Bill Tieleman, president of West Star Communications, is one of BC's best known political commentators and communicators. Read political commentary from Bill every Tuesday in 24 hours, Vancouver's free weekday newspaper (also online) and in The Tyee — BC's award-winning online magazine.
by Bill Tieleman
Loyalty is a fine quality, but in excess it fills political graveyards.
– Neil Kinnock, ex-British Labour Party leader
The wild political shootout at the BC Conservative Party corral last weekend didn’t produce any fatalities, but it may have shaped the province’s political future by laying the groundwork for yet another party — or a BC Liberal leadership revolt.
by Bill Tieleman
Stonewalling is a good term to use to describe this situation overall and in this case.
– John van Dongen, B.C. Conservative MLA
How did two former ministerial aides charged with breach of trust and fraud get their $6 million legal fees paid by the BC Liberal government despite pleading guilty in the BC Legislature raid case?
We may never know, despite the provincial independent Auditor-General John Doyle attempting to find out through a BC Supreme Court application heard for five days last week.
by Bill Tieleman
Oh! The good old hockey game/Is the best game you can name.
– Stompin’ Tom Connors, The Hockey Song
A group of dedicated National Hockey League fans won’t cry in their beer if team owners lock out their players. They are planning to take billionaire owners into the boards very hard.
How? By launching a consumer boycott of NHL team owners’ other businesses — including breweries and restaurant chains — to penalize them for high sticking fans.
Now, cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good; When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.
– Led Zeppelin – When The Levee Breaks (Originally written by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy)
The BC Liberal levee broke last week. By the end of political hurricane season, many of its MLAs will be adrift, not running for re-election.
The sudden resignations of Finance Minister Kevin Falcon and Education Minister George Abbott in just 24 hours only indicates the extreme severity of the storm Premier Christy Clark faces, not its length.
by Bill Tieleman
If any ideology is so serious that you can't have fun while you're doing it, it's probably too serious.
– Author Larry Wall
Are you right-wing or left-wing? Are you a social liberal or conservative?
What exactly is your ideology? And how can you tell?
These are tough questions anytime and more difficult still at a time when religion is fading as a moral compass, and millions of different issues bombard us through electronic media.
by Bill Tieleman
The bottom line for British Columbians is that pipelines are risky. You can't produce a safe system, you can only produce a less risky system. There is no leak proof system.
– York University Professor Sean Kheraj
Alberta Premier Alison Redford says oil pipelines are environmentally safe, with any spills an easily dealt with unusual occurrence.
That's what Redford claimed after a Plains Midstream Canada pipeline ruptured, spilling up to 475,000 litres of crude oil into the Red Deer River near Sundre on June 7.
by Bill Tieleman
Creative semantics is the key to contemporary government; it consists of talking in strange tongues lest the public learn the inevitable inconveniently early.
– George Will, US columnist
Dirty is clean.
Bonuses are salary.
God made only water, but man made wine.
– Victor Hugo, 1802-1885
Cheers to the BC Liberal government!
Shocked? It's not a sentiment seen often in this space, but credit should be given when any party does the right thing. And on new wine corkage rules in BC restaurants, the government has — gulp — done a good job.
The concept is simple: restaurants with a liquor licence can let customers bring their own bottle to accompany a meal and be charged a corkage fee rather than buying wine from the establishment.
"Bill has a column, right — so I'm warning you — so if you tell Bill he's wrong, the chances are he's going to get a column out of it."
– Voice Of BC host Vaughn Palmer to BC liquor minister Rich Coleman
Do you believe the price of beer, wine and spirits in British Columbia is reasonable? That BC booze costs are comparable to other provinces and American states? I don't, so I posed a simple question to Coleman on Shaw Cable's Voice Of BC on May 31.
"Why do consumers of beer wine, and spirits pay among the highest prices in North America for those products?" I asked.
But Coleman immediately rejected my conclusion when Palmer asked: "Is he right about that?"
"Not really, no. We have a pretty comparable price structure to the rest of Canada," Coleman replied.
Oh yeah? I may only be a columnist and wine blogger but I think the minister is wrong.
by Bill Tieleman
You know, we lived through socialism in BC for 10 years. I know what it looks like and it is not pretty.
– Jim Shepard, Concerned Citizens for BC leader
One can admire veteran corporate executive Jim Shepard for doing what he believes is right — attempting to save Premier Christy Clark by putting his retirement time and business experience on the line to head a political rescue mission.
But he's the wrong salvage operator, who's using faulty "facts" and a counterproductive approach that may backfire on the BC Liberals.
