to as a slave, or Uncle Tom, simply because a black person could embrace conservative ( Republican ) values.
He counter attacks with referring to ILLEGAL aliens and homosexuals as being a negative influence. The rhetoric is amazing, in that we are so much more tame here.
But those were great days. The wage increases, even within private industry was 20% at times. They were very responsible for the " Restraint Program ".

the socreds certainly weren't perfect, but at least they didn't make a mockery of gov't the way the ndp did in the 90's. we're still in recovery mode from those morons, and david tieleman and bill schreck were right there at the forefront. thank god they'll NEVER be back.

BC had the best job creation record in the country between 1991 and 1996 - then came the "Asian Flu" and a drop in exports to markets which accounted for one third of the provincial economy. The Liberals are riding a lucky wave of high commodity prices. And I guess the Socreds never made a mockery of government although like Elliot I have a bad memory.

clueless babbles about the good old days again!
they were good, simply because at that time the international concerns had not bought up everything yet!
those were the day when it was still possible for an individual to start a business and not get undercut by Wallmart.
if you feel it is bad now, you are correct!
Our lives have been manipulated just as the players in a "monopoly " game one by one, get eaten up by the eventual winner who winds up owning everything!
We are getting close to that point now with all these algamations and take-overs.
You can visit every store in town and find identical merchandize, but no specialty items anymore.
They will talk about service, but will not stock anything that does not sell enough, some service!

amalgamations..........sorry

Elliot

Where’ve you been man – in hiding since that last hockey game? What about the new look Canucks?

Certainly agree with you in hailing the demise of the Socreds. And that bit about ‘respect’ for the concept of government – you might want to reconsider giving them that much credit. The only difference I see between the Liberals and the defunct (Thank God) Socreds is the fact that Mini Wac Bennett had the good sense to realize he was no genius. He (Bennett) messed up the civil service pretty badly but the geniuses (in the own minds only) in charge today have ruined what was once a proud and competent and professional operation and turned into a joke – Penny Ballam’s recent resignation being only the latest clear evidence of the crime committed a year ago in May when the people of this province didn’t send Gordon Campbell and his band of crooks back to the private sector where they belong, in my view. The real problem for someone like me is the question about whether or not there will be anything left for the people of the province when Campbell’s finished – Bennett’s great BCRIC game turned to ashes pretty quickly remember! Have you still got your share certificate(s)?

I had to give a little chortle to the one response above (Elliott):

They DIDN'T? Obivously you and a couple of others here think the Socreds were God-On-Earth and could do no wrong; and either alongside that you're either swallowed the CanWestGlobal propaganda during the NDP years whole, as if it were actual independent opinion, instead of backroom hacks working for whichever group it is that Howe Street wants in power.

I don't recall the NDP having shady meetings (all-night parties in the Howard Hughes suites in the Bayshore, no less) with Taiwanese gambling lords intent on buying a banking license on BC, and willing to engage in a little land flip to help out the Premier's personal business. Yeah, that was showing respect for government, wasn't it? To the bitter end, of course Van der Zalm denied any wrongdoing, or any sense of conscience towards public propriety. Making a mockery of government? Van der Zalm did things that make Glen Clark look like a toddler in a sandbox by comparison. Clark was ambitious; Van der Zalm simply venal, which to me is far worse.

Then there's all the constitutional crimes of Bill Bennett, and not just in 1983 with the contsitutional interregnum, the engineering of the ballot boxes/hustings through outside (Ontario/US) help, the obvious inability of the Bennett regime to get the public to obey its edicts short of a threat of armed force (actually the standard tool of Canadian governments when faced with determined opposition/criticism, despite our national mythology of rapprochement and dialogue). The Bennett I, Bennett II and Van der Zalm Socreds eclipsed any amateurish power-mongering the NDP might have presumed to try simply by the sheer volume of scandals and other chicanery....I seem to recall Dr. Foth or Trevor Lautens or one of those types - might even have been Denny Boyd - discussing Bennett II's rearrangement of the bureaucracy which had deputy ministers report directly to the Premier's Office, instead of via their Ministers; this is an abuse of "convention" and is tantamount to a constitutional change; but of course "convention" you don't need a constituitonal mandate for, only the power of a Privy Council. And then "convention" sets "precedent" and basically however high-handed you want to be, if you get away with it once, it's "precedent" and becomes established in the way the country/province is run, even though the public has had no recourse to examining or preventing such a constitutional change.

The Socreds were the ones who defined what a mockery of government, and a mockery of democracy. That CanWest and the other media megalopolies spent most of the '90s encouraging capital to stay away from BC becauwe of the NDP, while at the same time complaining about the environmental movement's boycotts......smacks of a big double standard. And the more and more the phrase "the NDP are/were the worst government BC has ever seen" (a bit of hyperbole which has nothing to do with history, only POV politics), the more people like Elliott will parrot it, even though there's no actual evidence for such a claim - especially when the scandalous records of the Socreds, the Coalition, and the Conservative and Liberal parties during their early 20th Century heydays.

