The Rime of the Ancient Statist

One could describe London, Ontario's city council as being drunk on power, but what power?  Municipal governments are suppose to be fairly hum-drum organizations; pick up the garbage, keep the streets clean and meet the payroll for the fire and police departments.  Wide reaching public policy decisions are the purview of provincial and federal authorities.  Leave the wielding of real power to the experts, relatively speaking.  Yet municipal politics attracts an odd bunch of characters.  Politics has been called show business for ugly people without talent, municipal politics is the bottom of that rather sad barrel; people too ugly and/or talentless to win election at the senior levels of government.  There are exceptions, men and women of genuine political ability who use local politics as a resume builder for bigger and better things, Mike Harris comes to mind. 

Those familiar with the yeoman efforts of our friends at The London Fog, will know that there are no future premiers' on London's city council.  Council meetings are comparable to atonal renditions of Gilbert and Sullivan operetta (perhaps Iolanthe), and their fiscal abilities rival those of Pierre Trudeau's latter finance ministers.  Striving far above their station, to say well past common sense, Monday the London City Council banned "sales of bottled water at all city-run facilities, including arenas and community centres, and possibly even golf courses."  This bit of petty authoritarianism was taken under the aegis of the current Green fad, which is showing signs of wearing down - even in it's statism London is behind the curve.  The impracticality of the ban was quickly made clear when the council stepped away from banning the bottle at outdoor events.  People buy bottled watter because they find alternatives too inconvenient or perceive them to be of low quality.  Greenista fantasies that plastics bottles will destroy the earth, will be forgotten within a few years.  The ban, however, will remain on the books, providing employment for the bureaucrats who administer the law, and distracting the police from fighting genuine crime.  Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.