Wow! She must be hearing footsteps.Very rare for her to get off her duff and actually show up anywhere past Hope!
I thought she was still sleeping in her office in Victoria!
What waste of time she turned out to be!
Ain't the NDP'ers proud?
I wonder when the party will devour her?

Where have you been, Andyfreeze? Carol James has been touring all of the the province ever since she was elected leader of the NDP, and is a major factor in its revival of fortunes. She brought the NDP from 3 MLAs to the current force that Campbell is afraid to face in the Legislature. Just because the bloodbath approach to provincial politics gets the headlines does not mean that the thoughtful, considered approach can't be effective.

Many in BC wanted a different way to do politics - well, Carol James is it.

She should go and sell some houses in the states and then we wouldn't have to listen to her.

Yes your right, you don't see the liberals making an effort to travel up there!

Actually ammonra,the "revival"of the NDP has nothing to do with Carole James whatsoever.
It has to do with the public's general dislike for Gordon Campbell, who by the way,is also strangely absent in the public eye.
I still think she is the most ineffective leader the NDP has ever had, and I am betting they WILL give her the kiss of death at the next leadership convention.
As much as I would like to see someone de-throne Campbell,she just doesn't have it.
I doubt very much that if the NDP really wants to revive the party,they will enter an election with her at the helm.
But hey,time will tell!
:-)

...and I also do not believe that the people of B.C. will elect a Premier of the female gender any time soon!
Sad but true,and I bet the NDP knows that.

I hope Carol James will be the NDP leader for the next decade or so.

"Yes you're right, you don't see the liberals making an effort to travel up there!"

Liberal MLA Pat Bell's visits to "up there" and his meetings with Canfor must have escaped the attention of those who wish he had not gone at all.

Obviously Andyfreeze doesn't know very much about how NDPers felt after the crushing defeat by the Liberals. The party was completely demoralised. Nobody wanted to do anything for a long time.

Except Carol James, who went from community to community encouraging and leading, in the real meaning of the term, so that when the next election came around the members were willing and ready to fight like banshees to unseat Campbell's mob. The results are history, and even though you may think she did nothing, ytou are absolutely wrong.

Indeed, the success of the NDP was partly due to Campbell's incompetence, lies, drunkenness and so on, but Carol James was a major factor in getting the NDP to fight and take advantage of it.

You comment that the voters are sexist is problematic. I don't know whether it is still true. It certainly has been in the past. I am not aware of any underground movement to remove Carol, but then I am not as active in the party as I have been in the past.

There is a desire to become more aggressive about the continuous Liberal screw ups and to publicise them more, especially as the accusations in the Basi, Basi, Virk affair makes clear the extent of the corruption at the highest levels, if they are true, of course. Not to mention Campbell's obvious and blatant contempt for the Supreme Court of Canada.

As for Bell's visits with Canfor: sweet FA was the result as far as I can tell!

Ammonra. Its about time we stopped referring to Gordon Campbell as a drunk because he was caught driving under the influence of alcohol.


Its not the driving that makes you a drunk it is the amount of alcohol you drink. Take away the driving infraction and you have a person who had to many drinks. I suggest to you that most people in this Province at one time or another in their lifetime have had too much to drink. If we were to use your inane reasoning then all these people would be drunks. It time to back off this drunk **BS** and get on to something else.

For those who might be interested the Liberal Party in Canada, especially Federally is nothing more than a bunch of CCF, NDP, Socialists. This is how the political parties line up in this country.

Liberals Left
NDP Further Left
Green Left Again
Bloc Que Left of Further Left.

Its a waste of time for the NDP to be ragging on the Liberals because they have been stealing each others platform for years.

What this Province needs is a good dose of Social Credit, or Conservative Government, and get rid of these tax and spend Liberals, NDPer's

Fortunately Canada still has free speech, and in my book a Premier of a province who breaks the laws of a foreign state by driving while drunk IS most definitely referred to as one. He is stuck with it for the rest of his life, whether you or he likes it or not. That is part of the penalty he pays, and part of the penalty all his supporters must pay for making such unqualified excuses for him, even when doing so completely undermined the anti-drunk driving programs conducted in this province for years before and since.

Still, I obviously hit a really tender nerve.

As for the Liberals being on the left, let me remind you that many of Campbell's mob ARE ex-socred MLAs from the government of Van der Zalm.

You would be suprised how much I know about the NDP ammonra.
I supporedt the NDP for years until I got smart and realized they were going nowhere except in the hole with lousy leaders and ideas!
But at the same time,I am also disgusted with the Liberals under Gordon Campbell and I figure one day in the near future we will all get to see just how bad he and his gang of thugs really are!
So unfortunately,I will have to agree with Palopu.
We need a whole new party and new policy fast before this province REALLY falls apart!
The biggest problem I see is the lack of accountability for politicans in the province.
They are out of control and we let them create this perfect,lucrative, little world for themselves!
Now we have to figure out how to get them all back under control!