The worst government in BC's history, IMO, was that of Joseph Martin in 1900. But to understand why, you'd actually have to read BC history and know something about the place; instead of just repeating the Sun's and Province's lies as if they were truth.

gwest; still here but couldn't get into the tyee thing for a while there. same old lefty blather bullshit and was too busy to bother. what a fabulous playoff. good for hockey. i'm still in withdrawal since the nhl and the nba have ended. love baseball but it's too early in the season for major intrigue, and the world cup hasn't thrilled me so far this year. take it easy.

Eliott: yeah, uh-huh, real men discuss sports instead of lefty politics, right? So much easier to wsay "lefty blather bullshit" as a dismissal of truth and tune in the game while cracking a beer. I don't suppose that you've ever considered that your own posts are "right-wing blather bullshit". Bullshit because, here as elsewhere, you don't debate the points, you go on about "lefty blather bullshit" and try and switch the topic to hockey. Just like, in fact, the CBC.....

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Right-wingers continue to call the CBC "left wing" and "Liberal"....how does this not explain the pride-of-place given Rex Murphy and the "balanced" coverage from Bay Street pundits and party hacks. The CBC may at one time have been "Liberal", but since Oka it has increasingly become a tool to parrot and sell the govenrments' policies; lately militarism, Afgthanistan, and what a great guy Stephen Harper is. Seems to me the CBC was a bit quick on the switch with Ralph Goodale, too (have the RCMP ever filed any charges against him as part of that election-busting investigation - but the CBC nor anyone else has asked those questions; nor intends to, either.

For somebody who remembers Peter Montague's bald statement during Gustafsen Lake that "we're experts at smear campaigns", and the subsequent on-camera trashing and harrassment of Glen Clark (as part of an RCMP agenda against a casino/gambling club competing with one owned by one of their ex-members, and also not in a small way another election-diddling "investigation" that served only one political interest, as with Goodale: the right-wing's political interest. Of course, both Martin and Clark were for a lot of things the RCMP are trying to keep criminalize and make even more cirminal, so they had to be gotten rid of to pave the way for like-minded politicians ("like-minded" meaning gone to the same thinktanks and police conventions in the US0.

Skookum 1
I could hardly agree more. On the relative badness of government in BC it's hard to ignore the Zalm years as well.

Sorry; didn't quite complete that; one big issue, mostly ignored by the CRTC (if ever debated officially at all, which perhaps it hasn't been) is the increasing amount of policing news and style on Global's newscast, and to some degree on the other channels. As with the US military, in return for access your paper/station will publish/broadcast [I]unquestioningly[/I} the bulk of police media material given them, and also favour, it seems, the police's political agenda. Media-friendly police are a great way to sell, for example, the anti-marijuana agenda that's increasingly been in print (since Harper took over, noticeably so) and various other challenges to things they had previously half-endorsed, or at least artfully equivocated on.

This is dangerous material to discuss publicly, obviously, and I do not consider myself a radical except in terms of radical truth vis a vis history and public affairs. We all know about the fear-spinning that is a staple of Canadian media; as someone else here observed about the saner press environment of Denmark or the UK or any number of other actually civilized countries. In Canada, the tradition of corporate monopoly is so ingrained, from the HBC down through the CPR to the Big Banks, and now integrating with government itself through P3s, that to have it in the media as well only makes sense within Canadian corporate and political cultures.

Why? Because Canadian corporate and political cutures can only see things in terms of monopoly governance and monopoly corporatism. CPI's penetration of the Western economy is remarkable, when you consider its diversified arms of so many kinds and the amount of land and resources held or leased; it was the norm and went unchallenged within Canadian society, except during the various rebellions and "political strikes" such as those in the '30s. Resource concentration was no issue, so why shouldn't press concentration be OK? It's only money and power, after all; why should the rules be any different. Control of information, don't be silly - this is a free press....

All those aforementioned strikes and rebellions and many others put down since by force, please note - or threat of it, NOT by dialogue or compromise, which are anong Canada's many national conceits, or pretenses anyway. Our history has already been heavily edited to a degree where to bring up the undiscussed is to become undiscussable, whether by pc-ism; Propagandists will discuss the undiscussable, but seek to control the debate by launching a reinterpretation/cooptation of terms. The revanchist Reform Party's name, for instacne, grabbed that wondrous word "reform" and made political and constitutional reform entirely right-wing in flavour; a cooptation.

Back ot the monopolies in the press, and their increasingly tight relationship with the authorities; I'd say their relationships with politicians are even cozier than they are with the police over whatever crime agenda or fear campaign is being pushed this week (as all too often). All very crass when you understand that marketing studies have shown that if you make people fearful they will indulge their consumerist fantasies; easier to look at the ads than read/listen to the news, as it were; something soothing, to make you feel good. And, throughout, to sell you the political agenda of the publisher. Izzy Asper, Moe Znaimer, and whatever the rest of the current list of owners is; and of course formerly Conrad Black and Lord Fleet (Roy Thompson, wasn't it?) and more; press barons are a staple of Canadian history; here their influence on colonial and early provincial pollitics - well, on all provincial politics - was sweeping, and there's a marked tradition here of outspoken journalists either entering politics, or retired politicos becoming or reverting to journalists (Rafe, for example).

