You gotta love subtle minds, especially subtle political ones able to see nuances of meaning or the possibility you could rub your tummy and pat your head simultaneously. That would be most definitely not like the political geniuses of the last decade…
Continue readingTag: Kathy Dunderdale
The Sir Robert Bond Papers: Like Momma says, stupid is…
It takes an especially keen political genius to take someone else’s political problem and make it yours. It takes an even rarer form of political genius to take a guaranteed loser issue and stake your entire political future to it with loopy rhetori…
Continue readingHello? Hello?
I’m normally not one for telling tales out of school. But having sat it on a handful of meetings between Prime Ministers and Premiers, and having regularly set up phone calls for a Prime Minister with several of his provincial counterparts – sometime…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Expectations
Having jacked expectations through the ceiling, Kathy Dunderdale better convince Stephen Harper to commit to halt the transfer of the jobs at the coast guard search and rescue co-ordination office in St. John’s to Halifax. If she gets nothing, then …
Continue readingAn Unsurprising Correlation
Check this out:Newfoundland & Labrador Premier Kathy Dunderdale, in a speech to the St. John’s Board of Trade, Febraury 23, 2011 (emphasis added):”Our province has never been in a stronger position.GDP growth for 2010 is estimated at 5.4 per cent, …
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Well did she know in advance?
The shipyard that supposedly had so much work it didn’t know what to do just laid off 250 workers. Makes you wonder why the company dropped out of a lucrative shipbuilding contract and – equally – why Kathy Dunderdale took the news without batti…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Penis Envy
I’ll share a quote with you now from Canadian marathon runner Peter Maher that I found interesting: "Running is a big question mark that’s there each and every day. It asks you, ‘Are you going to be a wimp or are you going to be strong today?…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Politics and Disasters
Even to people not desperately in need of help in the wake of last year’s Hurricane Igor, it was pretty obvious – at the time – the provincial government was more geared to stoking and stroking political egos than anything else. By the second or …
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Political impotence and the little blue pills
Fish minister Clyde “The Finger” Jackman is going to fight to save a local coast guard co-ordination centre and its dozen jobs. Well, that’s what the torqued CBC headline says. The provincial government he’s a part of has created a financi…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The perils of polling stories
Not surprisingly, local media reports of Corporate Research Associates’ most recent quarterly poll got the news spectacularly wrong. For example, the Telegram reported that “[s]upport for the provincial Conservatives has dropped to 57 per cent of …
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Dunderdale disapproval doubles; Tory vote drops to 44%
What a difference a federal election can make to provincial poll results. According to the latest Angus-Reid poll, 43% of respondents are satisfied with Kathy Dunderdale’s performance as premier down from 55% in February and 67% for her predec…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Dundernomics 101: All your toasters are belong to us
labradore does yet another fine job exposing the completely ludicrous claims of those backing Kathy Dunderdale’s Empire of Debt, doing business as the Muskrat Falls project. Specifically, labradore tackles the idea that electricity demand in the pro…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Give Danny the money
Your humble e-scribbler is no fan of handing public cash to private sector companies for any reason. And make no mistake: when Danny Williams claims the provincial government would make its money back 20 fold on the hockey team, he is as full of shite…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Dundernomics 101: the cost of doing business
Premier Kathy Dunderdale, displaying her keen awareness of mathematics – among other things - in the House of Assembly on Monday, May 9: Mr. Speaker, Hebron costs are driven by reserves, as are most projects in the offshore. So as we do our…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Crude price forecasts don’t support Dunderdale’s empire of debt #nlpoli
Crude oil prices are the pedestal on which Kathy Dunderdale’s empire of debt called Muskrat Falls is built. The provincial Conservative’s plan to burden the people of Newfoundland and Labrador with a huge public debt and grossly increased electric…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: If this is Friday, it must be yes…
Or is it no? First, they were going to give Danny his cash for his hockey team. Then 24 hours later they decided – emphatically and unequivocally – that the new answer was “no” because the government did not fund that sort of thing. But …
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Reductio ad argentum: senatorial elections version
With the Conservatives who have been running the province since 2003, everything reduces to cash. For them, the only principle is cash. Not surprisingly, when it comes to the idea of electing senators to represent the people of Newfoundland an…
Continue readingHow stuff works
Former Premier (and wanna-be subsidized hockey team owner) Danny Williams tells the CBC why he should get favourable treatment and a wad of cash from an unspecified government kitty for his latest vanity project:”…I’ve given my heart and soul to the …
Continue reading