The Black Rod

WHOOP. WHOOP. WHOOP. WHOOP. WHOOP. Take cover! It's a boondoggle alert! The cost of upgrading the West End Water Pollution Control Centre, WEWPCC as it's affectionately known in city hall circles, is officially out of control. The smell of death is so thick over this project that Finance Committee Chairman Mike O'Shaughnessy wants the city auditor to start dissecting the corpse. Just last week the city's water department revealed the WEWPCC, as it's affectionately known in city hall circles, will cost taxpayers another $12 million. And that, as the newspapers told us, is on top of $35 million already budgetted for the upgrade project. In broad strokes, the cost just went up by a third. That's the good news. Because back in 2004 when the project was announced, the estimated cost was $26 million. That means it's now 80 percent over budget. With no end in sight. And almost two years behind schedule. With no end in sight. And a hair's breadth away from be...

Every now and then we make an effort to clear the backlog of newspapers sitting on chairs in our office in the Baxter Building. And like prospectors panning for gold, we usually stumble across a nugget or two that makes the effort worthwhile. This week it was a column, on the end of the latest session of Parliament, by Lawrence Martin in the Globe and Mail. The piece, 'Harper's angry-man syndrome dominated Parliament' , (June 18/07), at first got a cursory skim-through. Blah blah, the usual, blah blah, Stephen Harper is bad, the Conservatives are bad, if only they were more liberal everything would be good, blah blah. But as we turned the pages, a nagging something kept saying "Go back." We've learned to listen to that little voice, so back we went. Blah blah, Stephen Harper is bad, the Conservatives are bad, blah blah. Same old... But 'nagging something' said keep reading. So, again, we read the column. Slower, line by line. "He took on the ...

Say it ain't so.... Shriek, The Black Rod's society reporter, tells us a certain fairytale marriage has hit the shoals. It's a dark day indeed for all little girls still dreaming of frog princes, castle weddings and jackets of the finest black leather. The word from the East is that the lovely and talented CBC national reporter Krista Erickson has been a social butterfly lately, sans wedding ring and definitely sans husband. The whereabouts of the aforesaid hubby, Mr. Krista Bob Morrision, are unknown at press time. The Missus, meanwhile, was in full Krista-mode at a recent garden party given by the Speaker of the House in Ottawa, according to Frank magazine. Standing at the entrance with your camera and having your picture taken with Ministers and MPs is a smart move for a newbie trying to get one up on the pack of tired Parliamentary hacks. Being carried around on the shoulder of Pink Scott Brison so that guests get a good look at your derriere is another way of being re...

In Brief: · As predicted, following the death of Mullah Dadullah the focus of the fighting has moved east · The long-awaited move to retake the village of Musa Qala from Taliban insurgents has probably begun. · Al Qaeda in Afghanistan needs money. Lots. Quickly. Charlie don't surf and Ahmed don't swim In a fitting metaphor for the sinking fortunes of the Taliban, about 60 insurgents drowned Friday while trying to hightail it away from allied and Afghan forces in the Kajaki district of Helmand province. It's the latest black eye for the insurgents who only three months ago were bragging to Al-Jazeera that they controlled Helmand province and were only waiting until the snows melted before capturing Kandahar province next door. Taliban forces are being chewed to pieces by British-led operations in Helmand. The latest, Operation Lastay Kulang, involves 2000 troops, including 1000 British and U.S. soldiers. The goal is to trap Taliban fighters north of Sangin in the Kajaki Dam ...

Without any fanfare, the Winnipeg Free Press has blazed a trail towards a New Journalism, one which abandons the outdated reliance on informed sources for stories. Instead, the FP has instituted a journalism where reporters simply cite themselves as the experts on issues. It's so simple, why didn't anybody think of this before? Take the full page devoted Saturday to the news that 78 percent of Winnipegers are scared to go into certain parts of the city. "A city of fraidy cats?" boomed the editorializing headline across the TOP NEWS page. Half the page was a story written by Aldo Santin about a Canada West Foundation survey of the citizens of seven of the country's larger cities from Vancouver to Toronto. It found that Winnipeg was tops in the number of residents who agreed with the statement "There are parts of the city I am scared to set foot in." The second half of the page was a story by City Hall reporter Bartley Kives who wrote, and we paraphrase, ...