What's interesting lately, trying to tie this back to the original topic, is the increasing number of police in journalism, either appointed as such or as colunnists (Mark Tonner); they have always been in politics, however; Rich Coleman and Larry Campbell are not the first in BC's history to switch from a badge to a cabinet bench or mayoralty (Gerry St. Germain, too, though he was a bit of a parachute candidate at the time IMO, as it almost seemed he started a turkey ranch around Mission or wherever just so he could run in the anticipated by-election; but he got into that before the by-election was called, so....).

Then there's the shadowy editorial direction behind the CBC of unknown composition, whether by its Board or covertly by actual politicians or others. I won't review what happened to Newsworld during Oka, but I think most readers here know what I mean; it's just too long to tell and I'm overlong already (as always).

Trying to sum up: the point is that the press/media barons pretty much have a monopoly on public debate, not just its content but its format and what will be covered and how. As with government in CAnada, the public has no option to reform this and is left facing huge powerbase/monpolies who have no intention of ever yielding. Much the same problem as with undoing the pork-barrel, patronage system that underlies the current parliamentary process; the vested interests in that are way bigger, and more situated to resist, than any amount of democratic pressure. Or rather, any amount of democratic pressure in a country where major disturbances have been largely quelled by minor shows, or threats, of armed power; now enacted peacefully in from of TV cameras through the processes of conviction, imprisonment or fines.

I wonder - not to dwell on his case in particular, just because it's fresh in my mind - if this was the United States, i.e .media-wise, how much coverage of the killling of that kid Josh in Houston BC would still be raging, and the police forced through public pressure to launch an investigation; certainly the elected District Attorneys or even Justices have the power to do so, if presented with information. And independent prosecutors are of course not unknown down there. Our media? No, just kinda shuffled aside with the latest news about grow-ops and sick kids and car crashes and horrible crimes, and lots of cool stuff about police participation in community activities also featured.....

It's dangerous to go on without riling them, if they were reading, and that I don't need to do, like any of us. And so we - even those of us who understand the importance of all this, if at all - are cowed into relative silence, or careful debate, and know it is dangerous to speak some truths, even to name their subjects. If anyone's seen Wajda's {I]Man Of Iron[/I], the opening scene is a radio announcer reading some of the poetry of Cieslaw Milosz about being forced to speak around the edges of things so as to speak of things that are forbidden; it is the eve of the Sollidarity revolution, when all things began to be spoken of. The Poles were daring. We - once or twice, to a point - have been.

It's not about revolution or rebellion, as some might read into what I'm saying; that's too easy, and has never worked; alternatives were glimpsed during the early '80s peace movement (which was multipartisan) and during Solidarity (also multipartisan); new ways of how the place should be run. Surfaced a lot during hte Spicer and Charest Commissions, information on which is kinda hard to find in fact.

Overall it's about truth, rather than uprising; or rather an uprising of truth to the point that they can't hide. like the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in South Africa, but in of course nothing like the same context. Reconciliation, yes, but first the creation of a neutral/deiversified field of information that is outside the control of a handful of powerful, politically-influential individuals. We all know that Global sold us the BC Liberals, and they sold us the New Tories (kept the flame burning despite up to two years at 12% in the poll, not that much ahead of the Green Party, but still the debate on "how to create a Canadian conservative party" was constant; finally they got their boy, polished him up, and sold him; not quite, but close enough for now).

That this can be done at all, that the public can be so excluded from the public debate - other than by controlled, half-scripted/chosen panel audiences and rally speakers/ questioners - by the media's power alone is frightening, and should be called into question. But every politician in the country that is in a positioni to speak is also vulnerable to the same press for daring to....

Somehow, by some means, it's time for reform in corporate culture as well as in politics; but how to do this? Them's have the money are those that makes the rules, after all....

Maybe the internet, and the opportunity it affords ideas like the Tyee and the general blogspace and personal spaces all over the cybernetic ying-yang, are the tool to break this up. cf a book called Age of the Masses[/} (pelican series, author forgotten at the moment) about how the rising tides of population, communication and movement (and implicitly, resources) became so big during the 19th and 20th Centuries that governments and the old order and old money were no longer to keep it under control; that the unknown nature of the culture of an interconnected, educated mass of people on an unprecedented scale was (as garnered from his ideas, if not stated directly in them) inherently something governmental and economic systems designed and conceived in times with smaller populations could not hope to control; hence the great revolutions and the various social changes which governments have had to follow, rather than lead in (althoug the New Tories, like their Republican kin, are trying their best).

Biggest thing is you have to get ordinary people to [I]care, in order to make the debate meaningful; and to get them to break out of the information-wash they've grown up in, which they assume is reality, when instead it's an information-engineering constructed environment of consumerism and political/social control. It's certainly not what McLuhan saw TV as potentially becoming; he hadn't foreseen the internet, however, which has more channels and no need for monpoly networks for information to propagate.....

Tieleman again - Bob Plecas notes on page 4 that Bennett and brother R.J. were cleared in court of insider trading charges in relations to Doman shares but were later found guilty of similar charges, along with Herb Doman, by the BC Securities Commission. It imposed penalties in 1999.

