There is an explanation for this. I have a younger brother whose name happens to be Douglas. When we were young, the standard answer to a bloody nose or a broken lamp was always “Dougie did it.” I can admit now that if the fresh blood was mine, I could easily blame him. Mother was very wary though of these claims when it looked like Dougie lost the fight.
But Dougie always was mother’s favourite. I felt hard done by when the fact was that my older sister and three older brothers could treat me as their Sherpa but I was not allowed to pick on Dougie. And he had the last laugh because he was the first in the family with a PhD.
The point of this is that I am not trying to belittle Ontario premier Douglas Ford by casually referring to him as Dougie. I am delighted today that I can say “Dougie did it” and mean it. It is certainly not my brother’s fault. He is now a retired academic living in Ohio where he lectured business students for many years.
One of the subjects I have discussed seriously with him over the years has been ethics in business and politics. When he was teaching in Ontario, I was welcome to go to Waterloo and lecture his business class.
I like to think I have contributed something to better ethics in business over the years but I tend to despair with politics. Frankly the leadership of the Ontario conservatives has been beyond redemption for the last several years.
While I believed that Patrick Brown might have just been diddling his expenses occasionally, there is really no excuse for someone such as Doug Ford. Doug Ford is a liar, a charlatan, an ignorant boor and a disgrace as premier of Ontario.
In his case, ‘Dougie’ is not an endearment.
Do you know that he promised observant Sikhs the other day that they can kill themselves on motorcycles.
I never knew a religion that wanted to fast-track the ‘Right to Die’ with anything other than KoolAid. Dougie actually told the Sikh community in the Brampton area that Sikh males could now use their turbans as helmets when they ride their motorcycles. That was not only flagrantly discriminatory and sexist but it was colossally stupid.
It was no wonder that he tried not to let non-Punjabi language media know about the plan. Ontario’s Dougie knows how to pander for votes!
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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry
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