I can’t help but wonder…

As the title says, I can’t help but wonder - despite the expected bombastic crap from Dalton and the rest-of-’em - what those in the know really think of Smitherman’s latest gaffes.

Everyone knows that he will put on the brave face in public, apologizing for his so-called innocent and unintentional remarks that insulted anyone with a sense of decency, but what do his advisors think… privately? I should think that all those around him - superiors, advisors, co-workers, clerical staff - what must they be saying behind his back?  If his office is like most, I can see them now - jaws dropped, shaking their heads, banging hands against foreheads and surely starting to wonder what this man will do next.

Yes, I can hear the snickering whispers over the Queen’s Park (no pun intended) coffee pots from here.

Personally, I don’t think I’d be able to work for this reasonable facsimile of a Health Minister (or as much as he tries to be a Health Minister) because I have no respect for this man whatsoever. (Let me re-phrase that: No, I KNOW I wouldn’t be able to work with Georgie.)

How does anyone with a backbone, not to mention a shred of decency, tolerate the embarrassing blunders that come so easily to the fellow? Honestly, would you want to make known that you work with Georgie-boy?? Now really! Guilt by association and all that… Not for me, thanks!

Then there’s Dalton who can’t seem to stand up and have a leader’s grit (no pun intended again) and moral fibre to say “Hey Smitty, what the hell were you thinking? The time’s come for me to put you on a lead ‘cos you’re making me look like more of an idiot than I already am, for Chrissakes.”

Down Boy!

I’m with Howard Hampton on this: Fire the lunatic, Dalton!

She’s Bang-on! In Christina Blizzard’s Opinion…

Who could top the March 1st column written by Sun Media’s Christina Blizzard as she writes of George Smitherman’s antics…

See original article here.

Smitherman’s Silly Stunt

By: Christina Blizzard

TORONTO — Health Minister George Smitherman must surely be one of the most high profile and kamikaze examples of arrested development I have ever seen.

Look at his history of public confessions of things that are best left private: First there was a front-page picture of him weeping over the plight of abused people in long-term care facilities.

Then in 2006, he admitted to using “party drugs” at a time he was under stress because his father had been incapacitated by a stroke.

Last year, the openly gay minister mused in a scrum that he was considering wearing a thong to his wedding. And he’s forever agonizing publicly about his weight. Talk about insecurity!

This week, the one-time Liberal attack dog left reporters scratching their heads after he announced that as “a matter of conscience,” he has “seriously been considering” personally testing a new type of adult diaper.

Hello? Earth to George. Too much information.

If anyone else in cabinet displayed that kind of erratic behaviour, there would be speculation that he was, well, a tad overwrought emotionally and that maybe he should take a break from his work to pull himself together.

New Democratic Leader Howard Hampton called for Smitherman’s resignation. PC Leader John Tory said he should apologize.

“This was the man, you will recall, who tearfully promised to bring about a revolution in long-term care,” Tory said at a news conference yesterday. “His idea of a revolution is to put on some sort of a sideshow where he says he will try out some kind of an adult diaper.”

Sadly, though, the real problem in all of this has become lost in Smitherman’s weird antics.

The issue that we should be addressing is how much personal care elderly — and often helpless — people in long-term care facilities receive. The new diaper in question is controversial. It is super absorbent — so old people can sit around longer in their own waste before a care worker needs to go clean them up.

Unions came here this week to ask for a minimum of 3.5 hours of personal care for seniors. They poured four jugs of water into the diaper to show just how much liquid it would take before a coloured band indicated it needed changing.

That’s what is so shocking about Smitherman’s silly stunt. His off-the-cuff remark is demeaning and insulting. While he claims to have been personally touched by his father’s illness, you wonder if all the drugs he was doing at that time desensitized him to the suffering of other elderly people.

If it were your mother, your father or your grandparents sitting for hours and hours in a sodden diaper, how would you feel hearing that the health minister has trivialized it by joking he’s going to wear one? Yesterday, Smitherman put out a mealy-mouthed written statement saying, “If people were offended, or think I shouldn’t have raised those comments, I do apologize.”

Well, George, it’s not a question of “if” we’re offended. It’s more a question of how deeply insulted we are by these callous remarks.

His boss, Premier Dalton McGuinty, was even worse. Asked about Smitherman’s gaffe, McGuinty stood by his man.

“I know that it is easy to go and make fun of this particular issue, but it is really one about human dignity and we should keep it in mind,” McGuinty said. That’s not good enough.

There are times when a premier needs to come out and say that his minister has erred, that it is unacceptable, and that minister will apologize. Or he’ll be hauled onto the carpet — and forced to quit.
//

March 1st. St. David’s Day

From the BBC Site: Read entire article.

Saint David

By BBC Team

Introduction

Saint David

Saint David, or Dewi Sant as he’s called in the Welsh language, is the patron saint of Wales. His day is 1st March.

His influence is shown in the number of churches dedicated to him in Wales and the celebrations each Saint David’s Day.

Saint David factfile

There aren’t many facts about St David; but here are the only undisputed ones.

• He really existed
• He was at the heart of the Welsh church in the 6th century
• He came from an aristocratic family in West Wales
• His mother was a saint, Saint Non
• His teacher was also a saint, St Paulinus
• He founded a large monastery in West Wales
• He was one of the early saints who helped to spread Christianity among the pagan Celtic tribes of Western Britain
• He became Archbishop of Wales, but remained in his community at Menevia (now called St Davids)
• He was active in supressing the Pelagian heresy
• His shrine became a great place of pilgrimage; four visits to the shrine at St David’s were considered the equivalent of two to Rome, and one to Jerusalem!

