Is BC Premier Gordon Campbell a monkey?

The BC Liberals are in the news again. This time they want a pay-increase, for themselves that is. And not a little one either:

The proposed pay increases would see an MLA's annual salary rise from $76,100 to $98,000.

Indeed, close to two times the minimum wage, on top of an already pretty decent income. But wait, the premier gets a pay raise too:

The premier would receive a 54-per-cent raise, boosting his annual salary from $121,100 to $186,200.

No wonder this doesn't go over well with a lot of people. And when I say a lot of people, I mean a lot of people. In BC the average full-time wage is $38,500 and so I'm sure there are many who will question why their tax dollars will be spend on already high wages.

You've got to give credit to Gordon Campbell; he played it smart. He didn't want to be seen as someone would be asking for a pay raise, so he hired an "independent panel" ("friends" that would approve his position) to do the work for him; obfuscating and delegating, all with one stone!

Unfortunately people found out about the panel's "slight" problem. NDP Leader Carole James:

The idea echoes the sentiment from a correspondent who suggested the reason the pay package was so rich is because the panelists were so well-off.

Sue Paish is a lawyer, a partner in her firm named one of Canada's "100 Most Powerful Women" a couple of years ago.

Josiah Wood spent a dozen years on the bench before quitting to become a partner in one of the oldest law firms in the country.

And Dr. Sandra Robinson is a professor at the University of British Columbia.

As my correspondent put it: "The panel was not in any sense independent, it was composed entirely of rich people."

Not that the Globe and Mail was bothered by this rich-people bias; they just ask another rich guy, professor Norman Ruff, who had the intelligence to say the following:

If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. I believe that," Prof. Ruff said. "I don't begrudge the MLAs decent pay.

So, finally, thanks to the professor, we all learnt a lesson here. Gordon Campbell is a monkey. The pay for MLAs in BC has been substandard, and THATS why we have these idiots in our government! Thank you, professor Ruff, for pointing that out.

Given the monkey analogy, the pay raise (if pushed through) will of course have to wait for the next governing body: Monkeys don't deserve a pay raise, or do they? They only need peanuts. Peanuts and martinis, that's more than enough.

- Times Colonist
- Paul Willcocks