Response to Tieleman: Aha. Yet who do the media point to as an example of political chicanery? Clark....who was acquitted on what were clearly trumped-up charges, and treated as if he were a war criminal over the fast ferries. Yet Bennett and Van der Zalm and any number of sleazy federal and provincial cabinet ministers are whitewashed by the media; even given kudos and feel-good retrospects to celebrate their, um, careers. They can do whatever they want, including drive drunk in a foreign country, and get away with it; if the NDP so much as sneezes it's an offence to democracy. Pls note: I am not an NDP supporter.

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I do; and Elliott, if you don't like people pointing out that you're saying stupid things, don't say stupid things. And that I'm better at using words than you (and smarter, too), a comment like "verbal diarrhea" is the sort of put down you expect from beer parlour, let's-stay-ignorant politics. But then, you're the guy who didn't want to talk democracy but wanted people to talk about hockey instead......right.

Digressions above partly provoked by the "Senators Let Big Media Get Off The Hook" column in the regular Tyee: http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2006/06/29/BigMedia/

Foloowing-up on what I was saying about police/military cloying by the media, there were a couple of items just now on CBC's the National. One was the coverage of the helicopter smuggling operation connected with Harrison Hot Springs - coverage which, since charges were being laid in the US, didn't need to use the obligatory "alleged" and other qualifiers, and can just announce the investigation as though it were a conviction. After all the speechifying by DEA, Homeland Security and some obscure Mountie, the tag on the article was a stat - that 3.5 million of Hydro is stolen by grow-ops. That was all, and the credit for the stat was the RCMP's Drug Information Service.....$3.5 million in Hydro; and how much did this one investigation and bust cost, that's the comparison. Never mind the 6 billion plus that the dope industry (pot alone) is worth to the cash flow in the BC economy; 3.5 million is piffle. The government blew that on lunch write-offs last week.

Point is, though, no other points of view, no competing stats or ideas to raise any challenge to the current "successes" of the police in helping making pot cultivation even more profitable; no debate, just reportage based on what the authorities give the media to say. That most of the police who did the talking in the reportage were American was only, perhaps, incidental....

Then Gordon whatsisface, the Tory defence minister, and Rick Hillier are given talking-heads star appearances on the National to help sell the 15 billion dollar aircraft purchase. First the article had them speaking at the announcement; then on the Journal we're going to be treated to hearing both of them hold forth about what a great thing it is to buy big toys for the boys. The Journal may have one or two officially-approved talking heads to "rebut" whatever it is Hillier and Gordon are going to pitch; but it won't be actual debate, and any real challenge or query will not, as we know from experience, be tolerated. Or even contemplated.

The absence of competing points of view in Canadian news is perhaps its most disturbing feature; despite loud protestations about diversity and open-ness, there's a tightly controlled media debate/sell on nearly every issue. The public is not wanted, except as sheep at the cash register and the ballot box....

Follow-up about Gordon O'Connor and Rick Hillier's appearance on the Journal/National. Yup, no outside interviewees or commentaries, but I'll grant that Peter Mansbridge DID chew into them some, if not all that aggressively. Enough to make both the minister and the general squirm though: one of the big questions was, since the US "won" the war in Afghanistand and destroyed the Taliban, why now, five years later, are the Taliban almost ready to push the Allies out of Afghanistan once and for all? O'Connor sounded like he'd been ambushed to that one; Hillier "did a military" (when in doubt, obfuscate and strike a pose, preferably with the flag wrapped tightly around you).

The main gist of the interviews, however, had to do with recruitment, which O'Connor and Hillier are both hot to trot to increase, talking abou the great job opportunities and "life satisfaction" taht a tour of duty in Afghanistan would give. So ultimately the coverage was an ad for enlistment, despite Mansbridge's occasional sharp questions.....

Skookum 1
No question that the CBC is slipping/ has slipped badly of late. On the military thing I also agree wholeheartedly. Just wish I had more time but this is my busy time of year. Much appreciate your posts and find myself in agreement with you much of the time.

I think the most interesting thing re Hillier was his earlier statement (not much mentioned these days) that the forces were better off just renting heavy lift aircraft etc from others. In contrast with what he said last night; but of course no media questions or requests for clarification: I do miss Barbara Frum some times, perhaps she might have saved the news division from the bean counters.

Skookum1, I usually do not respond to trolls but here I go...

Governments are elected by democratic vote. They introduce laws and they are vote on in the legislature. If the law is legal and constitutional, the Lt Governor gives Royal Assent.

Any interest group such as a union is welcome to challenge any law they want in the BC Supreme Court. They do not, however, have the right it engage in strikes outside their collective agreements. Should they do so, their employers can apply to the Supreme Court for an injunction. Should that be granted, the union and its members are in contept of court, which is a very serious matter in a democracy such ours.

Being in government is not an easy task. Leaders in Canada are required by our constitution of engage in peace, order and good government. "General Strikes" are certainly out of the scope of the first two points. The last point can be dealt with by the ballot box. Thus, no government in Canada will ever let a fired up, non-accountable to anyone mob decide public policy. It is simply not going to happen and that is exaclty what happened in 1983 when Bill Bennett met with Jack Munroe. In did not happen in Winnipeg in 1919. It will not happen as long as the govenment has control over the police and the military and I do not see that changing any time soon.

Now, you may not like that. You are perfectly entitled to your views but your views do not entitle you to break the law because we, like our leaders, must live by Rule of Law. Should you not like the particular law you want to disobey, you can vote for whatever politcal candidate you wish to or even run yourself.

