Dear Editor:
Your lead story last week on the result of the referendum on the HST reminded me that in the 1930s in the U.K., teachers frequently told us, “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
This gem of political philosophy is alternatively attributed to the 16th president of the U.S.A., Abraham Lincoln and to three-ring circus impresario Phineas Barnum.
Your report mentions of course that in the 2009 provincial election, then-premier Gordon Campbell may have said things which some of the people found “misleading” and even “deceiving.”
In the referendum, voters in favour of keeping the HST needed to vote No while those opposed to the tax should vote Yes.
It may be that the quotation cited above was not part of the tuition for members of the right-wing coalition masquerading as the Liberal Party of B.C., and so we now have the three-ring circus.
Dick Clements
Summerland