MOUNTIES ON THE PRECIPICE

We have been calling for a fresh start for the RCMP for many months now on these pages.

Now, the government itself is calling for just that.

And just in the nick of time.

They taser a 68-year old guy in Kelowna for a minor parking infraction?

And months after the event, they admit that one of their own has been busted on a child porno charge?

Once again...please get some dignity and skill and a return to pride in performance and behaviour.

Ryan Baloney Causes Grief at the Xmas Party

It takes a great, great editorial cartoonist like Peterson to capture in a line an entire story. See his take on Ryan Baloney on page D3 of today's Sun.

Ryan is clutching cash in hand. The caption is, "I did not have cheques with this man!"

Wonderful! Succinct! Falling down funny.

Last night, at an otherwise warm and enjoyable Christmas party, I almost got into a punch-up with another guest.

Somehow, in a group of 4 standing about, waiting for the call to the trough, the subject of Ryan came up.

When I said that I thought, as I have thought for a great many years, that Ryan was a crook and a disgrace and a dreadful Prime Minister and that he was cheating on his taxes and that this was known as a crime, Mr. Square Head said, "Hey, that's how the real world works. That's business."

I love when guys say stuff like that.

I said, "Not my world, Pal."

So he went for the old My Asshole isn't as Bad as Your Asshole Trick.

"Yah? Well, what about Chretien?"

Guess he thought because I didn't like Ryan, I was a Liberal.

I love when guys are that simple.

"What about Chretien? He was just as bad. What's that got to do with a Prime Minister hawking war weapons and stuffing cash into secret security boxes in 2 different countries and not declaring income.?"

Fortunately, a much nicer person that both me and Square Head came along and whisked me off into a corner to talk about something else.

Cop Champions Treatment

Dave Dickson knows the hooker world of the DTES well.

He is a retired VPD officer who worked those mean streets for 25 years.

In a first-rate article by Mike Howell in yesterday's Courier, Dickson says NO to Harm Seduction and YES to Mandatory Treatment.

He says what I have been saying for only 40 years now: Help those women leave The Life.

See this story here, and read my column in tomorrow's Province on exactly this subject.

Will the Punishment Ever Fit the Crime?

Pinky, the most successful and richest madam in town, known to prosecutors as Pinky the Pimp, gets 1 year of community service for enslaving women and renting out their genitals by the hour.

She keeps her silver BMW SUV, her second home and no doubt her Imelda shoe collection.

This is how we value women.

Tranclink in Conflict

The new Transclunk board are, of course - whajja expect, Bunkie? - political hacks and dough boys.

But the worst appointee is Robert Tribe, a recently retired VP of SNV Lavelin, who built the Canada Line.

This is called CONFLICT OF INTEREST.

Is there no shame in Mudville?

Billie Holiday, My Man