Being a "revolutionary" in a country whose constitutional history is rather evolutionary is sometimes not very satisfying. If you don't like the system, try to change it. But if you break the law, especially when it comes to contempt, there will be a price to be paid. We have seen many examples of this recently, too. Was it Bill Bennett who threw the Carmanah protesters in jail?

Just had time to get to this story, although I wish I'd done it earlier to shut up some of our ideological apologists.

Perhaps the worst case, one man political disaster in Bennett's cabinet was Pat McGeer. Everything that guy touched turned to crap

When Bennett got into power McGeer was in charge of the newly organized ICBC. It turned out that the rates were too low, so McGeer simply doubled them. Everybody's insurance was due at the end of February in those days and, for some reason, the shock of an extra $1 or 200. per car caused a mini depression.

There were cars parked all over Vancouver with "Stick in in your ear McGeer" signs on them. I just moved my shop down to Richmond and was stretched to the limit, when all of a sudden, my sales went down 20% overnight, for over 6 months, with a string of cancellations.

A year later my accountant told me that McGeer's idiocy cost me $65,000 in 1976 dollars, probably over $300,000 or even more in today's money. All my competition were wiped out and although it didn't break us, we had to mortgage our brand new, almost paid for house, and when we sold it in 1979, we got $65,000, thanks to Bennett and his bunch of chickenbrains.

That was also the time when Woodward's first recorded a loss in their history and Chunky Woodward and a number of other bigwig businessman had an open letter in the Sun etc. blaming Bennett for the problems.

I was doing some work for Chunky at the time and as we were having tea in his living room at Point Grey, I thanked him for the letter and told him what happened to me. He blew up and called Bennett and McGeer some pretty fancy names, I wish I could write here, including blundering idiots for not spreading the increase over, pulling $300,000 million from the BC economy in a week .

I talked to some prominent accountants at the time and nobody could really explain why it happened, as the effect was mainly psychological .

As far I'm concerned Bennett was a nobody, although a brilliant leader compared to his successors like Zalm and the preseent runaway from the institute by the name of Campbell.

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Reviewer Teileman fails to note that his frequent on-air sparring partner, Globe and Mail columnist Norman Spector, was the Machiavelli of Bill Bennett's inner circle in those days, and was probably the author of the deal that took the wind out of Solidarity's sails with Jack Munro's celebrated midnight ride to Kelowna. CBC radio news reporter Greg Dixon sniffed out the story at the LRB office and took his own vehicle to Mr. Bennet's porch to cover it.

The confined quarters of Victoria's hack pack don't allow him to come right out and say it, but that book is a shameless puff piece by Plecas on his ex-boss. Yet it's the first book of any kind we've had on the BC political scene since Tyee's anti-Campbell election screed. The last impressive book-length analysis of a BC social issue I saw in print was Dennis Brown's largely overlooked book on the demise of commercial fishing, Salmon Wars. Its admitted UFAWU bias aside, it at least treated an important current event with the kind of intelligent analysis you would expect to encounter from time to time in a grown-up province. That this occurs so rarely is a sad comment on the state of published social comment in contemporary BC. I'd like to see Tieleman himself put his considerable political insight into something more satisfying than a column one of these days.

I would also like to congratulate Tyee Books on running one review of a BC-published book. Other than the CCPA pamphlet reviewed by Murray Dobbin,I beleive this is the first actual BC book you have deigned to acknowledge. More, please.

WHAT DEAL??????? Don't you get it? THERE WAS NO DEAL. Other than the one that saw Mujnro get a post-Socred sinecure in the years since. Neither Bennett nor Munro ever talked about whatever deal they suggested was struck that night.

As for Working Man, the pretense that 1983 was purely a labour union event is pure and unadulterated bullshit; and smacks, in fact, of Munro's use of Operation Solidarity to coopt the Solidaity Coalition; and in fact the real Solidarity was bigger than the Coalition-as-organization; it was only a proxy. Mob rule? I'll tell you what - what we had instead was bozo rule.

General strikes and other uprisings are the tools of the populace when the rulers refuse to govern either wisely or compassionately; it is the only recourse in a democracy (so-called) where a minority of the vote can earn enough seats in the House for a ruler to behave like an absolute monarch.

In my view, when the L-G called Bennett to Government House on April 4 or 5 of that year, the last thing he should have done was allow an intransigent Premier, who had displayed contempt for the Constitution, to remain in power. The emergency warrants should ONLY have been issued if one of the two parties in the House had presented evidence of a majority. Bennett didn't dare hold a sitting of the House, which is why the mandate ran out.

And again - the union politics were a smokescreen; human rights funding was trashed, arts funding was trashed, environment was trashed, and way more of course (social services, the Ombudsman, etc etc etc).

What pissed people off was that Bennett had pretended to run for re-election as a moderate; then turned vicious radical, specifically targeting programs established or beneficial to his political enemies. That was UGLY, and there's no exusing it on the basis of "rulers don't have to respond to mob rule"

And that wasn't a democratic election. It was staged, and unfairly manipulated by oustide money and organizers from Ontario and the US. Period.

Our system is not a democracy anyway; it is the pretense of a democracy only.

