...And now for something completely different: The Rants of a University Student (#33)

Ah yes. Christmas season on PEI. Snow is in the air, our anally retentive Province has opened the doors for shopping on Sunday, and our beautiful trolley-busses are sporting festive holidays boughs. Ding-ding! All aboard the shit-mobile! Meanwhile, amidst our piles of final assignments and exams and papers and labs, us students are left to ponder how big of an explosion we would have to concoct before they cancelled the remainder of classes and delayed exams for 30 or 40 years. There’s a somewhat joyous concept to consider over the festive season. By the way, just for curiosity’s sake, how damn long does it take to build a friggin Nutri-Science Building anyway? Like holy slack-ass construction Batman!
Well, on Monday Islanders had their chance to vote for a system of Proportional Representation. Did they go for it? Well, It’s Sunday evening, so my opinion is purely speculative, but my guess is: No. Part of the reason for this is because no one knows what the hell is going on, another being that old Patty Binns, a man with the foresight of a carrot, raised the bar of democracy to 60%, presumably to protect us poor voters from being represented by any party other than his own. Of course he doesn’t even have to do a damn thing if it passes anyway. But the main reason it didn’t pass, of course, is because Islanders just don’t like change. “Well yeah, no shit Ryan.” That’s why no one knows how to sort their garbage yet and why we didn’t get a 911 system until 2000. Islanders cherish their backwards and antiquated voting process: you go to the polls, you cast your ballot, your get your pint of rum and you go home. This opinion has been enunciated clearly in the letters to the editor in The Guardian over the past few weeks. These morons would have you believe that the proposed system is equivalent to that of Communist China, which is like comparing my 89-year-old grandmother to 50 Cent. Mind you, the proposed system was likely the stupidest version of Proportional Representation I have ever seen, but the fact remains that somewhere along the line we are going to need electoral change here on PEI. For example, while the rest of the country is going nuts about the Sponsorship Scandal, freaking out that the Liberals gave money and jobs to their friends, Islanders are sitting around thinking: “Yeah...on PEI, that’s called good politics.” Still, some argue that Political Patronage is a thing of the past here on the Island. Oh sure. And if you believe that I have a Little Christo’s Factory and some Polar Food stock to sell you. I’m sure it’s not coincidence that after Catherine Callbeck won a landslide in 1993 that my road was paved for the first time since 1961, nor is it by mere happenstance that every damn mailbox on our road has been blown to shit by Conservative plow operators since Binns took over in ‘96. Binnsy, by the way, has decided to stick around to run in the next Provincial election. Well good. I was wondering who was going to continue funding ridiculous business ventures and driving our economy into the ground. Ahwell. In the era of the quasi-democratic 60%+1, you get what you ask for. Or at least what Binns tells you to ask for.
Have a good one!