A8 Sunday, January 8, 2012 - The Morning Star
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Opinion Glenn Mitchell – Managing Editor
Risky Dix or Christy Crunch?
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I spy with my little eye...
I
t may be a little late – hey, I get time off at Christmas too, okay? – but here are some predictions for 2012 that may or may not be worth considering or betting the bank on, it’s totally up to you. Just because the year ends the media is filled with year-end wrap-ups, which are interesting to see what we’ve lived through and likely already forgotten, as well as forecasts and predictions about the coming year from alleged soothsayers otherwise known as economists, astrologers, university Glenn Mitchell professors, sports analysts, medical experts and maybe even an octopus in Europe or a monkey in Thailand. Some, admittedly, have better credentials than others but they’re all winging it when it comes to trying the predict the future. So, hey, I can wing it with the best of them so here’s my top 5 predictions for 2012, even though I’m cheating a little because a week’s gone by already, but, hey, what do you want for free? 1. The world will not end. That may seem like an easy one and not even worth mentioning but us humans seem fixated with this kind of stuff, and especially in 2012. Apparently some Mayan calender says Dec. 21 of this year is it for our planet, actually it’s just the end of another segment of the once-thriving society’s calendar, but there’s no time to quibble when we’re talking possible doomsday here. So if you were counting on this as a reason not to buy your wife a Christmas gift this year, forget about it. I mean I suppose we could also get hit by a larger-than-normal meteor and cease to exist but I’m saving that prediction for 2013,
MITCHELL’S MUSINGS
maybe around Dec. 21. 2. The stock market will go down and it will go up. Again this may not seem like much of a prediction but if you actually bother to translate the prognostications of the financial guys that’s pretty much what they’re saying too. I mean some radicals might say the European economy will fall and then the domino (the toy, not the pizza) effect will take out the rest of us too. Of course this too could happen but the Mayans are silent on the subject so I’m going with the roller-coaster ride continues and it is what it is (which I think Todd Bertuzzi first said and it’s caught on to mean, basically, “whatever,” with a shrug). 3. Studies will show some new stuff will cause cancer and some stuff that we once thought might have won’t anymore. Again this is a bit a no-brainer but it’s always front page stuff when it gets reported. All I would say is take it all with a grain of salt, unless a grain of salt gives you cancer of course. 4. A Canadian team will win the Stanley Cup. I want to say it’s the Canucks, and they do have the best chance (he said wistfully thinking back to game 7 last year) but I don’t want to jinx them. But the team won’t be from Alberta or Ontario, or likely Quebec or Manitoba either... 5. I won’t win the lottery and either will you. This one is also a no-brainer due to the odds involved, but it sucks nonetheless. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to buy less lottery tickets but I know my predilection to purchase them is solely based on what kind of week I’ve had. And they can’t all be winners, so to speak, so chances are I’ll buy a few along the way. Hopefully lightning will strike me, or you, not literally of course, but you know what I mean. Happy New Year everyone.
The difference is in the manner in which the ads are presented. The provincial political world has weighed in on the B.C. Liberals’ decision to target B.C. NDP Leader Adrian Dix with 16 months between now and the May 2013 election. The governing party has created a website — riskydix.ca — where it lists everything that went wrong in B.C. during the NDP reign in the 1990s, when Dix was former premier Glen Clark’s right-hand man. Some have accused the Liberals of showing their desperation in waging all-out war on Dix; the Grits argue they are simply laying out the facts for voters who might not be aware of Dix’s involvement in the NDP government of the 1990s. The Liberal campaign is serious and shows the party is obviously extremely concerned about losing the next election to the NDP. The New Democrats, conversely, scored big-time with their clever, witty and wickedly funny TV commercial last year featuring “Christy Crunch” cereal. That may have been an attack ad, but at least it was one with panache and creativity. Now, about the riskydix.ca campaign. What the Liberals don’t mention is that other taxes (what the B.C. Liberals prefer to call fees and tolls and recycling deposits and carbon-neutrality goals and MSP premiums and ICBC rates and ferry fares and BC Hydro costs) have climbed to heights unimagined since they claimed power in 2001. Dix may be risky. That remains to be seen. But, the past 10 years have not exactly resembled Shangri-La for the average family struggling to survive. ---Kamloops This Week