So Mr. Premier, as this may be my last epistle to your august self, I’ve been contemplating how best to bid you adieu and maintain the same sense of decorum and high literary standards that have always earmarked these epistles.

I considered the possibility of applying to the BC Arts Council for a grant to make a film about your years as our esteemed and honourable political Moses who led us through the desert of socialist stability to the holy land of financial deficits and public/private partnerships.

Then I remembered that your government cut massive amounts of funding to the BC arts community and left the entire artistic population bereft of promised grants to continue their work. (I wonder, what is it about artists that scares your government so much that you would disassociate yourselves from them even though the arts employ as many as 80,000 British Columbians and generate over 5.2 billion dollars of revenue for this province.) So realizing that the chances of actually getting any support for this project from your government were about as good as a Liberal’s chances of re-election or a snowball’s chance in hell, I decided to explore the idea of raising money from the “average British Columbian” that you felt you so often spoke for.

So far, I’ve raised $2.93 but I remain hopeful.

I also considered applying to the many large corporations that your government has so magnificently supported with lower taxes and any number of fine contracts, but I suspect I’d be on hold for a few months even though they would claim my call is important to them.

However, being an eternal optimist, I began to consider possible titles for the film. There were some that almost seemed to suggest themselves, and I wanted to share these with you.

1. De-Railed: My Promise Not to Sell BC Rail.

2. The Wages of Sin: How to Exploit Minimum Wage Earners.

3. Sea Wars: Darth Gordo vs. Hahn Solo.

4. The Falcon and the Showman: Conjoint Political Twins.

5. The Gord of Olympus: the Zip line to Obscurity.

6. Hawaii: Pictures from my Winter Vacation.

7. The Longest Delay: Basi and Virk’s Fine Timing on the longest drawn out guilty plea.

8. The 15 per cent Solution: To Be or Not to Be, That is the Question.

9. Me and the Governator: The Hydrogen Highwaymen.

10. The HST: How to Stretch the Truth.

11. BC Hydra: The Many-Headed Monster that had the Run of Rivers.

12. The MSP: Magnificent Scam on the Public.

And the last suggestion:

13. Time to Say Goodbye: So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu!

Well Mr. Premier, as you can see, it’s definitely a challenge to come up with one title that captures all that you’ve accomplished. Maybe with the funding issues, I’ll just do a quick YouTube thing – after all the ones with the talking cats seem to be doing very well, and you are computer literate as indicated by your excursion onto Facebook. By the way, how’s that working for you? Many friends?

Even with your seemingly neverending shuffle off the political stage, I suspect I will be just as dedicated to offering my sage advice to whichever of your political colleagues who are fighting to wrench the wheel of the faltering Liberal Titanic from your clenched grip, actually succeed in taking over the helm.

Enjoy your retirement and your enormous pension. I hope your MSP payments are covered.

Be cautious of any offerings of a Senate seat from the Honourable Stephen Harper. I hear that although he’s offering seats to political figures of your ilk, there might come a time when it may be necessary to run for election to maintain your hold on those seats. I suggest most strongly that your chances of winning any election for anything, anywhere, anytime, are about as likely as most of us believing that the idea of the HST popped out of hyperspace right after the last election and insinuated itself into your cadre with no foreplay, er, forethought.

It would have been wise Mr. Premier, to have taken good counsel from Claude D. Pepper who wrote “the mistake a lot of politicians make is in forgetting they’ve been appointed and thinking they’ve been anointed”. It would appear, Sir, that you were operating under the illusion that like King Louis XVI, you were anointed. His departure from politics led to a revolution. Perhaps yours may eventually lead to a political evolution with new opportunity and a new democracy.