Thursday, September 22, 2011

A NorthVan Izzy Stone To Call Our Own?

DeepMiningTheDatabases
HeadLampShiningBrightVille

In case you haven't noticed, NVG over at the Blog Borg Collective is doing some really great work combing through publicly available documents online and is pulling out some really nice nuggets.

Like, say, the fact that Kevin Falcon's travel expense account went through the roof just as the HST gov't counter-offensive went into overdrive:

"Christy Clark was sworn in as Premier on March 15, 2011, Kevin Falcon as Finance Minister soon afterwards.

For the new Finance Minister:
Travel Expenses Paid (per month) were:

$169.82 in April;
$1,550.51 in May;
$1,408.24 in June;
$11,289.16 in July;
August we'll just have to wait and see...."

There's more like that if you just scroll on down the page over at NVG's place.


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I.F. Stone was a master public data miner, first class, back before there were either inner or outer Tubz to go down, or up in, or, whatever....


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3 comments:

North Van's Grumps said...

Kevin had a busy month of July, flying all over BC, flying outside of the Province and flying outside of Canada, which according to the protocol at the Legislature.... all flights made by an MLA and/or Deputy Ministers, outside of the Province must be made known to the Speaker of the House.

Which set off bells, alarm bells, from the times of Campbell being out of country during the raids on the legislature and his being arrested by Hawaii Five Oh...No!

The BC Liberals must keep the Speaker busy and wouldn't that be a great one to check out for Travel Expenses......

RossK said...

You go NVG!

(thanks)

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BC Mary said...

Good going, NVG.

And RossK, a million thanks for backing me up. When I said, on my blog, "Does anybody else get the feeling that Gordon Campbell wrote the U.K. Prime Minister's speech to our parliament yesterday?" ... well, I was halfway joking.

But YOU found out that Gordo had actually snuck into town (Ottawa) and was there to meet with Prime Minister Cameron ...

... and for some reason, journalist Rosemary Barton chatted him up but didn't ask the questions we're all dying to know: was he there ("in the establishment I frequent") for a drink? or two? and suchlike.

And nobody saw him in/around Ottawa, apparently. Hmmm. Was he walking around with a brown paper bag over his head, or what.
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