A little Political Post

In the past two days there has been much furor about a report into the investigation regarding safety at the Burnaby General Hospital. In the spring of this year alarms were raised over the high number of infections at the facility so of course a government committee was formed to look into it.

A committee was formed because everything in the medical system is tainted with political bias from the heavily politically appointed executives of Fraser health down through the heavily political unionized hospital workers and the heavily politically debated private cleaning services.

Anyway the recommendations aren't even out yet but the unions and the NDP are already jumping on it for bias based on leaked emails, etc. I mean seriously, did anyone think a committee set up by the standing government wouldn't have a Liberal leaning cast ? If the NDP were in power would the committee not likely have been full of NDP supporters ? It's the way business is done, I'm not saying it's right but it is a fact of political life.

There has been some good comedy out of it though. Global news has consistently branded the Liberal biased committee members as "Liberal political operatives", which kind of makes me wonder if Len Deighton is writing their copy, and the mayor of Burnaby seriously questioned the ethics of Health Minister Margaret MacDiarmid for having more than one email address..............Really ? It's 2012, my neighbour's cat has three email addresses, and a blog I think, and Mayor Corrigan thinks it's suspicious that a government minister has more than one ?

Of course Mayor Corrigan is a stalwart member of the NDP so at least we know he's not expressing any bias in voicing his disapproval of bias in the hospital committee recommendations.

It's hard times politically in BC, the Liberals are rife with the inbred small scale corruptions that are inevitable with a party that has been in power for over a decade and I have my doubts that current leader Christy Clark has the wherewithal to hold things together but I cringe at the thought of the NDP running a provincial economy that is dangling by a thread during a world financial crisis .

Plus there's the whole Adrian Dix vs. Remy from Ratatouille thing that scares me.

Teacher's job Inaction

So, shockingly, the BCTF has decided to initiate a job action and withhold services for three days this week. This is referred to as a job action because the words strike or holding students futures hostage or acting like playground bullies don't play nearly as well for the media, but make no mistake all three of those descriptions are more accurate than a job action. In fact what we have is a job inaction.

The teacher's union would have you believe that this strike is about:

1) The evil Liberal government . It should be noted that the evil Liberal Government is having no less success in dealing with the BCTF than previous NDP and Social Credit governments have had over the past 40+ years.

2) Improved working conditions

3) Class size

4) Children's futures

In fact this strike is about money, specifically the 15% increase over three years that the BCTF has refused to budge on since June of 2011. I will guarantee you that if the government said tomorrow: "Class sizes are staying the same, no more cash is going into special needs, portable use is increasing but we're fine with the 15% raise" that the poor oppressed teachers would break their ankles running back to work.

There is some comedy here though, despite a ban on picket lines teachers were protesting outside schools but because they were carrying their signs and not wearing them around their necks the teacher's felt they were not in violation of the no picket line rulings. Hopefully all these teachers are Semantics instructors.........or just idiots.

The job action and the government's refusal to rush back to work legislation has lead for some confusion among the opposition ranks as well. Last week, the NDP Opposition promised to delay the passage of the back-to-work legislation as long as possible, with plans to speak up to 17 hours on the second reading of the bill alone. However when the Liberals didn't call an emergency weekend sitting this lead NDP house leader John Horgan to criticize the government for their inaction, stating: "I would have thought that if the government was serious about getting kids back in the classroom they would have taken action before now,"

So what is it you really wanted John, for the Liberals to try and rush through a bill so that you could delay it ?

I used to have a great deal of respect for teachers until daughter entered the public school system, since almost day one she has been bombarded with union rhetoric while the poor teachers work 184 days a year. Among the great teacher rhetoric is that they don't get paid for the nine weeks off in the summer, true but the salary isn't prorated either and the average salary for teacher in Vancouver in 2011 was $73,792 ............ for a 43 week year with 20 non working days in it. The other great line that teachers use is the disparity between wages in BC and Alberta, to which I would reply that they are welcome to move to Alberta if they would like that pay raise. The whole situation is a farce, with an over politicized union throwing their weight around and the students, as always, are the ones who suffer .