Our leaders operate by Rule of Law? To hell with that, they operate by fiat!! All you need is an Order-in-Council, and you don't even need that. You can drive drunk in a foreign country (where it's only a misdemenour, although here at home it's a criminal offense) and not even step aside until your sentence is up (or paid, or whatever slap on the wrist he got from the State of Hawaii). Then there's the wheeling and dealing over the Coquihalla or Fantasy Gardens or any number of government megaprojects (the bigger the budget, the eaiser it is to fudge the books, y'see....), or Campbell's refusal to abide by the Constitution by not recognizing an Opposition. Then there's the apparenty use of police for political ends (or the police operating as a political animal in their own right) as with the Goodale and Glen Clark affairs and so much more.

The only Rules of Law our politicians operate by is the ones they write to to benefit themselves; all else is mere appearances. As it always has been, perhaps, but in other countries the public has more ability to investigate and review. Oh, and depose......

Of course, you'd probably have told the American colonists to submit to the King like good little subjects, and not challenge the laws that weren't written for them, but to exploit them.....

That's rather disingenuous isn't it? In a country where the "new" constitution has a gridlock reform path - 7/10 plus 50% - and a pre-set agenda focussing on one disenchanted province's two hundred year old grievances, and other constitutional ideas and agendas are shoved aside my media, politicians, and the spin doctors who patrol blogs on behalf of the politicians.....are you kidding? "Try to change it".

Rather like Marie Antoinette saying "Have they no cake?" Startup parties are immediately infiltrated by agents provocateurs from the Big Parties and from CSIS and who knows who else, and the media don't cover them and if they do try to find something negative. The big media are in the hands of two or three peoeple, and the whole pack are in cahoots with the system as it is; the entrenched patronage system that Parliament really is, behind all that ceremonial; the gussied-up pork barrel that masquerades as a budget.

Actually try to field constitutional proposals? Where? With what money? The rightist backers of the Reform/Tory have managed to put their constitutional ideas forward, primitive as they are, but that's because they've got dough. The submissions to the Spicer Commission were often dangerously democratic, and many people spoke out that the system inherited from our days as a group of subpopulated British colonies can't deal with who we are now. Nor can it deal with the public's desire to bring their politicians to leash. WHICH THEY CANNOT.

Hence the Emerson Affair. Hence Harper's attempt to dictate to the press how his government will be reported on (and bad reporters will be punished by not being let in the room, no less). Hence no motion in the ocean on anything resembling the democratic reforms which have surfaced from within the population, despite media attempts to silence them and politicians' attempts to ignore them.

There is no room in the current system for reform, and it is very unlikely any independent review of patronage and pork-barrel and any tools by which the public can exercise its will against autocratic government will never reach the order paper. Might make a private member's bill, which might make the floor, but will never reach third reading; and not the Senate. And if it did that, it still has to go to seven out of ten fifty percent, and Quebec essentially has a veto.

That's not democracy. It's a stalemate. A precisely engineered stalemate. My view is that the amending formula and the 1982 constitution were designed specfically to PREVENT democratic reform, i.e. as an impossibility because of the blockades put in the path of any discussions of same....

Ditto the Meech and Charlottetown fiascos, which seeemed custom-built to derail all other potential discussions of more sweeping changes to the way democracy works in Canada; such that it actually might work, if ever implemented. Big-party control, media consolidation, and all the rest entrenched towards simply a revamp of the same old thing: move some powers here, throw some money there, move some papers around, and get the First Ministers together and make it look official, even though it's not. Not really.

Actually, since Charlottetown, IMO they've pretty well proceeded with implementing all the redistribution of powers and other stuff hidden in the omnibus of the Accord, in which the popular native and women's rights and a (bloody hell at last) deal with Quebec were all packaged in to a lot more that created a new federal-provioncial structure pretty much out of the sight, or at least the input, of the public. Sure, we see them get together for photo-ops and sit around a table.....but the failure of the Accord at the polls has been used to sell the idea that people who voted against it were voting against Quebec and women and natives. Well, maybe in Alberta, but word was that even there people were just pissed off that the politicians and the media were trying to sell us a snow job. And it didn't smell like snow, either.

But why is it those 10-12 guys and their bureaucrats got to even propose changes; and no other changes. Shouldn't that tell us something? This is what they want, and nothing else will be discussed. Even now all Harper's mumbling about is fixed election dates. Show us the money, Stephen - not just fixed election dates, but recall, electoral reform, party finance reform (yeah, right), media decentralization (private as much as public), House discipline, and more. Fixed election dates are candles for a cake that hasn't been baked yet, IMO>

"Oh there's no need for further political change right now....we've got a war to fight, remember?" Or "...we've got to deal with Quebec first". Which we're already hearing again, as well as Albertan boasting about now everyone will find out how to be well-run as Alberta (only if we find as much oil, I guess).

