The Stupid Season

As if I need another reason to be grateful I live in Canada rather than that swirling nightmare to the south (let’s face it, while your average United Station is one of the best people you are ever going to meet, politically that place is a mess), I am now and forever thankful that the Canadian national political season only lasts about six weeks, start to finish.

Granted, six weeks of lying and babbling stupidity is hard to take, but at least it’s only six weeks. Another good thing is that being way out in the western most province (as I am) we don’t really have to put up with the national “leaders” of any of the parties slithering around here much. This is a good thing since to get the slime-trail stains out of everything costs a bundle. The local candidates are quite annoying enough but you know that right after the election they will disappear until the next election so you won’t have to see them for a couple of years, usually not even on the news.

The thing that really bothers me the most about election campaigns, even beyond the lying, the false promises and the self-induced mindlessness, are the campaign signs. They sprout up like rancid mushrooms all over the place and frankly I would rather see cigarette butts and used condoms littering the streets. The signs that some people put in their own yards are fine. People tend to litter their yards with all sorts of junk, garden gnomes, plastic flamingos, wire unicorn statues, and there are those people who never clean up after their dogs, and while political signs are far worse, they are on private property. The signs that bug me are those that are just place out for blocks on end by some political drone or another (remember? Self-induced mindlessness?) Yesterday I saw this, where several signs had been jabbed into the ground for blocks on end, including into the grounds of a school. This is totally offside, and is just one more reason I would like a bylaw against political signs on anything but private property. I propose that for any political sign put on any public property at all by any political party, or in the name of any political party, there would be a fine of $1000 per sign per week (or any portion thereof). A fine to be paid for by the party the sign represents.

Is this an idea just ripe for political parties to take advantage of each other, running up huge fines for each other? I sure is, and that is one of the best parts of this idea. Anybody who actually depends on the honesty of politicians or their minions needs a reality smack anyway, and this could turn out to be a decent spectator sport, watching the political parties screwing each other over for a change. So, how would we pay for the extra bylaw officers we would need to monitor all this? I suspect that the fines would take care of that, with money left over to put towards important things (you know, health care, education, the sorts of things that politicians talk about but don’t really care about. Oh, is that a touch cynical? Right after someone explains to me where the national child-care system is I will agree that this is merely cynicism. However both leading political parties have been grunting at each other about it for decades now, and both have been in power during that time and neither has done anything about it. Cynical? I don’t think so). Honestly, if this plan doesn’t create a win/win situation then I don’t know what will.

Anyway… Humouroceros