Friday, October 15, 2010

Purple Haze

"Purple haze all in my brain
Lately things just don't seem the same
Actin' funny, but I don't know why
'Scuse me while I kiss the sky
." - Jimi Hendrix

For years I have always wondered how cult leader Jim Jones ever managed to get 909 people in Jonestown, Guyana to drink that cyanide laced purple kool-aid leading to one of modern history's largest mass suicides on record. Then I sat down with the purple disc that turned up in some Caledon mailboxes yesterday, packaged up like a Mission Impossible envelope, that told us to be sure to watch before election day. I slid it in to my DVD player and at the pressing of the Play button there is Annette Groves smiling at me like a Stepford Wife, sprawled across our 50" plasma flat screen. Let the show begin.....

At about the 2 minute, 35 second mark in to watching this piece of high priced, pan in, pan out, pan in, pan out production, if you had told me to drink the purple kool-aid I would actually have done so quite willingly. I probably would have asked for an extra large glass with some crushed ice. Vodka always is a good mixer too.


All my personal feelings and contempt aside, something just isn't jiving here with this latest piece of electioneering promotional materials by the Groves campaign. Take away the teleprompter and the 8 & 1/2 minutes of scripting written by a hired gun, because we all know that Ms. Groves isn't a girl who can actually string together three of her own sentences or her own thoughts, without her human GPS. Something feels completely off about all of this. To coin an old adage, "something is rotten in Denmark".

The numbers Annette Grove's babbling on about just doesn't add up. Time to get out the abacus. I've been reading the recent auditor's report on the town and their numbers and your numbers just don't jive. Oh wait, you would be using the Groves Mathematical system of Accounting now wouldn't you.

Toss out the absolute silliness of the chatter of the Morrison Myth and what are we really watching here? Therein lays the problem.
Ms. Groves tells us that Caledon has absolutely no Planning plan whatsoever and that as our leader she'll take us back to square one and start all over. WTF? Ok, quick coopSpeak translation....let's hand Caledon's planning direction over to a whole new batch of people, consultants, players and all around developers. Oh as an after thought Mayor Grove's legacy to Caledon will be to begin to erode the protected biosphere of the Niagara Escarpment. At least that's what I heard her say at the Caesar's Palace parody of a debate.

The fact is that the town has just completed a full town wide review of our official plan and after several years of public input and studies have passed a comprehensive official plan amendment (O.P.A. 226) that conforms to the provincial policy under “Places to Grow”. In addition, the town approved Caledon’s first strategic plan, a newly updated parks and recreation master plan, a new development charges by-law, a long range capital plan, a new comprehensive zoning by-law including conformity to the Oak Ridge’s Moraine Plan and the provincial greenbelt strategy. Next term they will be implementing this body of work including a residential urban boundary expansion for Bolton. Funny, how Annette neglects to mention any of this in her blather.

Is she suggesting that we should start over or has she just forgotten what she generally voted against! Oh wait, maybe she didn't quite "understand" that vote, after all, we've seen this before from her.

Like her previous "Dialing for Votes" phone polls and that acrid pre-recorded message about what a bad mayor we've had over the past term, Annette Groves has never taken a positive step forward and actually offered us, the Caledon residents and electorate, a concrete plan or HER own true vision of what Caledon should be. Not once. Not ever. All Annette Groves has done has told us what is wrong, never once, not even pausing for a second, has she taken the time to tell us what we've, Caledon the beautiful, has done right. We must have done something right because if we hadn't why would so many developers want to build their houses in our community?

There's never been any talk about how we've been the safest or the greenest community in the province. Annette has never stopped to talk about how the Town of Caledon Economic Dept. has recently been awarded a GTAA marketing award and she's never ever given credit to the town staff for the recent successful and glowing audit for how they've managed the municipality's business. During the election process the staff and their salaries are always an easy target for the venom of the candidates and the taxpayers. That is for lazy candidates. Always an easy way to try and find an issue.

While we are counting up the dollars has anyone given any thought to the money meter that has been running on the Groves campaign? There is no way that the Groves campaign hasn't smashed open the election spending cap. Just the large signage and all those trees they used to prop them up must have cost a fortune. Plus two print pieces (with the rumour of one more to come), distribution costs, a door knocker hanger, numerous telephone solicitations, office rental, video productions, air brushing costs, dvd reproduction, news paper ads, radio blurbs oh and let's not forget about the porcetta for your office opening. We aren't even going to talk about the carbon footprint and the garbage for landfill you just created with those little purple dvd's.

As a Bolton resident, and I rarely refer to myself as a Bolton resident, as I usually say I'm a citizen of Caledon, I am very much looking forward to the Kinsmen's Debate. As far as I'm concerned this is going to be the Show Down at the OK Corral. This is an election that can be won or lost in Bolton. So to my local Boltonites I say snap out of your haze and come out to this debate. It is the one legitimate local debate for us to see what substance our local candidates can bring to us. I am looking forward to hearing from a couple of veteran incumbents, including our Mayor, on the numbers that Ms. Groves has spewed out at us in her YouTube channel.

Finally, I've just put a mention in my sidebar about the latest silliness that has defined this campaign. Playing the race card, in my opinion, is not only stupid but an absolute act of cowardice. Can't you just smell the mendacity of that act.

One week to go. Let the people speak.
___________________________________________________

Post Blog PS. You know you are doing something right when people start to
post nasty little comments. For the record, those last couple of comments have come people who've never opened up this blog before and are more than likely
just plants of a certain candidates team. Also for the record, on the Annette Groves YouTube Channel, when logged in, you can post comments or hit the thumbs up or thumbs down rating. I have been emailed by several younger members of the voting community who have told me that their comments are always removed.

3 comments:

  1. Whatever happened to the loud mouthed local politician who slugged a colleague a few years back? Oh, look, she has become a self appointed political pundit with a very nasty way of trying to make others look bad. People who live in glass houses......pity.

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  2. LMAO. Marys you just made my day. Absolutely. I don't live in a glass house and for the record, there was no slugging going on anywhere. As a matter of fact the alleged slugee and myself get along quite lovely and civilized these days. Then again, you wouldn't understand about civility when you try and depend upon a decade old incident, that nothing ever came of to try and discredit me. People such as yourself just make me want to write even more. I also write a food blog but I haven't seen any of your comments there.

    I've never considered myself a self appointed political pundit. I've been writing this blog for well over 2 years now and to the best of my knowledge this is the first time you've made your appearance here. If you don't care for my writing style, don't waste your time here. I'm quite sure Dr. Suess is more your reading capabilities.

    I welcome all comments, good or bad, even yours. Unlike your buddy the wannabe mayor who has all the comments and thumbs down wiped off her YouTube channel on a daily basis.

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  3. Can Marys tell us who "appoints" political pundits?

    ReplyDelete