Bureaucracy Run Amok

There seems to have been a devilish theme to this morning's front page:

1. Parents at a school on the West Side of town want to donate some government grant money to a poorer East Side School. Sounds pretty good, right?

Not if you're a plank-up-your-ass official.

No, no, no...kindness not accepted here.

The good folks at Rich School were told spend the loot or give it back.

There are just some bureaucrats who have never met an obscure rule they didn't relish.

2. The BC Human Rights Tribunal ruled in 2005 that the Education Ministry and the North Van school board - two organizations revered round the world for their enlightenment - discriminated against learning disabled students. Quite simply, they didn't give them the resources to succeed in their studies.

Well, why would the government sit back and accept their own Human Rights decisions?

Of course, they spent your tax money suing in BC Supreme Court, and of course, in its traditional wisdom, the much admired Court overturned the 2005 decision.

Meaning we just don't have to waste money helping challenged children with their education.

Why should we? We need that money for law suits.

3. And in a foto big enough to choke a horse, we see The Ultimate Bore.

There's Gordo the Great celebrating one chunk of mud meeting another chunk of mud in downtown Vancouver.

That would be your Canerder Line.

Let's see the foto of Our Esteemed Leader handing over cheques to the disabled businesses on Cambie Street.

Michael Clayton

It's a mystery.

This incomprehensible piece of slush was nominated for 7 Oscars, including Best Picture.

Perhaps someone who has managed to sit through it, even liked it, could take a moment and explain to us what it is about.

We have no idea.

We stopped watching it after about an hour.

I tried to finish watching it the next night. I managed about 20 minutes.

And George Clooney as Best Actor?

Is this someone's idea of a mass prank?

How about George Clooney as the Most Attractive Hat Rack in History?

Handsome, yes. Charming, yes. Actor - has the full range from A to A minus.

The movie is slick. It is beautifully filmed. It has many written words of dialogue.

But we don't even know the story, let alone the whole point. So Hollywood, such unrealistic characters living in a world inhabited only by script writers.

By the way, in case you're not getting the full thrust here... we really didn't like this movie.

Elizabeth Deports

3 March, 2008

Hi, David:


Another day; another deadline in the Best Place on Earth.

Will it be met or thwarted?

Word this morning is that "the federal government has spent $60,000" on attempts to deport Laibar Singh. To which my response is, "and the rest".

We also learn today, that a new ploy has been dreamed up in an attempt to get Canada to pay for another year of care for this man, because "supporters want his health to improve to the point where he can get out of the wheelchair." This has to end. I am sick and tired of Canada being jerked around by all and sundry - including criminals - who seem to think Canadian taxpayer pocket is the go-to place for their convenience.

The claim is that India cannot supply the same level of care. If that was the case, I'd be the first to say Singh should stay; it isn't. It's arrant nonsense; else why would Canadians go over to India and pay many thousands and thoussands of dollars for care they cannot get in their own country?

If Ottawa has $60,000 - and the rest - to spare, then let's spend it on BC patients who three-four times in a row have had to have their urgent surgery bumped. Or the elderly patients who are being abused while they are being housed in Okanagan "care" homes. Or the "children in care" for whom Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond cannot get the attention of the Campbell government.

In the meantime, if that deadline is not met - we'd like that $50,000 bond forfeited, please - every penny of it to go straight to one of three places: (1) Children's Hospital ICU; (2) to the care of abused patients in the Okanagan; or (3) to BC Heart and Stroke Foundation for the "direct" care care of BC's own stroke patients.

Elizabeth James