Vote local is the main lesson one should take from this IMO. The particrates are all corrupted and will destroy this country to attain power. Don't vote for the particrates IMO.

I always liked and respected Bill until he destroyed the reform party, which resulted in the liberal sweep with no opposition in BC a few elections back. I thought that was dirty and he never has explained himself on that one.

Who cares what someone who is generally considered a weasel and a thief thinks about anything? Didnt this guy almost single-handidly wipe an entire political party of the map? Gotta love the fact that his new book is going to be carried by a plant store. Almost like no bookstore is interested in carrying this crap.

I think most bookstores will carry his book.
The reason the plant store carries it is because the store is owned by friends of Bill.
At one time he owned the Art Knapp franchise.
I'm looking forward to reading his book.
He's a great guy, I know him personally.

Did ya know Bill Vanderzalm's library burned down? Burned both books and he didn't even get a chance to colour the second one.

Harbinger, you'r mixed up with Jack Layton.

http://www.billvanderzalm.com/bv/

Really nice guy. Looked like Stephen Harper. Like an Angel reincarnated. Can't go by looks folks.
Actually I didn't mind Bill V but Harper scares me. He is the best manipulator I have ever encountered and he fools the masses because Canadians are so darn nice!

Why is it that this statement keeps coming up? Harper scares me?? You scare easy--What did Chretien do to you--make you feel warm and fuzzy?

Born in BC said "Didn't this guy almost single-handedly wipe an entire political party of the map?"
Actually the Socreds are alive and well, except the are called BC Liberals. Remember this is "Liberal in Name Only" or LINO. The BC Liberals are a coalition of Socreds and Liberals. Some of the cabinet ministers are former Socred members. No they are still alive and still messing up this province with Campbell at the helm.

Bill Vander Zalm certainly didn't "single-handidly almost wipe a politcal party off the map, " Born in BC. What did that was largely the "sour-grapes" attitude of some of his former Cabinet colleagues who lost the Social Credit Party leadership to him, and continually tried to undermine his efforts as Premier.

That, and the fact that after the original BC Social Credit "League" took in most of the then BC Liberal Party caucus before Bill Bennett won election as Premier, the new BC Social Credit "Party" was really the BC Liberal Party under a different name. The original, genuine, "free-enterprise" ideas of Social Credit were lost, supplanted gradually by "global capitalist" ones

Vander Zalm made his mistakes, too, but all in all he had more good ideras than bad ones, and for an ex-Liberal, wasn't too bad a Premier. Hell of a lot better than what we've had since, and especially now.

If ANY other so-called Socred had won the 1986 leadership contest instead of Vander Zalm the NDP would've wiped out Social Credit in the election that followed.

Bill Vander Zalm really only made one big mistake. He should've called an election about a year sooner than when he was forced to resign. Right when he started getting criticism from inside his Party. Rita Johnston repeated that mistake when she replaced him . If she'd gone to election the day after she won as Leader and Premier over Grace McCarthy and the others who were vying for the job, she'd have won it hands down. And the "decade of despair" might have been avoided, as well as the "Campbell catastrophe" that followed.

BTW, astro, the BC Social Credit Party still exists. Not ALL its members devolved into, or went back to calling themselves, BC Liberals. There is a party president, Carol Woolsey, who ran in the last election for MLA in one of the Vancouver area ridings, as well as an executive, and members and supporters from throughout the Province.

You can barely compare Social Credit under VanderZalm with the Social Credit that built this Province.
The Zalm was the first to start the disassembly of everything that WAC Bennett built. The founders of the party must be rolling in their graves to see BC Rail and parts of Hydro spun off with no benefit to anyone.

No, I disagree, cryptkeeper, Bill Bennett initiated the process when he hired the likes of Norman Spector and David Emerson, and began to conduct politics here like the "Big Blue Machine" did in Ontario.

Instead of being a Premier like his dad, who would travel the Province quietly in between elections listening to what people were telling him, Bill Bennett went around with his 'spin-doctors' in a flashy big bus, looking for photo-ops and ways to manage the media to get them to tell us what his "handlers" wanted us to hear.

Bill Vander Zalm was much more a "populist" in the WAC Bennett style, but he didn't have WAC's intimate knowledge of finance. Some of his ideas were real good, but he didn't have the financial accumen to make them a successful reality.

And others, like going down the 'privatization' road just because that was then in vogue elsewhere, didn't bring the desired results to the benefit of the BC public.

One of the very few things which were in tune with the original ideas of "Social Credit" that came about during Bill Bennett's time in office was the distribution of the 5 free BCRIC shares, to every man woman and child in the Province.

The idea itself had great merit. But the way the Government handled it, by making BCRIC into a conglomerate almost impossible to manage, instead of de-centralising the components into separate companies, and then distributing shares in each of them to us, doomed it from the start. If they had done it properly most of those shares would've been paying dividends to us in many of the years since they were issued. Instead of being worthless scraps of paper, as they are now.