Politician vs. entrepreneur

[occasional thoughts]

We of the so-called westside are "privileged" to have a local twice-weekly, the Westside Weekly. Our MLA is Ben Stewart, a so-called B.C. Liberal of course and proprietor of Quail's Gate Winery, who writes a periodic column. Recently he was railing against splitting the centre-right vote and letting the NDP in down the middle, and being quite insulting to centre-left people of B.C. who are supposedly in a plurality if not majority in the province at the moment.

Now, Ben's OK and his winery is beautiful albeit a tad expensive, and I'm not going to boycott it and him just because of his political ranting. Yet. But it occurred to me as to how can Ben the politician so publicly rail against such a large bloc of Ben the entrepreneur's potential customers. Are Loyal Opposition (NDP) supporters so vile, so unworthy, such disloyal British columbians that he wouldn't want them to drink his wine? I think not. Would he like them to rail against him in a boycott, whether overt or covert, of his products. I think not. It's just politics, you say. I say its emblematic of what's rotten with politics.

[Glacier]

That tells me that Ben Stewart is more concerned with the political future of the province than he is with his own financial gain.

The BC Liberals and the BC Conservatives are going for the same pool of voters (right leaning ones), so it makes sense that he would state the obvious as a means of trying to stop the bleeding to the BC Conservatives.