Anyway, back to try to keep this short; my point about Meech and Charlottetown is that they were about the consolidation of power by the first ministers to their offices, without any consideration of broader democratic reforms that might jeopardize the powers they just enacted for themselves. Or rather, made a show of trying to get a mandate for; even though most of it they were able to proceed with "around the corners" in the years and First Ministers Conferences since....

from 2nd parag:

"were all packaged in to convince the public to vote for it" but the real meat was all the fine print, the more-than-boilerplate of all those other clauses which established new power structures and relationships between governments and gave them even more powers; to make more of those laws that the Rule of Law is about, which is what happens when you give a power hierarchy the relatively absolute powers of the Crown. The 1982 Constitution, procedurally and structurally, isn't all that differfent from the 1867 Constitution, which itself is a distillation of how England/Britain had been being run for the previous several decades, roughly from the time of Pitt the Younger onwards. It's a system that's the bones of a lost age; and certainly not conceived to deal with a country of completely different scale and composition than England; and it has nothing to do with modern expectations of democracy and public leashing of politicians who "disobey their mandates" (as with Emerson this year, or Bennett in '83).

I've felt this way ever since Meech and Charlottetown, and the shutdown of how Newsworld used to be since Oka, and the buildup of outright propaganda within the Canadian media about how Canadians are supposed to behave and what we're [I]supposed[/I} to want. But never really ask us, except in artfully-designed "professional polls". Run by private companies, of course.....

I wonder when they'll finally privatize political parties.....

Happy Dominion Day.

getting tired, it's late:

I mean the shutdown of how Newsworld used to be during [the peak of] the Oka Crisis. If you don't recognize it, you won't find it on the Wikipedia page. Someone there would insist that I provide documentation that the military shut the live feed down and took over the editorial policy of the CBC for the duration of the crisis, also changing the look of Newsworld forever.

On Wiki, if you can't cite it, you can't write about it, so despite its incredible mass of information anything controversial is often very toned-down because of all the competing interests and angles on any one topic. So trenchant points about lots of things (Oka, Charlottetown, Gusftafsen, BC politics in general, and more) are difficult to get into public view; unless you've kept a complete newspaper and TV archive for the last 30-40 years....

Even when you KNOW something happened, that is. Since everyone else has been programmed to forget, you're expected to, too....

...hence Bill Bennett as some kind of retired superhero.....

redemption, even celebration of political careers which were vilified in their own time....a la Mulroney....(and even Zalm!).....

hey skookum; are you having a grand old time debating with yourself? how whacked out are you man?

Another put down, huh, Eliott? Do you have anything actually to say or do you just need to dump on other people. I was at home yesterday, rather than being out flag-waving with the rest of you suckers. And I had thoughts come to me about what I'd already written, so added them. YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT????

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More putdowns...Elliott, I have yet to recall a post of yours where you spoke to any issue; only criticized others for having opinions, or in this case simply for posting at all. Threat? No, I'm just asking you what kind of problem you have with other people speaking their minds. Of course, it would help if you had your own mind first...

hello Skookum:
you must admit that you have a lot of post in here lately?
several are one-liners. like an afterthought?
How about doing us all a favour and write your piece in Word, then leave it on for a few minutes, then re-read it and perhaps try to digest your thoughts more?
You obvionsly would like for us to read your opinions, so why scare us away with so much input, that could be said in one post and fewer words?
This is not a put-down, but advice on how to write an article that people may wish to read!

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Skookum1
i am sorry that you do not get it!
i wrote a nice post to you, and you reply by insulting me?
i fail to see why it makes sense to post a bunch of one-liners, if you could have collected your thoughs before posting them? but maybe collecting your thoughts is too much to ask?
I do participate here, but quite often i see my point of view already expressed! Unlike some, i am quite happy to see one well-worded post that i approve of, and i have no need to see my name in print , merely repeating what is already posted!

Another cheap accusation, yet you're saying you made a nice post last time; you did not; you made an insult by way of accusation, just like you're doing here (again).

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The word SOLIDARITY was stolen from Polish social movement against socialist tyrany of Soviet occupation of Poland. Fellow who gave "permission" to use that name was actually a Communist implant into SOLIDARITY movement. After SOLIDARITY was crushed in Poland by shooting workers on the street and show of Soviet tanks, he became an advisor to the "post Communist" President of Poland, one Stolzman, who changed his name and religion to Kwasniewski and Catholicism.
Inside that Canadian SOLIDARiTY was ex-priest yelling "PROFITS, PROFITS, PROFITS" Instead of EXTORTION, EXTORTION, EXTORTION!"
Favourite victim was MACMILLAN BLOEDEL, until they were bought by WEYERHOUSER, who is now above any criticism. Did they also support BC SOLIDARITY movement?
About leaky condos. It was comrad Dave Barrett himself who cosigned WAFFLE MANIFESTO which was suppose to ban private property of land and houses in Canada. This was too much even for his socialist NDP party. Later on when he kicked out private insurance companies, nobody would write Performance Bonds, available only to the contractors with a perfect integrity. After that all kinds of crooks started building condos and Co-ops, causing more than 5 billion dollars of losses to the condo owners, taxpayers and destroying health of the tens of thousands of residents inhaling spores of white, green and black mould.

At last, someone who's crazier than I am (Latarnik)......

Blaming Solidarity BC for MacBlo's problems, and somehow tying in the Waffle Manifesto and the leaky condo things and blaming it all and spies from the Polish Communist Party working in Solidarity BC (hmm...but wans't Solidarnosc ANTI-communist??).

