On the move!
Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.
Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.
Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!
—Ian King, December 13, 2004
Sunday, January 12, 2003
The Province has sent reporter Adrienne Tanner down to Maui to investigate BC Premier Gordon Campbell's drunk-driving arrest. The first stories are now coming in, including one where Tanner retraces Campbell's journey. CTV has also sent reporter Rob Brown out to cover the story; he talks to Maui County police officers in this report. (warning: video optimized for high-speed connections)
Pierre Bourque continues to push his claim that the Premier will resign this afternoon, although Liberal offcials uinclusing Finance Minister Gary Collins continue to deny that the premier has any intention of stepping down. The Attorney-General, Geoff Plant, has apparently told Campbell that there are no legal barriers to his remaining as a Minister of the Crown (although one could argue that there is some precendent that says he should resign, inclusing former federal cabinet minister Bernie Valcourt, who resigned after a drunk-driving accident in Maine; then again, there are enough precedents to go around).
Other peoples' comments
Province provincial-affairs columnist Mike Smyth, who is usually friendlier to the Premier than most commentators, gives the premier a good slamming for drunk driving and notes that the premier, a rich man himself, could easily have afforded the cab fare back to his hotel.
Curiously, Smyth writes:
The timing of the event is brutal, coming days after 13-year-old Carley Regan was killed in a sickening hit-and-run in Langley. A man with a drunk-driving record was charged, outraging the entire province.
Is it ever a good time to drive drunk? The timing is always appalling when it comes to drunk driving. It's just not on anymore, and after a generation of the Drinking Driving Counterattack program in B.C.(a program that Campbell has talked of cutting or eliminating), most residents will not brush this off the way that they might have 30 years ago.
Smyth recovers with this one:
Then there's the lofty standard of personal behaviour that Campbell demanded of the former NDP government. When Campbell was in Opposition, he screamed for resignations when there was only a whiff of misconduct.
If he judges himself by own holier-than-thou standards, he'd have no choice but to resign. But in this province's mucky political culture, that doesn't mean much, does it?
Too true. The standards politicians have when they're in opposition tend to become much lower once they get into government.
In yesterday's Victoria Times-Colonist, Les Leyne gave a good rundown of whether or not the Premier should stay or go, and the arguments for both sides.
Reports, opinions, columns, and anything else on this site, are © 2002-2003 Ian King unless otherwise noted. Permission granted to use material on this site for non-commercial purposes provided that the work is attributed to the original author. All other uses require specific permission of the original author. Contact weblog owner with any inquiries.
Feel free to link to this web log. The management likes getting lots of traffic.
