I doubt there’s a couple on Earth that hasn’t run into a little conflict negotiating the division of labour that comes with early co-habitation and, especially, parenting.
One of my favourite daydreams — described to me by one young, sleep-deprived mom — was of her putting both feet on her sleeping husband’s back and shoving him out of bed with all the force her legs could muster to attend to their wailing newborn.
Much time in the early years is spent sorting out which partner’s life sucks worse and who has done more around the house.
And one tactic I’ve seen — as couples tally up who has done what during the day — is to break down each chore into smaller and smaller parts to boost the numbers.
“So, then I picked up all the dirty laundry and I put it in the washer and I changed it to the dryer and I took it out and I folded it and I organized it into the drawers…”
I remember my sister calling my brother-in-law out on the ploy. We all had a good laugh.
It’s silly and it’s childish — and it reminds me a little of what our BC Liberal government is doing in the run-up to next May’s provincial election.
For a few months now, my email inbox has been hit with a steady stream of education funding announcements that seem not so much designed to inform the public as to squeeze as much credit as possible out of the most routine acts of government.
The latest announcement proclaimed the province had invested $36,000 in the Burnaby School District’s community and continuing education landscape horticulturalist apprenticeship training program.
The figure is peanuts and you would think the funding would at least have to be new for our government to pay a communications professional to write a press release about it, complete with a quote from Liberal Burnaby-North MLA Richard Lee.
You’d think, but you’d be wrong.
It’s not new money and it’s not extra money; it’s the same level of funding the program has received since 2013. But even the managing programmer of continuing education thought at first it was new funding.
Clearly, $36,000 is not the kind of figure that would attract the attention of bigger news outlets and I suspect this flurry of recent announcements, all with the names of local Liberal MLAs attached, is aimed at smaller community newspapers.
That makes this personal.
A government press release is easy to rewrite. It comes with easily digestible information and direct (if predictable) quotes from local officials and politicians.
With community newsrooms shrinking across the province, it’s tempting for busy reporters not to make the calls it takes to ensure the information in minor announcements sent to us by our government is accurate and not misleading.
Not all of us do, not all the time, and that’s a problem.
But the sinking feeling that our elected representatives might be counting on that to gain an edge at election time is a pretty big problem, too.
Cornelia Naylor is a reporter at the Burnaby Now.
@CorNaylor
