It was heartening to see the large cheery photo of Randy White beaming at us from The News on Tuesday, and to scan the list of progressive policies his party is eager to install.
His enthusiasm for such elusive basics as a fair voting system was crystal clear; as was his party’s solid commitment to using the nation’s own bank to fund his future government’s needs, thus relieving future B.C. budgets of nearly two and a half billion dollars annually of interest- on- the- interest (and the taxes to produce that sum) which have been a notable feature of government planning here for so many years.
Of course the down side is that such a move may sharply reduce the large donations which normally flow from the finance community to his party, particularly when his colleagues in Ottawa are hell-bent on removing any taint of equality, like tax-payer funding, from political parties; but hey, that’s politics, and the national party leader is a trained economist after all.
Perhaps the most telling quote was, “What the party has to do now, is to make policies that make sense.” This tacitly admits that the party’s previous policies didn’t make sense. Moreover, I always thought that the establishment of policies came first, and were in fact what identified the party and attracted votes. But what do I know? Mr. White is the man of long experience, and his stated intention is to ‘Go for the jugular’. Policy it seems, may appear later. Well, published policies have short shrift after elections anyway; but the tidal wave of Internet information, and the currently dormant but potentially explosive Occupy movement makes this an increasingly dodgy proposition now.
So let’s just get rid of the current mob — no quarrel from me there — install a Harper/Reform style government in B.C. But send in the money now. Even if you’ve lost a great chunk of your assets in the bank meltdown, we can make it up later in lower taxes. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
Russ Vinden
Errington