Welch's Gripe Juice

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with Mary Agnes Welch

Motley Screw

Can we dispense with the puritanical tsk-tsking about the couple who were schtupping/lapdancing at the Motley Crue concert? I mean, it's a Motley Crue concert. What do you expect? Hasn't anyone read The Dirt?

View Full Post | 5/02/2010 12:10 PM | 8
Manitoba a Goth kid?

Everyone keeps saying Manitoba is on the outs with its fellow western provinces – excluded from transportation talks and left out of a recent trade barrier deal. Manitoba keeps getting painted as the sullen Goth kid at the back of the class who gives everyone the silent treatment.

View Full Post | 3/02/2010 4:27 PM | 4
Wanted: Elections boss with no pride

I know the Tories love to hold up committee meetings with their crazy political theatrics, but it makes no sense for the NDP to ignore those theatrics and hire a new elections boss without the opposition.

View Full Post | 22/01/2010 5:19 PM | 5
I don't want to pay for you

I totally agreed with the sentiment in this letter from a senior citizens group angry about possible education property tax hikes, especially because most seniors haven't had kids in school for decades.

View Full Post | 13/01/2010 9:51 AM | 28
Love shacks and water mains

No gripes today. Kudos, instead.

View Full Post | 8/01/2010 11:45 AM | 2
Pink Ink Part II

I was thinking a little more about Manitoba's deficit over Christmas while I was in Edmonton. My hometown was all abuzz over the Alberta government's brilliant plans to tackle its $4 billion budget gap.

View Full Post | 29/12/2009 1:07 PM | 8
Pink Ink

People kept calling the province’s latest financial report “a sea of red ink” yesterday.

View Full Post | 23/12/2009 8:14 AM | 2
Do not go gentle, Lil

I know everyone is shaking their heads at the moderately preposterous idea of Lillian Thomas running for mayor. She’s been a councillor for two decades and she holds her seat easily but she’s best known for being marginal and screechy.

View Full Post | 16/12/2009 12:25 PM | 6
Ghettoization

APTN did an in-depth bit last night on the idea of an Aboriginal school division and had a really good interview with Prof. Brock Pitawanakwat from the U of W’s Aboriginal Governance department.

View Full Post | 8/12/2009 3:15 PM | 8
Whistlebungle

If I was a whistleblower sitting on explosive evidence of government mismanagement, I would just pull the covers over my head and go into eternal hibernation.

View Full Post | 25/11/2009 9:44 AM | 11
Just say yes, Mr. Schroeder

Sometimes Tory Leader Hugh McFadyen gets a little too lawyerly at committee hearings, wasting time trying to get obvious stuff on the public record, like he’s deposing someone for a civil suit.

View Full Post | 19/11/2009 12:29 PM | 4
Cranky town

We all just got the program for the Association of Manitoba Municipalities’ annual convention in Brandon later this month. That sounds fairly routine and usually is, except when the towns debate a new deal-style sales tax like they did last time.

View Full Post | 12/11/2009 10:54 AM | 2
Concordia scuttlebutt

Add a guy named Jagdev Buttar to the list of rumoured candidates for Gary Doer’s old seat in Concordia.

View Full Post | 10/11/2009 10:31 AM | 1
Tiny defence of the WRHA

I can’t argue with a single word Policy Frog says about the confused way the WRHA has communicated and delivered its H1N1 vaccination program.

View Full Post | 5/11/2009 12:19 PM | 4
Tiny bit more cabinet spec

Yellow Snow has made some very reasonable cabinet shuffle predictions. I specifically agree that Stan Struthers would be a good fit in Ag and Nancy Allan in edumacation.

View Full Post | 23/10/2009 11:55 AM | 4
That didn't take long

About an hour after Greg Selinger was voted the new leader of the NDP, the Tories issued an e-mail blast slagging the guy.

View Full Post | 19/10/2009 7:53 AM | 14
Delegate debacle

This quote from the Selinger camp in
Bruce and Larry’s story
View Full Post | 16/10/2009 11:35 AM | 21
Peep at the lameness

The Doer government just issued a press release about how it’s got a new program to fund peepholes for seniors.

View Full Post | 7/10/2009 3:48 PM | 3
MYND

Last night’s Manitoba Young New Democrats delegate selection meeting in the bowels of the U of W was pretty neat, if only because the meeting actually started on time, the votes were counted before midnight and there was some yelling.

View Full Post | 7/10/2009 11:47 AM | 2
Indo Outrage

Here’s an interesting update on last night’s big NDP delegate selection meeting in Inkster: Despite his barn-burner of a speech, subtly accusing some NDPers of, at best, being snotty toward new members and, at worst, being a bit racist, leadership hopeful Steve Ashton didn’t actually pick up many delegates.

View Full Post | 1/10/2009 10:31 AM | 3
Ride the Pony

Doer is widely expected to attend tonight's delegate selection meeting in Concordia, one of the 13 Super Thursday meetings that might give us a better snapshot of each candidate's support. The Concordia meeting will be the first of many Doer love-ins, I bet. How do I know? The event is being catered by the Pony Corral.

View Full Post | 24/09/2009 9:17 AM | 0
Shrink-ocracy

Yellow Snow made some interesting observations about the fatness of NDP party rolls. Recently, a longtime NDPer was telling me about memberships in the Schreyer/Pawley years – 25,000, and the unwritten rule was that no general election would be called unless the membership list topped that. Same in Saskatchewan’s NDP. No vote unless there were 35,000 members.

View Full Post | 23/09/2009 9:59 AM | 3
Swan's song

Amid the bedlam of last night's delegate selection meeting, there were a couple of neat things. At first, one neat thing was the informality of it all. It was kind of earthy and grassrootsy -- which can degenerate into anarchy pretty fast.

View Full Post | 21/09/2009 4:10 PM | 3
Thoughts on Gay-gate

Stu Murray, the former head of the provincial Tories and the new boss of the Canadian Human Rights Museum is having a rough start in his new job. He's come under fire from gay and lesbian groups for voting against extending adoption rights back in the day, and not having a particularly well-prepared explanation for how that jibes with being an international advocate for human rights. In a speedy bit of damage control, it sounds like Murray and the human rights museum folks are meeting ASAP with anyone remotely gay to smooth things over, as well they should.

View Full Post | 20/09/2009 10:30 AM | 10
Oswald for Preem

Enlarge Image

Manitoba Health Minister Theresa Oswald (in red) answers a question from the media at a meeting of provincial, territorial and federal health ministers in Winnipeg today. (MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

What the heck happened to Health Minister Theresa Oswald? She’s always been a fairly smart and capable minister, but she often comes across a little tentative and jargon-y in scrums and in Question Period.

View Full Post | 17/09/2009 5:06 PM | 7