I am quite frankly tired of all the disclaiming.
My family went to a new church today and it was an ‘older’ crowd, let’s say. After the service, one of the pastors ran up to us and quickly pronounced that we needed to know the church did actually have younger people (remember I’m 40 this year not exactly a spring chicken) but they went to another service. I felt like telling him he didn’t need this disclaimer.
Then of course, there’s the usual disclaimer about being ‘from the Maritimes’ which takes on a different form depending on the audience.
Then there’s the disclaimer about living ‘downtown’ and how there really isn’t much crime down here. I catch myself doing this one when I talk with a suburber type.
But why I even raise this at all is that one of my favourite disclaimers of all time was related to the Montreal Expos. Almost every fan felt the need to say that if the Expos were in a ‘real’ city, they would be competitive. Just think of all the players we have lost because of the money, we would say.
Now the friggin’ Expos are in a friggin’ U.S. ‘real’ city and this. Las Vegas is predicting they will lose a record 125 games this year. No other team in history has lost as many games.
That, my friends, is annoying. If Washington is such a friggin’ good city for baseball why don’t they go out and buy a few players? Why sell all their high priced talent? The Nationals budget this year is less than when they were in Montreal. Absolutely nuts.
But, in keeping with the theme, Nationals bloggers are already saying “yeah, but wait until next year”. As a 33 year fan of the Expos, I have gotten more mileage out of that phrase than any other save rebukes of Al Hogan.
There is no ‘next year’. Get it done this year. That must be the motto.
Speaking of getting it done this year, there’s a tie in with my blog here somewhere. After Bernard Lord had been in power six months he had done all that 200 days of change stuff, either had or was about to split economic development into two departments (a good idea in my opinion but he changed it back a year or so later) and pretty well had established the tone and tenor of his government.
In contrast, the Libs haven’t done much in their first six months. Raised a few bucks in new taxes and made a few appointments but other than that not much. I don’t think Lord talked so much about getting more dough from the Feds either – in the early days – he made up for that later.
One would hope they (the Libs) are keeping their powder dry till the final report of the Self Sufficiency crew.
One would further hope that this report will recommend massive changes (hey, that’s their word not mine) to the way economic development is done in this province.
Otherwise, we are in for another long stretch of meltdown, I would think.