The Black Rod

Who thinks about what jail is like? People likely to go to jail, of course. But if you're a career-oriented, hard-working family man like Mark Stobbe, you never imagine yourself in jail.  That's something you see on television.  It's make-believe and as far removed from your reality as the actors in prop jumpsuits and tin handcuffs. That's what Stobbe thought, right until the day the police arrested him and charged him with killing his wife.  Instantly, the pretend had become the real. He found himself in jail. It would take years, literally, before he was brought to trial. And it turned out the Crown didn't have the slightest, smallest shred of evidence against him.  Their whole case was a bluff.  A flight of fancy. Pure imagination.  A case so beyond flimsy it would shame real lawyers and real judges if they were capable of shame. If there was one good thing about the whole experience (as if there can be anything good about b...

In  August, 2011, six people sat down to a home-cooked meal at the residence of Red River College President Stephanie Forsyth. You paid for the food.  But you weren't invited. That's because you're a troll and Forsyth and her guests are the New Aristocrats.   You are expected to cover the cost of their socializing.  And like it.  And STFU. Forsyth, during her Golf Shoe phone blitz on Friday, declared that people should be grateful to her for hosting a dinner party at home.  After all, she sniffed, she could have gone to a restaurant.   See, she actually saved you money . This is the mind-set of the New Aristocracy.  The idea that the public shouldn't cover the cost of a restaurant get-together either didn't even rate a thought.   To people of her ilk the fact that her evenings out are paid for by the hoi polloi is a given and not up for debate. We repeat ourselves: Stephanie Forsyth has an office. Her guest at ...

After two days of being incommunicado, Red River College President Stephanie Forsyth surfaced Friday in a blitz of phone interviews with Winnipeg television, radio and newspaper reporters. She launched a charm offensive to bury the taint of Bev Oda (she of the $16 orange juice) that hangs over her after the Canadian Taxpayers Association revealed that Forsyth had claimed $78,000 in expenses in her first 16 months on the job. That's an average of just under $5000 a month on top of her $261,000 salary. Forsyth's message? She's entitled to her entitlements and everything she claimed was a proper expense, even the super-special high-end $205 golf shoes. But because you poopy-heads made such a big deal of it, she was going to repay the money for the golf shoes. Satisfied? Richard Lennon, chairman of the Red River College Board of Governors, joined Forsyth's atonement parade to say the college would launch a whitewash by the end of the mon...

Snap! Did unrepentant provocateur Gordon Warren just spring a trap on Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz and his pal Sandy Shindleman? Damned if he didn't. And did he bait the trap with unsuspecting reporters and bloggers (yes, like us)? It seems (sob) like he did. The Mayor and his supporters must have been chortling at the news Wednesday that Shindleman and his brother Robert have launched a lawsuit against Warren for defamation. But the suit is just a smokescreen to disguise Shindleman's true goal---to crush blogger and pamphleteer Gordon Warren into the dust for the Jewish community of Winnipeg. Warren first earned their ire six months ago by circulating posters attacking alleged corruption at City Hall manifested by "untendered contracts and shady land deals" which benefited or involved 13 of Mayor Katz's associates, whom he listed. That had them running in circles like a yapping pack of chihuahuas howling about anti-semitism. But there was o...

Last week was Freedom To Read Week in Canada, and we were, you guessed it, reading---the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. Just for a break, someone decided to clear the email. What he discovered was more shocking than Anastasia Steele in bondage and begging for it 'rough'. It was a government press release on a ban to peat mining in provincial parks. Hardly heart-pounding stuff, you say. The last time we even thought of peat moss was when we bought a Venus Fly Trap for the office. Ever since the last provincial election, government news releases have read more like NDP promotional material than neutral information on government business. We've taken note of this politicization of the public service and for that reason we pay close attention to these releases, even one on peat moss. We not only read it, we read it to the very bottom, where we found this paragraph: "Because our peatlands are a carbon sink, they provide significant c...