The most famous story about Saint David tells how he was preaching to a huge crowd and the ground is said to have risen up, so that he was standing on a hill and everyone had a better chance of hearing him.

St David’s day celebrations

Celebrations

Girl in national costume of Wales

St David’s Day has been a national festival in Wales since the 18th century, and is still marked with gusto.

Many people will wear either a daffodil or a leek, which are both symbols of Wales.

The other Welsh symbol, Y Ddraig Goch (the Red Dragon, Wales’s national flag), will be flown on many more buildings than usual.

Concerts are held to mark the occasion, particularly male voice choirs.

Primary schools

Saint David’s Day begins in many Welsh primary schools with a religious service.

Children dress in the traditional Welsh costumes.

Folk dancing in the ruins at Saint David’s

Girls wear a petticoat and overcoat, made of Welsh flannel, and a tall hat, worn over a frilled bonnet. Boys wear a white shirt, a Welsh flannel waistcoat, black trousers, long wool socks and black shoes.

Chilldren enjoy traditional Welsh dances, sing Welsh folk songs and recite Welsh poems.

Secondary schools

Some secondary schools in Wales celebrate the Saint’s day with an Eisteddfod, a festival of singing, dancing, and reciting. The climax of the Eisteddfod is often a choir competition.

The Art of Buying a New Car

I’ve always enjoyed keeping abreast of new cars, likely a result of going to car shows with my parents when we lived in London, England, during the 1960s. Roger, on the other hand, does not like going to car dealerships at all (that’s putting it mildly) and will only go when I’ve actually decided on the car I want. Then he makes his appearance, stonefaced, and arms usually folded, as he lets the salesperson do most of the talking.  When it comes down to ‘negotiating,’ I make myself scarce, as the episode is akin to what one friend described as “stiff bartering in an African marketplace.” Truer words were….  And so it was this time.

Even before myX5 smoked and burned (oil, that is) a few weeks ago, we were already thinking of a new vehicle. I knew which cars I liked and which ones I didn’t. In fact, I was all set to purchase the 2008 VW New Beetle in Gecko Green. I liked the quirkiness of the car, and was already impressed with it after driving Ellen’s 2004 Bug for the last few months. It’s a Fun Car (capitalization intended) or, as George Costanza in a ’50s letter jacket and cuffed jeans would say, “She’s a sweet riiiiide….”

The problem I encountered at the time, though, was that no one else thought much of getting another Beetle to park beside Ellen’s. Huh? Why not??

So, I looked at the Audi TT (don’t ask) then the A4, and was thisclose to saying yes to owning an Audi. What held me back was that I really wasn’t sold on the interior of the current A4, despite its appointments, and knowing that come October/November, Audi would be releasing the newly designed A4. (It also made a rather odd engine noise when driven around town, but handled amazingly well.)

We headed over to Mercedes that following Monday where we both liked the completely revamped for 2008 C-Class. I drove the C and liked it very much - there was little, if anything, to complain about. However, deciding to look around some more, we went up to Mini in Oakville where the 2008 Mini Cooper Clubmans were making their debut. I loved the Clubman, and Roger liked it, enough that we considered it a front runner, up there with the Mercedes B and C-Class.It didn’t get much further than that. The girls, especially Ellen, didn’t like it AT ALL - the term they used was that it looked like a hearse!  That was followed by Roger having second thoughts about the size of the car, that it would feel too small when the novelty had worn off.   All three were smitten with the C-Class.  I was fighting a losing battle.

We dealt with Mercedes-Benz here in town, and Jacen Douglas, New Car Sales Manager. Jacen, comparatively speaking, scored a 9 out of 10 in the scale of things (always room for improvement for anyone…) as did Jen Toohy at Mini Oakville. Both professional and extremely helpful.  The worst rep I dealt with, bar none, was a salesperson at the Cadillac dealership in the city. Lexus tried hard, but the salesperson there simply read specs from the computer screen in front of her. I felt like I was speaking with one of the Stepford wives in another universe. Polite as can be, and friendly, but no offense, we’re all good at reading specs and options from a website.

Anyway, fast forward to this week. The C-Class and the Clubman were in the finals and I was leaning toward the Clubman - even had British Racing Green picked out. Roger, on the other hand, joined by the girls, was still taken with the C-Class. Jacen, his strength being numbers, offered us an extremely appealing package, or at least it was to me, but Roger insisted that Jacen make it even more appealing. He met the challenge, after acknowledging he had perhaps met his match with Roger-the-Negotiator. True to form, I went outside to look at cars while they hammered out final numbers.The last time I saw our new car (black, by the way) it was covered in road salt from our test drives. I collect it two days from now - on Monday, and expect it will be shiny and clean - at least I hope so… (I still have memories of my first BMW X5 delivered dusty and dirty, and sticky with cola stains. I have a name for that sort of delivery and I made it patently clear that I didn’t want a repeat of the BMW method of delivering a new vehicle.  Now we’re looking at portable navigation systems, since my X5 had the system built in. We’re down to the TomTom GO 720 and the Garmin Nuvi 750, - whittled down to two and pretty good since we started off looking at a ton of them.

Stay tuned.