Friday, December 04, 2009

How to drive a Newfoundlander crazy

Saying the words "Churchill Falls" is like the "all aboard" call for the crazy train to crazy town for most Newfoundlanders. Seriously. One of these days they're going to have to rename Newfoundland and Labrador and call it The Waterford (the local mental hospital for those from away) because that damn falls is going to have driven everyone insane.

You want proof? Read the comments section of this relatively mild editorial from The Telegram yesterday. This was the first comment:
mmm...quite an interesting editorial from a paper that is owned by Transcontinental Media (a QUEBEC based company) with its editor from New Brunswick. Naturally this paper is going to be opposed to re-opening the 1969 Churchill Falls deal. They don't want to offend their Quebecois masters.

I read that and nearly heaved the computer across the room. There are times I wish all Newfoundlanders had one head so I could knock some collective sense into it. Of course, I guess that's relatively mild compared to the premier screaming "traitor" at the leader of the opposition and suggesting she's getting questions from outside the province for daring to wonder what the hell the government is up to with Churchill Falls.

Look, Churchill Falls was a shitty deal. It's always been a shitty deal. If you want to dig up Joey Smallwood's corpse and kick it around the graveyard a few times to make yourself feel better, go right ahead. Have a party. It's not going to change things, though. We are locked into that deal for years and years and that's never going to change. Why?

1. The instant any Government of Quebec agrees to reopen that deal and they take in once cent< less revenue from it, you can set an egg timer to how long they're going to remain in power. The people of Quebec will toss them out on their ass.

2. If positions were reversed and we were screwing them out of hundreds of millions of dollars annually, we would be mocking them. "Should have had some better common sense there, b'ye." And there is no way on Earth we would ever reopen that deal. Because we would be idiots to do so. And Quebec knows this too.

I'm not saying you have to be happy that we're being fucked in the ass for the next few decades. If Premier Danny Williams wants to create a provincial holiday and encourage Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to travel to Quebec and punch someone in the head completely at random because of this deal, why, I could be for that. But enough already at trying to renegotiate that deal. It's not happening. Enough of yelling and screaming every time Quebec says to bugger off about them being bullies.

It's tiring. It's irritating. And surely God someone in that government has something better to do than fighting this utterly hopeless cause.

Last Five
1. Dumb - Nirvana
2. Midnight coward - Stars
3. Stay free - Black Mountain
4. Dueling chanters - The Chieftains*
5. Let 'em in - Paul McCartney

5 comments:

WJM said...

I read that and nearly heaved the computer across the room.

Heave away.

Geoff Meeker said...

The latest Churchill Falls shenanigans started exactly when the House of Assembly opened. I think it was Danny's way of creating a sideshow to divert media attention away from the woeful and unconscionable lack of a legislative agenda in the House. If so, it worked.

Anonymous said...

Ah, TB! I AM SO GLAD that I have friends like you! Lol, lol, lol, as they say on the internets.

nadinebc said...

Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors.

I actually dropped by because I saw this at Wired, thought you might like it.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/12/hey-oscar-wilde/

WJM said...

I think it was Danny's way of creating a sideshow to divert media attention away from the woeful and unconscionable lack of a legislative agenda in the House. If so, it worked.

More likely it's an attempt to get Danny's poll numbers up to about 135%, so that when the Very Bad News starts coming down the pike, He, like St. John's, will be able to take the hit.

Interestingly, there are whole swaths of the local intertubes where no one is talking about this gambit at all.