One fan of Citizen Judd
One of my favorite upcountry columnists is Neville Judd of the Sechelt/Gibsons Coast Reporter. British Columbia's towns and cities have their elections every three years on the same Saturday in November. (The latest elections were held this past Saturday.) Mr. Judd complains about how politicians use catchphrases instead of explaining what they want to do, making their platforms as vague as possible.

Many of B.C.'s non-Vancouver papers have small staffs, so they tend to concentrate their resources on what is important to their readers. This is, of course, correct but it proves a small burden on whomever is reading dozens of them one after the other. In the past two week's worth of papers, it seemed that everyone in the province had either fought in World War Two or was running for city council. I'm a big fan of veterans (my grandfather ran away from home at 15 to fight, and was gassed in the trenches of the Western Front), but I found myself quietly agreeing with Mr. Judd's column about the tendency of politicians to "duckspeak".