Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Ask And You Shall Receive

I love my MP.

To: Garth Turner
From: Jennifer Smith
Subject: Harper redecorating the Government lobby?

Lordy, lordy - read this.

Is this new, or had Harper already replaced all these pictures with his own when you were on the other side? And what are the odds of you sneaking in there with a camera tomorrow? Enquiring minds at The Galloping Beaver want to know. As do I.


I honestly didn't expect him to do it. After all, security is pretty tight back there and according to the Ottawa Citizen article, only current Conservative Party Members are usually allowed in.

Still, this is Garth Turner. As another Canadian has famously said, what other kind of shenanigans could he get into?

A few minutes ago I got this:

From: garth@garth.ca
Subject: Re: Harper redecorating the Government lobby?
To: jsmith25@cogeco.ca

Done.

Garth


And I thought, holy crap, he didn't really do it, did he?

Yes. Yes he did. And he's put it all up on his blog.


Let me count the ways…


Running beside the House of Commons, on each side of that historic chamber, are two equally historic rooms. We call them the ‘lobbies’ – one, to the right of the Speaker, reserved for government MPs, and the other for members of the opposition. Stone-walled and normally bristling with activity, these rooms are a living part of Canadian history – and for the years I’ve been in Parliament, have been graced with the photos of former prime ministers.

But, no more. At least not the government lobby – a piece of public real estate which has suddenly been turned into a portrait gallery for one man. Our dear leader. Stephen Harper.




And there's a lot more where that came from, plus a picture of the corresponding Opposition lobby for comparison.

Ok, so I don't really think he went back there and took those pictures just because I dared asked him to. Still, how cool is that?

(UPDATE: And then the pictures came down.)

5 comments:

  1. What we really need is a picture,before and after, and let the public see and compare.

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  2. Absolutely, although there are plenty of accounts out there now of what paintings and photos were there before.

    If anyone has any pre-Harper pictures of the Government lobby, please let me know.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Check Garth's blog post now; he's removed the photos. I guess he fears the spiteful Conservatives will fire someone innocent for this. I don't know if you need to remove the photo here.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the heads-up, Holly. I've emailed Garth to get a better idea of exactly what the situation is. I'll make my decision after I hear from him, hopefully tomorrow.

    Conservatives. No sense of humour.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Incredible. And people call Bush "imperial".

    And, heck, Canada's a monarchy, isn't it? What kind of "Prime Minister" removes pictures of his own Queen to make room for pictures of himself?

    ReplyDelete