If anyone is following what is happening in British Columbia (BC), Canada right now then they will probably have a sick feeling in their stomach as they tell you all about it.
We have had a lying, backstabbing, and greedy party in power for the past 12 years. A party that chose a weasel as their leader just because she is a woman. She has no experience or education and was thrust to a leadership role simply because they thought a woman would get the vote... and they were right. To clarify, before you start pointing your feminist guns at me, I am fully in support of a woman being a leader. Some of my criteria is that anyone who becomes a leader is competent and not a backstabbing liar. I am a humanist, work in a field dominated by women, and think that I am an example of how you can achieve anything you want if you're willing to put in work with blood, sweat, and tears. We live in a democracy where everyone can vote yet most don't. My solace and value in all of this is based on my experience, line of work, education, and achievements. I vote and work extremely hard to give the next generation a better world than the one we currently have. It does seem sometimes that I am part of the minority on that.
Her name is Christy Clark and I have never felt so much anger towards a single person than I do with her. She is far from being as cruel as the countless dictators and warmongers in the world, I know you were thinking that, but when someone attacks you at home and hurts those that you personally care about you would feel the same as I do.
As much as I have talked and written about her before and am getting very tired of it, she is still the floating bag of ear wax that sits on top of the BC Liberal Party. Supposedly a centrist party that ties the left and the right together, the reality is that there is no right in BC with any power so the BC Liberals end up falling into that void. As with any sewage it always falls where no one wants to be.
Her father was a teacher, yet she has single handed made the life of teachers and students a living hell. I am a teacher and have had to work with a constantly eroding budget in an environment that continually loses the support structures that have been there for a long time. Students that have special needs have lost the support they used to have which then pushes those extra needs onto other students that lose time with me because I have to attend to an ever growing amount of work - with no pay raise to cover it. An entire generation of children have gone from kindergarten through grade 12 without the support and help they already had in place prior to her being in power. That support was not at an unnecessary cost to taxpayers either considering that our education system was one of the most efficiently run with the highest scoring values in the world. Christy Clark has claimed this each time she announced further budget cuts to education, stating that we have one of the best education systems in the world even though we are cutting their funding. This is the core reason that I despise her and hope that she lives the rest of her days broke while being reminded by everyone that she will go down in history as a liar, con-artist, and the cause of so much harm to our children's future. Isn't it pathetic that teachers seem to constantly be put into situations where they have to forego their own well being and income to support children? I'm not even that old and am absolutely fed up with this constant defecation on teachers for creating the next generation.
As a side note to this, she stripped rights from teachers in 2002 to bargain for classroom management structures in our contracts. The teachers union fought this and ended up taking the case to the Supreme Court of Canada, winning each step. The Supreme Court deliberated for less than an hour on the case in favour of teachers. That time scale of deliberation never happens with the justices stating that the action on behalf of Christy Clark was unconstitutional and should never have happened. The BC Liberals used taxpayer money to take the rights of teachers away and fight us all the way to the Supreme Court. This is pathetic and should have been grounds to remove her from office, but obviously that was not up to me.
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2017/04/27/More-Money-Improve-BC-Education/
Christy Clark has done so much more than just flush education down with her. If you're interested you can click this link and read a short list of her mistakes. These mistakes were on purpose and for the benefit of her benefactors and friends, making them terror policies instead of mistakes.
https://www.pressprogress.ca/here_are_41_of_the_sketchiest_things_that_happened_during_christy_clark_time_as_premier_of_bc
Back to the BC Liberal Party. We just had an election and the vote was surprisingly close to even. Three parties took office with the BC Liberals and BC NDP (New Democratic Party) ending up with almost even votes. Not enough to hold a majority in the province - I'll spare political jargon for those that don't know Canadian/British political titles. A somewhat new party, the Green Party gained enough votes to hold the balance of power. Luckily they are much closer to the BC NDP than the BC Liberals. A coalition between the Green Party and the BC NDP was signed to form a majority making the BC Liberals fall to the trash pile they created. This is where it starts to make me sick and many others. I obviously live in a closed circle with teachers all having the same viewpoints politically. The fact that our goal and mindset is to ensure that students have the best education they can get makes us all very liberal - not the same as the BC Liberal Party!
Now there is this frustrating and sickening political game being played by the BC Liberals. Christy Clark is making promises that she clearly had the polar opposite position to a month ago. Her platform going into the election was the exact same as the past 12 years, screw the general public so that companies and wealthy individuals can get richer. Now she has hit copy-paste on everything the NDP and Greens have promised all so that she can try to hold power.
Pleading and crying her way back to power like the bully that just broke everyone's toys and now has no friends. It is disgusting and I now have more contempt for her than I ever have before. This is something that I didn't think was possible. Tomorrow she is giving the expected thrown speech, which is kind of like the state of the union address by the president... but also not like it. It's her last ditch attempt to try and get just one person from the other parties to feel pity for her greedy grin.
If you personally know her can you just show her this article. Tell her that I want to tell her how badly she has fucked a generation of children. Growing up thinking that they won't get the help that they could have had, that their friends are smarter and better than them because they were able to understand something faster; not simply because the teachers were so over worked that they didn't have time to help them grasp something. Clark has a kid and he is in a private school, she increased private school funding while decreasing it for public schools. Just that should make you raise an eyebrow.
I am writing this because I read this article: http://www.straight.com/news/926171/martyn-brown-pouring-cold-water-bc-liberals-deathbed-repentance
It made my blood boil so much that I had to do something other than destroy another punching bag.
As for the United States, you are next. You now have a president and a secretary of education that will do the same to you. Your children and the next generation to grow up are going to be fucked. Science and reason is being cut and replaced with fundamentalist stupidity. Please fight for children and educate yourselves before your children educate you on how to be a human being. The reality is that teachers raise your children, we won't say that often and want you to raise them instead - but the truth is that a large percentage of children learn how to be a true adult through their teachers.
Thank you for reading this article. As much as it was closer to a rant, it feels good to say these things to the public. If you have ideas let me know in the comments. I will be updating this as time goes on. I hope you have a great day! Remember to say thank you to a teacher, especially with the current war on education.