The good news is that Gold River is a nice place to live. It might be nicer if there were more jobs to be had, but it is pretty nice nevertheless. Clean air, plenty of good water and not much crime except for the usual collection of boozers and yahoos who would probably be road kill if they were living anywhere else. The bad news is that the world on the other side of the mountains gets worse every day.

One recent item that crossed my desk is the news that the B.C. government has introduced a bill that will effectively kill off local democratic control, and also allow the Cabinet and individual ministers to ignore their own regulations whenever they see fit. It is called the Significant Project Streamlining Act. It gives ministers extraordinary powers to overrule provincial laws and regulations and local laws and regulations if they are perceived to be “constraints” to significant development projects. It makes a mockery out of our legislative form of representative democracy by taking the ultimate power of decision making away from the people through their representatives, and placing it in the hands of a select few people in the executive branch. It is the work of an arrogant and contemptuous government whose sole purpose is to transfer as much of the province’s wealth as they can as payback to their high rolling campaign contributors.

This Act is but one more episode in a series of attacks upon the people of this province and their communities. The downloading of police costs to small communities is in the offing, now conveniently postponed until after the next election, but not dead. The restricting of local government’s rights to regulate farms and fish farms was forced on the province despite the opposition of the provinceâe(TM)s municipalities. And games are continuing to be played with public assets like BC Hydro despite widespread popular support to leave them alone. Meanwhile, our elected Members of the Legislative Assembly say nothing to defend us, and instead sing from song sheets written and approved by an administration that is becoming more like a dictatorship than a democracy.

And B.C. is not the only place where this trend is frighteningly obvious. Just look south of the border where another convicted drunk driver is at the helm of the greatest single power on the planet. Our premier and the U.S. president share more than their mutual affinity for a combination of cars and booze. They are both arrogant, self righteous and dismissive of public opinion. They are also both leading their domains into the cesspool. Fortunately for us our provincial government has neither the military nor the authority to start a war, otherwise some us would probably be dying somewhere now for one of Gordon’s fantasies.

Bush’s wars are not going well. The old one in Afghanistan, the one where we did bail him out, isn’t getting any better, at least if you are not in the opium business. Warlords are fighting, poppies are flourishing once again, and the Taliban are on the comeback trail. Aid workers are pulling out because it is too dangerous, and the president of the country is derisively known as the Mayor of Kabul because his authority doesn’t go much farther. Unfortunately for us we have a lot of good soldiers at risk there. Soldiers that should be home defending Canada.

And in Iraq, Bush is in cow pies up to his kneecaps and looking for a way to cut and run without looking like he cut and ran. The U.S. death toll has passed 400 and is climbing daily. The wounded number in the thousands and we are not even counting the Iraqis who got the double whammy of first suffering under Saddam, then getting blown to bits by George. Recently General John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, has been quoted as saying that it was “beyond my imagination” that Saddam Hussein had planned for a guerrilla war prior to the fall of Baghdad. Duh? Is he pulling our leg or were they really that stupid when they started this war?

What I know for sure is that I am happy to be living on this side of the mountains today, but I worry about the future and the mess that our grandchildren will inherit when the likes of Bush and Campbell are through