In the lineup for the Referendum result - Alcyonenews

Main menu:

Miscellany

Posted December 14, 2018

In the lineup for the Referendum result

I had planned to discuss the Referendum results in this issue, but the voting deadline was advanced for a week and moreover, ballot-counting proved more cumbersome than expected. Anyway, now the polls are closed and the elves of Elections BC are busy feverishly counting we are told, to beat Santa by bringing us the gift of Democratization, I hope.

I will keep my undertaking to discuss the Electoral System Referendum, but till it comes out I will keep quiet, true to my mum’s teaching me to not be a “propetes”. This word characterizes a person who tends to answer a question, or comment on a statement, before hearing the whole question or statement. It is a lovely word, or at least so I think but I am partial to it – I get a jolt of guilt every time I fail it which, I regret to say, happens not rarely. By the way, “predicate” is the closest to it that I have found in lexicons but my daughter is trying to prompt lexicographers to promote “propetes”, for the world needs this word.

On my first stay in my wife’s native village, Minchinhampton, in the Cotswolds, on Sunday morning I went to buy the Times. When I arrived at the candy and news store, in the village square, there was a substantial lineup of genuine Brit Gentlemen, accordingly attired, which surprised me for I had never seen children lining up to buy candy in such numbers. A gentleman at the queue informed me that they were awaiting the arrival of the newspapers from London; but if I was after candy, I could bypass the lineup and make my purchase, said he. I thought of turning tail, but stayed for the “news”. At present I feel like I am in a wide queue for referendum news.

Being in the lineup is conducive to thinking and this I do while awaiting the Referendum news – somehow I can’t get rid of the Plecas and his victims mind-worm. But, if I ever had any concerns about being a “propetes” in commenting on Mr. Plecas’ play, I no longer have such. He came back on December 6 and erased faint doubts in naive minds about him being wrong. Unmindful of the 1st Law of Holes, “when you’re in a hole, stop digging”, the Hon. Mr. Plecas continued revealing his mindset by hurling epithets at the Clerk and at the Seargeant at Arms of the Legislature, whom he had paraded on the sidewalk outside the Legislature, being evicted. So hideous were their “crimes” Plecas said, that he took it upon himself to trample the Charter of Rights and play Judge, Jury and executioner, so as to postpone us “throwing up” (his word) until after the holiday season. Plecas appears expecting us, the populace, to thank him for having sheltered us from vomiting, it being unsightly to company and unpleasant to the perpetrator.

Back to the Referendum. From what we know so far, the race between “elected despotism” and democratization of the system is too close to call. This, if it happens and to the extent it may, would be because change is hard to come by in a society which has been frequently “burned” by Change. Better the Devil you know, many of us prefer, and this is arguably sound when the need for change may as easily be exploited by those who are affected adversely, and be tamed to serve their interests. We endure relics in our midst because we fear the worst washed upon us by the change storm. Abuse of abuse of technology, such as cybercrime pandemic, drives many of us to ponder whether we would not have been better without the blessings modern technology has brought us in recent times. The fear of change phenomenon is a black blotch on the wide social canvas, ardently in need of exposure. I will do a bit of that when we have the Referendum results – cross my heart.

Tom V.