Ammonra.

The fact of the matter is you are splitting hairs and seem to refuse to face the fact.

Are you saying that if an individual has been drinking and he is pulled over by the police and registers over .08 and is charged he is a drunk, while another person who has been drinking, but didnt get pulled over and drove home is not a drunk.

Show me the difference between the two situations. A drunk is a drunk. Either you are or your not. I suggest to you that using your way of determining who is a drunk, every person who attends a party and drinks too much, is a drunk, regardless of whether they drive or not.\

Using your determination, I would suggest that half the people in this town are drunks.

Everybody makes a mistake now and then.

After having made a mistake, a person may learn from it and become a better human being and never do it again.

After having paid a fine and having been subjected to public humiliation it is not reasonable to keep despising a person for the rest of his life.

Hopefully, ammonra, you will not end up one day in a similar situation and then act surprised if people (who hate like you do) will never forget and forgive you for something that you are truly sorry for and have promised to never let happen again.

I think its about time to stop flogging the issue for the sake of cheap political gain.

To Palopu, I am not saying anything other than one of the reasons for the NDP gains during the last election was Campbell's drunken driving. The hair splitting about drunk versus drunk is yours.

Really diplomat get a grip. I don't hate anybody, I just argue forcefully. Please keep my comments in context. My point was made in the context of why the NDP made such an incredible comeback during the last election. Campbell's drunk driving event did have something to do with that whether you want to admit it or not. It is also a matter of public record and he is stuck with it for the rest of his life. That may not be fair, but that's life.

For your information I am not so much offended by his being drunk (and I do not for an instant believe that was the first time) as I am offended that he did it in a foreign country and humiliated Canada and British Columbia.

However, if that were the end of it I would have forgotten it by now. Instead, he refused to accept responsibility and got his supporters to undermine the RCMP and MADD anti-drunk driving programs just to save his political skin. Even the Attorney General of the time publicly made excuses for him and I find that completely unforgivable, since his legal responsibility is to support the law not make self-serving excuses for the Premier. Those excuses put back the campaigns against drunk driving in BC at least five years and that really is inexcusable. It is that which I find most offensive about the affair.

As to me being in the same situation, I rarely drink, and only one beer when I do. However, if I did I would deserve the same treatment, wouldn't I?

If you don't like the reference to the drunk driving charge in my second comment, then just change it to:

"Indeed, the success of the NDP was partly due to Campbell's incompetence, lies and so on, but Carol James was a major factor in getting the NDP to fight and take advantage of it."

Nobody objected to those comments.

"We need a whole new party and new policy fast before this province REALLY falls apart!"

We had two attempts at that - PDA after Howe Street removed Gordo W and installed Gordo C. The some ultra right wing group that did not even get off the ground.

Let's face it, BC is way out there when it comes to weird parties.

What's in a name? They're all politicians. At times I am thinking that the US system has some merits. A Democrat is a Democrat and a Republican a Republican whether they are occupying municipal, State or Federal seats.

BTW, Mackenzie is in Bell's riding. I wonder if that had anything to do with him being there?

Ammonra, I wrote:"...in a similar situation." I did not write:"...in the same situation."

Drinking and driving is not the only thing that can get a person into trouble.

Please read my comments more carefully and don't be too offended, I am sure only BC and Canada noticed for a few days Mr. Campbell's transgression.The rest of the world didn't care much one way or the other. Mr. Campbell's hosts should have done a better job of keeping him overnight at their house, where he had been invited to a party and where they allowed him to have too many drinks.

Gordon may not have realized that he was over the limit and at least much of the moral and 100% of the legal blame can be assigned to the hosts who failed to take his car keys away from him and put him up for the night to sober up.

At the very least they should have called a cab for him.

You may consider getting a grip on your assessment of what actually happened there and move out of the past and on to the present.

I repeat, diplomat, I was mostly offended by what happened in BC afterwards, not the events themselves. You are quite correct about his host.

I personally don't allow myself to become offended by things that other people do to other people or to themselves. I have no control over that.

Just the same, if Mr. Campbell had resigned after that episode it would have been applauded by many, like the MADD organization and all those who are aware of the often tragic consequences of driving while intoxicated.

Since elected officials and others who are leading their lives under public scrutiny are thought to have the additional responsibility of trying to set good examples and be role models for the rest of the people his resignation would have been applauded by me too, although with a certain degree of sadness and disappointment.

He chose to tough it out and he was even re-elected.

Life goes on.