Friday, May 08, 2009

Herb Pond can’t buy us all a beer… But…


Back in the day of the old school politics of the North Coast, legend had it that a long time (and now deceased) Mayor once made a regular election habit of making sure that the vote got out, including those that may wish to spend more of their time at a beverage room than a voting booth.

There never has been any confirmation of this urban myth, of the nocturnal voter being returned to their more familiar environment after marking an X, to be compensated for their civic duty, but it does make for a wonderful story.

Today of course, any self respecting candidate would never think of providing that kind of door to door service to the voting public, but if an advertisement in this week’s Northern Connector, the spirit of that strategy may live on…

The Liberals (or rather one of their support groups) feature a rather fascinating bit of political theatre in the Connector this week, a half page ad that suggests that the NDP intends to jack up the price of the working man and woman’s beer and apparently only candidate Pond stands between you, I and the gouging of the socialists…

From page thirteen of the Friday edition of the connector (right above the Mother's Day dining options ads)


Gary Coons and the NDP want to raise the price of a six pack of beer by $3.00.

HERB POND AND THE BC LIBERALS OPPOSE THIS TAX ON WORKING PEOPLE.


On May 12th Vote HERB POND and the BC Liberals

Paid for by Northerners for Economic Developement

Now while we like our beer to be as inexpensive as possible, we have to wonder first off if this is really where the Liberals wish to make their stand in the campaign, on the price of beer?

Besides the point that there really is no hard fast proof that the NDP have a secret agenda of soaking those that like their suds, the simple fact is, that with the myriad of problems facing the Northcoast, you have to wonder how high on the political radar that the price of a six pack really is.

The Liberals in much of their advertising so far have stayed away from offering much in the way of constructive evidence as to how they plan to tackle such issues as the doctor’s shortage in Prince Rupert and how they plan to stop the erosion of our medical system. There have been no answers or solutions offered to the state of education in the Northwest, how to improve the graduation rate, increase the pace of needed repairs to infrastructure and ensure that class ratio sizes return to a more intelligent level.

On employment, other than the always popular promise of Port jobs, they haven’t provided much in direction as to where they wish to find jobs for the over 12 per cent (and rising) unemployed citizens that currently reside here. And we are sure that there are even more issues that residents are concerned about, beyond the price of beer with or without a phantom threat of increase allocated to the NDP.
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Surely the Liberals can come up with something far more frightening for the electorate, than the price of beer... in the world of scare mongering, six pack increases just don't have the same impact as stealing your savings through taxes, driving away all investment, or turning the province over to the trades unions.

We’re not sure of the upside of a campaign ad that features the price of beer, a rather transparent attempt at tossing some mud, with or without solid proof that what they say will happen, may actually come to pass.

It’s a strange little strategy for the campaign to have latched onto, perhaps they should just offer to buy us all a round of beer and hope that all our troubles will go away?

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