A year ago, my mother had a brain tumour removed. Her recovery went well, but the tumour ultimately took her life.

The medical staff were as busy as hell, but she never lacked for excellent care.

The one thing they couldn’t do was get her out of the hospital quickly. She languished in bed for three weeks after her neurosurgeon declared she should go.

But moving her out wasn’t their job. It was the job of the hospital bureaucrats.
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Ever wonder what happens to all that information your grocery store collects about you? The information they glean every time they swipe your club card at the register?

Depending on where you shop, it probably gets sold to private companies.

Your supermarket tempts you to use that card with free wine glasses or maybe travel points. Then, they sell your information for big bucks to data brokers who use it to figure out almost everything about you — including who you vote for.
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If you don’t like bias in your newspaper, stop reading now. This is a column. It’s chock-full of bias. It’s supposed to be.

Stories are a different animal. Most of the stories you’ll see in the newspaper today were written by reporters whose job it is to state the facts.

They don’t openly declare their views. If their bias sneaks in, as it often does, it’s through the adjectives they use or the people they choose to quote. That makes their biases hard to spot.

You should have no such difficulty when you’re reading a column.

Columnists get paid to express opinions. They don’t shy away from saying what they think. In fact, if you can’t spot a bias in a column, its writer has failed you.
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B.C. got no new representation in the cabinet after Stephen Harper shuffled it this week.

Jay Hill, from Prince George-Peace River, got promoted to a secretary of state, but it doesn’t put him in cabinet.

Hill didn’t even get any new duties with the promotion. Just a new title, a bigger paycheque and a chauffeur.

That news got me thinking about two things.

First, a secretary of state gig sounds pretty sweet. An extra $53,000 a year with no new responsibilities is nice work, if you can get it.

Second, it sure would be nice to have some more B.C. clout around that table this year. We’re going to need it.
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