stray thoghts on The Times, the protesting parents,and the reporter who wasn't? there.

It'a suprising enough that a newspaper for a city of 160,000 would devote so much space as The Times did in its issue of Oct. 20, 2010. The protestors numbered only 20. That's not anywhere close to the over a thousand people involved in the MHS problem. The reporter excuses it by Monctonians are too polite to protest.

Well, they are polite. But they had a bigger turnout at city hall for a protest of less importance. You can get more than twenty people to watch a barefoot tap dancer on Main Street. When the teacher's aids and support people deomonstrated at every school, they must have numbered over a hundred. Where was the big coverage of that?  Most of the coverage was an ignorant and abusive editorial aimed at the work-to-rule demonstrators. It was The Times playing it's usual role, sucking up to the rich by attacking some of the lowest paid workers in Canada.

So why the big writeup about 20 demonstrators?

Because the Moncton Times is creating a crisis, that's why. And if it's creating a crisis, it's because the boss wants a crisis. Think hard about the Atlantic Insistute of Marketing Studies. It wants to get a piece of the education budget for the rich (which will make maintenance all the worse.) It's been on a campaign, ably assisted by The Moncton Times, to denigrate the public schools and their teachers. Isn't this playing up to a handful of protestors as though they represent everybody - isn't that playing right into the Hands of AIMS? Can you see the coming Moncton editorial about how public schooling has failed?

What contemptible newspapers New Brunswick has! What a contemptible and greedy lot of corporate leaders New Bunswick has!

There's another strange thing. The only Moncton Times reporter I picked out at the meeting was Brian Cormier, who is a member of the DEC. And he is listed as a member who expressed his support for the DEC and for the superintendent. I didn't see Brent Mazerolle there.

The audience that I saw wasn't large enough to applaud anything. They were three people. They shook hands with me and thanked me when I left (after devotiing a considerable part of my speech to defending the DEC and the superintendent - so they certainly weren't protesters.)

There was another person, a shy, young woman who simply nodded at me as I left. She had a large notebook and  a pen. I had noticed her writing while I spoke. Is it possible that she was a junior reporter at The Times? Is it possible that Brent Mazerolle got his information - (half of his article was on the DEC meeting) - from a junior reporter? That he wasn't there? If so, that's pretty unethical. It's not quite in league with his final paragraph for lack of ethics. But it's pretty bad.

Interesting to see Picone-Ford (a failed Liberal candidate) speaking to the press and emphasizing that she was not being partisan. I'm sure she wasn't. Why would she be? Both the Liberals and the Conservatives have the same masters. 

Picone-Ford is also the "expert" on education who said our children need to be trained in for a global economy. She gave no indication she knows what "global economy" means (we've been living in one for centuries); and no idea of exactly what it is one teaches for a global economy. So our "informed" source turns out to be a typical politician who knows only buzz words.

In any case, it is possible - close to certain,  I'm afraid - that we shall soon be living in an economy that is less global than it has been since before Columbus.

Oh - a little fun time for our politicians. Ask you local Liberal exactly what the word liberal means. As your local Progressive-Conservative what that label means. I'd be happy to feature their answers in a blog.