Harper: A Skinflint

[Oleg Bach]

My only question is who the hell uses the word "skinflint" anymore?

Real old school guys and I do not mean modern retro. I would estimate the person you uses such a term as about 65 to 70 - middle class - better because Aunt Martha's adopted son who looks like the product of a back alley grudge affair..inherited the family fortune and cut him out.

[Argus]

The main point is: why are we spending even $200 million on these summits? Does Harper, the son of an accountant and a guy who stays at Super 8, get this? Does he know the consequences of this boondoggle for his political career?

Here's what Harper knows. The only alternative to hosting these events every now and then is to drop out of them. If Canada quit the G8 and G20 because it couldn't afford to host the summits it would be an international laughingstock, and Canadians, who are DEEPLY self-conscious about their national image, about how others see them, would be humiliated and furious. He'd be condemned from every corner of the land.

You might think we could have done this cheaper by sticking it out in the boonies, but the G20 is simply too big an event for that. As one of the local commentators pointed out the other night, we couldn't have held it in Ottawa because we don't have a big enough convention centre. No one in the boonies has room to house thousands and thousands of officials plus the press.

[ToadBrother]

I think he'll plummet in the polls, except maybe not - since so many people like me have no elsewhere to go. Jim Prentice, Maxime Bernier even, please - get involved.

If he does, it won't be for this. The media has been trying to hype this up, and no doubt there were plenty enough bad spending decisions (you get that many people trying to work through something as complex as security, government or private, and money will be burned).

To my mind, I don't know why they don't just hold these meetings at airports. Build a big-ass hotel in every G8 or G20 country at the largest airport (most have them anyways), fence it in with a big goddamned wall designed specifically to hold back the angry hoards of professional protestors, place really big ass guns and missiles in it so that if anything that can't be identified tries to fly within fifty miles, it's going to end up being flaming bits of metal, glass and plastic, and be done with it. No one in any of the cities that hosts these things actually wants them there, it disrupts traffic, causes general chaos and leaves an incredibly big mess.

Edited June 10, 2010 by ToadBrother