Peter, Thank you for wasting my Friday evening right along with my tax dollars

Being a Friday night I had planned a quiet evening, nothing too serious, no blogging, maybe a little television for the evening. I did however have a blog article in mind for posting on Saturday, one that I have been researching over the last week or so. Like every night, when I arrived home I checked my mailbox to see what had been delivered and what I found threw my plans for a peaceful Friday night right out the window and put me on a different writing path than my intended Saturday blog.

As anyone who is a regular reader of this blog is aware I have had little if anything positive to say about the "Occupy" movement since its inception. The Occupy movement which originally sprouted from "Occupy Wallstreet" in New York's financial district had lost all sense of purpose by the time it moved to other locales and cities. What was essentially in the beginning a protest against massive government bailouts of poorly managed financial institutes and the corruption of sub-prime mortgages (funny enough, both are issues that I could have supported protesting against) quickly evolved to protesting  "the flavor of the week" depending on the particular group of Occupy Drones that formed in any specific city. Every perceived woe that faced society came under attack by Occupy Drones and allowed them to self justify criminal acts such as illegally trespassing on private property or the destruction of public property. After all it was all in the name of a greater cause. Soon they were demanding forgiveness of personal student loan and credit card debt, withdrawal of troops, closing down the oilsands, a reduction of CO2, you name it they wanted it. The bottom line is that the Occupy movement became a gathering place for the disenchanted and anarchists, at times the "camps" even became havens of refuge for the homeless. So whats this got to do with what I discovered in my mailbox?

Well, when I emptied my mailbox I discovered amongst the other "junk" mail a brochure from my Member of Parliament (MP), Peter Goldring. Now MP's get a budget to mail out these brochures to their constituents under the guise of providing updates of what is happening in government and how the MP is working hard on behalf of their electorate. At least that's the party line, the reality is it's simply a way for MP's to promote their party and themselves at no personal expense. Frankly in today's electronic age it is a shameless waste of taxpayer funds, after all have they never heard of the internet or email? But that is not the issue that got me riled, at least not directly.

The brochure I received, Issue 120 (just imagine the cost of 119 editions of this glorified toilet tissue being mailed previously) was titled "Occupy Canada" and featured a photo of Mr Goldring proudly standing arm-in arm with the Occupy Edmonton group , and another photo of him enjoying a photo-op in front of the sign identifying the Occupy Toronto group, all of this was accomplished on his part under the guise of a fact finding mission (translation - "taxpayer funded"). But it gets better, the four pages of the brochure were devoted entirely to "educating" his constituents about the Occupy movement, it's objectives, and the reasons that inspired the movement. Now to be fair, the article did its very best to play both sides of the fence, making the Occupy Drones appear to be something akin to the Founding Fathers of the United States fighting a revolution against oppression, while skillfully pointing out that capitalism and free enterprise is not all bad. Way to go Peter!

To be very frank, I have never been much of a fan of Mr Goldring, although I will admit to begrudgingly voting for him (a case of the party, not the candidate). In fact, amongst our inner circle ( a few like minded friends) we refer to him as Peter "Ringworm", as he reminds us of a parasite that that getsunder your skin and is difficult to get rid of. However that opinion was formed long before my receiving this brochure, and in fact even before Ringworm got pulled over in late 2011 during a routine CheckStop and simply refused to provide a breath sample (something that is required under the Criminal Code of Canada). Funny, one would think that a Member of Parliament would understand better than most the need to abide by a nations laws, go figure. Of course at the time Ringworm denied being impaired  and insisted that he had only had one beer all night. Naturally, we are expected to take him at his word, after all he is the Honorable Peter Ringworm, Member of Parliament, nothing like the rest the riff-raff driving around our streets after consuming far too much alcohol. Well enough on that, he is due to go to trial at some point and it will be interesting to see how that plays out.

What really burned me is that this man has the gall to use public funds in mailing this piece of trash under the guise of keeping us naive voters informed of how the world really works. Trust me I would imagine that most of us have formed our own opinions about the Occupy movement, a movement that is virtually dead around the world and for all intents and purposes can't even interest most newspapers enough to rate an article in the classified section (another almost dead reminder of the past). Yet Ringworm figures that we need an update months after the fact. 

Since his road side incident in late 2011 Ringworm voluntarily left the Conservative caucus and now sits as an Independent Civil Libertarian, otherwise next election I would have to say "screw the party" and vote for anyone else than Ringworm.

On a last note, before writing this I visited Peter's website to bring myself up to speed. Funny it does not appear to have any updates (except for government news feeds) from about November of 2011, which coincidentally is around the time Ringworm was charged with failing to provide a breath sample. Now if Peter is really interested in keeping his constituents up to date on current affairs maybe he can post something on his website or in a brochure about his own failure to abide by Canada's Criminal code and his subsequent criminal charges. Or better yet, explain to us why the individual we voted for under the Conservative banner took it upon himself to sit as an Independent! News Flash Peter, if we wanted an Independent we would have voted accordingly, your decision to "cross the floor" is just one more reason why in the next election we need you replaced by someone with character.