Hello Gordon.

22 Apr 04 19:01, you wrote to me:

 MG>> One wonders whether he truly was as "racked by guilt" as he
 MG>> claims, or whether the impetus for him turning himself in was
 MG>> simply the fact that he was made aware of his being caught on
 MG>> video in the act... IMO, the fact that he hasn't resigned his
 MG>> seat shows that he is without a shred of honor.

 GL> He has stated he'll hold it for the few months until the election
 GL> and not run again, for what that's worth.

 GL> What I find somewhat incredible, is that living here, and always
 GL> watching the local news, not very much was said by the local media
 GL> about the fact that the video was taken and the police had it for
 GL> 2 days. I was very much down-played here, if mentioned at all.

Yeah; they had it for two days, yet didn't arrest and charge him? That's
what makes me think he was given notice of the police having the tape;
maybe even by the police themselves.

 GL> But we did have oodles of segments of all his past controversy,
 GL> and how he was the first public gay MP, and how he got charged for
 GL> comtempt when he was tree hugging and all the other things good
 GL> NDP'ers do.

Svend also publically "outed" Scott Brison, who was not
publically out of the closet at the time and may not have wished to be, in
order to advance a cause he was interested in. He didn't care that it may
have caused problems or embarassment for Scott at the time.

 GL> There is no doubt that he was one of the hardest working MP's
 GL> for his constituents, but in reality, the media here sure took
 GL> it easy on him. There was a huge media uproar over Premier
 GL> Campbell getting caught driving drunk in Hawaii which lasted
 GL> well over a month, but good ole Sven gets patted on the back and
 GL> told tsk tsk, you shouldn't steal but we understand your
 GL> distraught over a previous broken jaw and ankle. He had to crawl
 GL> a whole 300 metres to a house to get aid. Bah!

It's typical; it all depends on if you're a member of the favored party in
any given area. We see the same crap here in Alberta, but with the Liberals
vs the Tories.

The sponsorship scandal gets everyone in the Alberta press screaming over
some 200 million that was maybe dishonorably but not illegally distributed
to Liberal friendly firms (anything to slam the Liberals on is /really/
popular out here), yet when a scandal about some misplaced 600 million
bucks breaks because the cattle farmers were getting bilked out of the
relief money the government gave them, through the meat packers reducing
what they paid them for their cows by the exact same amount of the relief
they were paid, while the grocery stores continued to charge the same
prices for beef as before the BSE crisis, it all gets swept under the rug
and isn't talked about, because the Alberta government is involved, the
Alberta government is Tory, and everyone knows that Alberta bleeds Tory
blue, and therefore the Tories can do no wrong...

Yesterday, there was a story on the news about dead cows rotting in some
farmers field. Small wonder; the farmers can't afford to feed their cattle
so the cows starve to death. The farmers can't even afford the $40 a head
it costs them to dispose of the carcasses properly.

But the meat packers' profits are up about 200%. I wonder how much Cargill
contributes to the Alberta PC Party...

 GL> I seem to recall a man who cut off his own arm after 3 days
 GL> pinned then walk miles before he was rescued and he didn't steal
 GL> any rings later!

Or the guy who gave a speech at our dental technician's convention in
Edmonton; he lost both legs by being pinned under a rock, yet has still
managed to climb Mt. Killamanjaro with the use of special prosthetic
legs...


--- GoldED/W32 3.0.1