Breathtakingly absurd. And more proof, to me, of the problems with new immigrants to Canada learning and propagating the many rightist fictions about our history and political culture....

You do not seem to undersatand Skookum1. Spies were not working for BC Radicals, they just allowed to use the name, to embarass Polish movement, which obviously was anti-Communist and anti Sociialist, as socialism is a fight of ideology with a common sense, when communism is a total victory of ideology. Socialism is always fighting problems which do not even exist in a market driven economy. If you do knot know relation between Performance bonds issued by private insurance co,panies and allowing any scumbag to become a general contractor, I could give you a lecture charging $50 an hour, and depending on your abilities 1 to 12 hours would be OK with me.
Mac Blo had problems with IWA, Green Peace and some disqualified clergy until Weyerhauser bought it and everybody is happy. Isn't it suspicious?

We didn't need Solidarnosc' permission to use the name; it was adopted independently, in tribute to the Solidarnosc movement, and received after-the-fact communiques from Poland saying "yeah, we have no problem with you using the name". And actually, since "Sollidarity" is a perfectly old word in political English, especially with union/ revolutionary contexts; it was more the use of the particular kind of graphics and logo associated with Sollidarnosc that needed "permission", though that wasn't the word used.

Solidarity was, and is, a Union movement. It drew its parallels ( in Poland) and inspiration from the Wobblies in the United States, more than anything else. It is hardly surprising it would be a source of ideas and passion for workers in British Columbia. That it may have been subverted - at least to some extent - by people from the traditional union hierarchy is not particularly strange either.

Too many workers, unfortunately, have largely forgotten the pain an agony that had to be endured to advance the cause of unionism for all exploited people during the 20th century both here in BC and around the world. Without a sense of shared common purpose individuals like the former and current premier and, alas, not a few so called union leaders and 'democratic socialists' will continue to use workers' divisions against them and their best interests.

1983 Solidarity was much broader than the union movement. The pretense that it was only a union uprising plays into the hands of the propagandists who maintained that fiction across Canada during the crisis, and have wallpapered it over since.

I know that it wasn't just a union movement because I was in it, and I'm not a unionist at all. Big-L Liberals were in it, even big-T Tories, and all kinds of non-union organizations and plethora of individuals who had in recent years been politicized by the Peace Movement. All kinds of community and social/cultural organizations and/or their members were part of it. Operation Solidarity was a union movement/organization; The Solidarity Coalition included a lot more than the unions, and was NOT a union movement, nor union-organized.

If union people would stop trying to take credit for the public's uprising that summer the truth about how the people of BC tried to stand up to a recalcitrant and only half-legal government could come out. But as long as the fiction of "Solidarity as a union movement only" is maintained, the truth of those events will be shuffled away into the dustbin of "revised history"; like so much else in BC history where the historical facts don't count so much as the myths built up around them (head tax, Japanese internments, Expo, CPR politics, and more).

One reality about the Solidarity Crisis is that, while many people in the marches were union members, they were not normally unionists and were there as citizens rather than syndicalists or union-revolutionaries; if the union movement was fully to credit for the mass show of public power that summer, then they'd be able to do that all the time. They can't, and that's a clear demonstration that there was a lot more to the feelings and coalesence of Solidarity in 1983 than anything the unions could take credit for, or are blamed for. It was public outrage that got people into the streets; not calls from their shop stewards.

Green Party, Libertarian Party, other sundry "fringe" parties, religious groups, pacifist groups, environmental groups, human rights groups, women's organizations, and lots, lots more, were all part of both the Solidarity Coalition as well as the mass of people in the streets and in Empire Stadium. And for sure, the union movement didn't have anything to do with their participation other than co-opting it.

If Operation Solidarity hadn't directed public sentiment towards the failed General Strike ("choked" is more like it, as in "they choked"), other avenues of political resistance might have emerged. A strike was presented as the only option - by unionists, since it's all they know how to do. What wasn't considered were constitutional conventions to get rid of the political process that allowed Bennett to stay in power (when he should have been jailed or fined IMO for violating the constitution) and otherwise reform democracy in BC to prevent revenge-legislation and lying-to-the-public electoral campaigns. Twenty-three years later and there's still no reforms ot the political structure of this country/province, despite how clearly they were needed in BC all the way back then; and as we were all to find out the same shebang would be played on national voters (Mulroney) and in Ontario and Alberta (Harris and Klein) by politicians who promised to rule wisely, then ruled with a hatchet and overblown egos, wrapping themselves in their "mandate"; mandates which they'd manipulated and connived their way into, only to exploit and punish once they got it.

Solidarity was, if anything, a sign of the resitiveness of the "great middle" in BC, the wide swathe of the citizenry who don't jibe with hard-left unionists, nor with hard-right free enterprisers. It was a protest for political decency and honesty; which neither the Socreds nor the NDP have much ability with, and even less so the "reborn" (stolen) BC Liberals and the new national Tories atand its coterie of zombie Reformers (zombie as in "undead").

You're absolutely right Skookum 1. My reference was to the Polish 'Solidarity' not to the one here in BC. I've just been rereading Lawrence Weschler's reports (from the New Yorker) and my remarks should have been clearer. I absolutely agree with your observations - and we could use a lot more decency and honest today, too.