Canadians still haven't been told what a huge impact the death of Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's chief military commander, will have on our mission in Afghanistan. Dadullah was the last of the Taliban OG's from Kandahar. Turning him into worm food means the terrorist group will be shifting the bullseye of the insurgency from the southern province of Kandahar, where Canadian troops are stationed, to the eastern provinces and Kabul, closer to the home base of Dadullah's military rivals. Every history of the Taliban states that Kandahar is the "spiritual home" of the Taliban, and where most of their leaders come from. It was where the terrorist group sprang up before sweeping across the country to capture Kabul. They've been trying to recreate that moment ever since being driven out of power in 2001 by the U.S.The "Feared Taliban Spring Offensive" of 2006 was intended to capture Kandahar, drive out the Canadians, and springboard an assault of Kabul....

It's a good thing that the P.C. Party colour is blue, for it captures their after-vote blues so well, but yesterday you would be forgiven for thinking their colour was red. That way the red-faces on the shamed Tory caucus and the red eyes and noses on weepy party supporters didn't look entirely out of place on election night. There's no other way to say it. It was a rout. Hugh McFadyen proved an unmitigated disaster as the new leader of the Progressive Conservatives. He accomplished what most pundits thought was impossible---he left the party with even fewer seats than Stu Murray. Well, so much for McFadyen's grand vision of turning the Tories into NDP-lite. Or was it Liberals over-easy? That tsunami of federal Liberal voters he promised to deliver was nowhere to be seen even as the Devil danced away with the soul of the venerable party. McFadyen's self-professed acumen as a political paragon now shares a shelf on the trashheap of history next to General George Cust...

Let's cut to the chase. You want to know who's going to win the provincial election. And we're going to tell you. The answer is.... ...written in the stars. Gary Doer was born March 31, 1948 which makes him an Aries. Hugh McFadyen was born May 31, 1967 which makes him a Gemini. We've examined what four astrologers have to say about the influences on the party leaders during the current month. * Penny Thornton was Lady Diana's personal astrologer for six years. * Susan Miller (Astrologyzone) is a world-renowned and accredited astrologer. She writes columns for In Style and has appeared on such shows as 20/20, The Early Show, and The View. * Neil Giles (Astrology on the Web) is an astrologer whose passion for mythology and the ancient traditions has led him on a journey through Astrology, Tarot, the Runes and the Celtic Ogham Script as a seeker and personal reader. He lives on an island in the South Seas. * John Hayes is the British Astrological and Psychic Socie...

Remember the glowing reviews we told you about of the long-delayed Brad Pitt movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Howard Ford? Well, forget 'em . The only thumbs that count when it comes to this flick belong to the execs at Warner Brothers, the film's co-funder. And they've decided to emulate an unhappy Roman emperor. Warners has given up trying to get a version of the movie they feel they can sell to an audience. According to the Times of London, the divide between the filmmakers and the studio proved to be insurmountable. " Warner Brothers has failed to persuade the star to change The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford from a leisurely "poetic" film into an action-packed crowd-pleaser, or even to shorten its title." " As a result studio executives have decided to put the film into a small number of American art house cinemas and cut back on advertising ." The movie, which contains scenes filmed in Winnipeg,...

It's all over but the counting. Why wait a week when you can read the post mortem of the 2007 election campaign here and now. The NDP were running scared for the entire campaign, never more so than the final week. They knew they would have to fight an uphill battle and they loaded up with every dirty trick in the book. The health care system is a shambles with doctor shortages, nurse shortages, annual emergency ward closures, rampant hallway medicine, deaths in emergency rooms, deaths on waiting lists, and a bureaucracy growing larger by the second. Kildonan candidate Dave Chomiak carries the stench of failure with him wherever he goes. The justice system is a nightmare. Candidates Doug Martindale (Burrows), George Hickes (Point Douglas) and Gord Mackintosh (St. Johns) wear the blood of Phil Haiart, Thomas Roy Phillips, and Rachelle Leost on their hands. The title of Gang Capital of Canada, Murder Capital of Canada and Car Theft Capital of Canada are the NDP's legacy for Winn...