First edition

I live in Victoria, right in the heart of Lotus Land, as Southwestern BC is known by the denizens of the rest of Canada, should they think of us while they shovel their sidewalks. For the benefit of these poor souls I should like to mention that the cherry trees are in blossom in the sunshine this afternoon of early February. I am so sorry- well, not really.
It's not just because of the weather that this is called Lotus Land. We are also known for our left leaning politics. Greenpeace, that masterly practitioner of the shakedown racket, was born and nurtured here. Vancouver is known variously as Hollywood North, because of its thriving movie industry, and San Francisco North because of its large population of non breeders.
The corner of Lotus land called Victoria will be the main subject of this blog because I love the place. No, it's stronger than that- I'm in love with it. This in spite of the fact that I am a deeply conservative man in a town which is rightly known for its luxuriant growth of radical leftist ideologues. We had a pot activist running for mayor a few elections back, and if you take a random stroll by parliament on a weekend you will have a good chance of finding some demonstrators demonstrating something. They are thick on the ground. However, I'm not convinced that Victorians are really as left wing as we are reputed. What is emphatically true is that our media outlets are decidedly biased in favour of leftist causes, just like everywhere else. But when you get down to nuts and bolts I think most of us are fairly conservative, and sometimes the categories don't really fit who we are;
But either way, whether on the left or the right, Victorians have one thing in common: we love our city. Victoria is a special place, as different from Vancouver as Vancouver is from Seattle. I will be trying to cover matters of interest to Victorians and to anyone interested in Victoria.
My conservatism is more cultural and social than political. In fact I have a certain dislike for politics. I am far more interested in the subject when it is safely part of history and I know what the answer was. Otherwise I am more interested in the ideas behind the politics and in the culture the ideas come from. My point will be that Victoria is what it is largely because of the cultural values we inherited from our predecessors, and furthermore that those values were arrived at for good reason. I'm afraid we are in danger of losing much of what we value through the influence of a class of sorcerers apprentices- social tinkerers who have done enormous damage to our society as they have assumed control of most of the avenues of public communication.
You see, I know some of these people and I like them. I just think they haven't thought things through. But I'm here to help.