Cheers & Jeers

Jeers: to keeping things up in the air. The long-running air ambulance controversy won’t go away, and it’s hard to know who to blame for that. St. Anthony Mayor Ern Simms and area MHA Marshall Dean, among others, continue to probe the government’s decision to move the service to Labrador. Lawyer Jim Bennett has even been hired by the town to assist with a legal challenge, and now, several pages of internal documents have been unearthed through transparency laws.

One may be tempted to say the town is making a mountain out of a molehill. Or that it doesn’t matter much in the end whether the decision involved a bit of political motivation.

And the Liberals’ call for Health Minister Jerome Kennedy’s resignation last week seems a bit stretched. But the government must take some blame for creating that molehill to begin with. There is now evidence that the author of an independent report on the service received some coaching and advice from a Health Department bureaucrat. The bureaucrat was obviously a useful source of information for the author, but her vetting of the report raises questions about the report’s objectivity.

Perhaps the only real place to resolve the issue is at the ballot box. If the Conservatives ever want to win that seat back, they’ll have some splainin’ to do.

Cheers: To Allan Hawco and the rest of the crowd at “Republic of Doyle” on their five Gemini nominations. They should be proud of themselves — not a bad showing for a first season. It’s encouraging, though not surprising, to see a homegrown production do so well. Perhaps the province’s film and television industry should strike while the iron’s hot and get another series in the works. Might we suggest capitalizing on the amazing popularity of the Stieg Larsson fiction trilogy by making a Newfoundland and Labrador movie version — “The Girl with the Shaggin' Tattoo”?

Cheers: to changing with the times. A Nova Scotia church has decided that high-tech devices could use a little divine endorsement. Rev. Lisa Vaughan of St. Timothy’s Anglican Church in Hatchet Lake has scheduled blessing services Sunday for electronic devices such as laptops and BlackBerrys. The minister said the idea harks back to times when farmers and others used to bring their tools to church to have them blessed. “Most of us live with our cellphones and laptops and BlackBerrys and all that kind of stuff,” she said. “I mean, those are just daily tools for us.” Blessings will take place at three worship services on Sunday, but the night service will be the main event. People will be asked to turn on their devices in the darkened church and bring them forward to be blessed. We’ll let you know if anyone receives any mysterious text messages along the way.