They know they’re worth it. The NDP members of the legislature know they don’t get paid enough.

Since getting elected, they don’t see their families much anymore. School plays and soccer games are pretty much a thing of the past.

When they go to Victoria, people complain they never see them in the local community anymore. When they come home, people say they should be in Victoria taking care of the people’s business.

They know their jobs are worth more than they currently get paid. They just can’t bring themselves to admit it. Because admitting it comes with a political cost.
Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t change my name when I got married. Nor did my husband want me to.

I used to joke that, if I changed it, I wouldn’t be able to re-use my lawn signs in the next election.

That explanation was accurate, but it was far from the whole truth.

The truth is I didn’t change my name when I got married because changing it seemed to me like giving up part of my identity and adopting that of someone else.

I felt like I would lose some of my hard-won independence by bearing my husband’s brand and telling the world that I belonged to him now.

And a tradition that requires women, but not men, to change their names seems to me patently unfair.

If changing one’s name symbolizes an eternal joining, then why do only women do it?
Read the rest of this entry »

The B.C. Teachers Federation has never been a big fan of a teacher disciplinary registry.

It doesn’t much like the idea that the public should have access to information about teachers who have been disciplined for misconduct, except in the most serious cases. Vice-president Irene Lanzinger was quoted as saying last month that a broad public registry is “just an invasion of people’s privacy.”

But ever since the government introduced its new legislation to establish a registry, the BCTF has been strangely, unsettlingly quiet about the issue.
Read the rest of this entry »