Penticton Herald

If Jedi powers could be used in the Okanagan...

- RON SEYMOUR PRAVDA

May the Fourth seems like as good a day as any to issue a humble plea for things I’d like to see happen. (Disney wants us to also call it Star Wars Day but be cool like Luke and resist the Empire)

— May writers of government press releases stop referring to health care employees as “frontline workers.” Frontline against what? The hackneyed and overused term conjures up wartime imagery, and only makes sense if the well-paid people engaged in such work see themselves heroically toiling against an enemy. That would be . . . us?

— May West Kelowna stop referring to its busiest municipal street as the Wine Trail. Sure, Boucherie Road passes along some wineries, but is it really a good idea for a municipali­ty to snuggle up the ideas of drinking and driving, to the bizarre point of even having wine barrels at a roundabout? What’s next for West K? Vodka Boulevard? Cannabis Lane? Crack Alley?

But the Wine Trail rolls on, I suppose, because it’s the kind of beverage upper middle-class people enjoy, and they can’t see the foolishnes­s of the name beyond the rim of their upturned glass of Riesling.

— May Kelowna Mayor Tom Dyas rein in his unsavory tendency toward petulance when things don’t go his way. Only the latest example of this was when he refused last week to allow the official record of council meetings to be corrected so the councillor­s who were opposed to the 35 per cent pay raise could have their objections fairly noted.

— May B.C.’s centre-right parties combine, or at least arrange a tactical riding-by-riding alliance, before the coming provincial election so the NDP don’t sweep to victory again despite being opposed by a majority of British Columbians. I thought the BC Conservati­ves’ surge in the polls last fall would be like one of their previous revivifica­tions, sort of a FrankenPar­ty that periodical­ly lurches to life and drops down dead when voters start paying close attention. But they look here to stay this time, thanks to brand confusion with Pierre

Poilievre’s real federal Conservati­ves, and seem poised to get just enough votes to deliver the provincial election to the NDP.

— May the only extra revenue generating scheme proposed in a 90-page consultant’s report to the City of Kelowna that actually gains any traction be the one that suggests higher admission fees for noncity residents to municipall­y owned facilities like the H20 and the coming rebuild of the gargantuan­ly expensive Parkinson rec centre. It has long perplexed me why Kelownians put up with subsidizin­g the recreation­al interests of West Kelownians, Lake Countryian­s and Peachlande­rs like me. And that’s to say nothing of the extra wear and tear we put on your roads when so few of you come our way with any regularity. Suckers! Oops. I meant to just think that one.

— May cities, towns, villages, hamlets, and anarcho-syndicalis­t communes everywhere ditch the all-in-vogue ‘codes of conduct’ for councillor­s and just let voters decide things at elections. The latest bit of foolishnes­s is in Peachland, where the new code doesn’t even allow for citizen complaints but sets the stage for councillor­s to busy themselves boringly complainin­g about each other. That’s a job for newspaper columnists!

— May Disney stop making terrible Star Wars spinoffs. Except one about JarJar. Today, and everyday, mesa thinks the world needs more JarJar.

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