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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Politics have a certain odour

What better place to cast a hold-your-nose ballot than a landfill, asks letter writer
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Letter writer responds to News Bulletin article ‘Map on Elections Canada website directs voters to landfill.’

To the editor,

Re: Map on Elections Canada website directs voters to landfill, Oct. 17.

Now that the excruciation of Election 2019 Canada is but memory, allow me to congratulate the Nanaimo Bulletin editor who scripted this headline.

Little did they realize, probably, how much their accurate rendering of the ensuing news item was redolent of Monty Python’s sardonic humour. As in, ‘What better place in Election 2019 to cast one’s hold-your-nose ballot?’ than a landfill.

It brought to mind California businessman Howard Jarvis, author of that state’s notorious Proposition 13 in 1978 that capped real estate taxation. He was interviewed back in the day by the Honolulu Star Bulletin. At the conclusion of an eight-column-wide, full-page screed, Jarvis observed wryly: “In politics, there is but one platform: re-election. All the rest is compost.”

So amen to both Bulletins and the heavenly smells of truth unfaked across 40 years and an ocean from two countries that forever have shared cultural garbage. Hard to imagine life without the sniff of such ironies as these.

Wm. Baird Blackstone, Tsawwassen

RELATED: Map on Elections Canada site sends voters to Cedar landfill

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The views and opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are those of the writer and do not reflect the views of Black Press or the Nanaimo News Bulletin. If you have a different view, we encourage you to write to us or contribute to the discussion below.