Today I saw a picture of Premier [Gordon] Campbell promoting his concern for the environment as he stands beside his new hybrid vehicle.
Good for him. I often see pictures of him at B.C. Mining Association, B.C. Chamber of Commerce  Vancouver Board of Trade and Union of B.C. Municipalities conventions and meetings. Perhaps his favourite photos are those at the new sports sites for the 2010 Games and meeting the 2010 Olympic dignitaries.
Unfortunately, pictures of Campbell touring the hard streets of Victoria or Vancouver are very rare. Without these pictures one  must  doubt if he has even had a tour or had a visit with the struggling residents. Homeless people reside in all communities in B.C.
It would be something positive to see him in a room full of ordinary police officers, officers venting their concerns. It would also be a step in the right direction for the Premier to quietly sit by in a welfare office or to attend a grow-op raid where there are very young children in the residence.  
I wonder why we and the media find the Premier’s lack of involvement acceptable? 
Webster’s dictionary defines leadership as the ability to lead. I would further define leadership as the ability to set goals and obtain positive results for all the people that one represents and to be completed in an open and democratic manner
Bob Ritchie
Qualicum Beach
Re: Biogas belches from political swamps (B.C. Views, Feb. 6).
I wish everyone could read this article.
We have replaced all the lights in our abbey church with low-wattage fluorescents, reducing the power demands from 28 kilowatts to 10.
Throughout our buildings we have also replaced incandescent with low-wattage bulbs. If everyone used the power smart options available to them, we would indeed have a greener society.
My brother, Dr. Robert Dumont, is principle scientist in the building performance section of the Saskatchewan Research Council. He has just finished building his fourth solar-powered home, which he expects will save 90 per cent on energy costs, and use 50 per cent less water. The design is on his website at www.factor9.ca.
Father Mark Dumont
Westminster Abbey
Mission
Re: B.C. Views, Feb. 6.
Doesn’t anyone else think that paying off highly profitable producers to drill for gas is wrong? As a service provider to the oil and gas industry I cannot rationalize the incentives for almost everything that our government is offering these companies without a link to employment targets for B.C. residents.
In the northeast we are inundated by out-of-province workers doing work for producers who are gobbling up taxpayer dollars. Almost none of these workers live in B.C., so where do they pay their taxes?
All these incentives have done is bring in more outside service providers on a transient basis.
We already have flow-through shares available as exploration incentives, which most jurisdictions do not. The federal government tried incentives in the 1980s, and ended up doing years of fraud investigations afterwards.
Bob Fedderly
Fort St. John
How fortunate for Fred Davies that he has a soap-box from which to hurl invective at the usual list of people; the ruling elite, Big Oil, skeptics, deniers and, of course, elected politicians.
How unfortunate for us he can declare he  and the entire  media  have been released from the tiresome burden of having to report views that don’t coincide with his own.
He also suffers from hypochondria, claiming to have been made ill by the last century’s 0.6deg. C rise in mean global temperature. To be fair, I don’t take his play on the word ‘sick’ seriously, but then, I don’t take the hysterical hodge-podge of anger, angst and indignation seriously either.
The only thing that’s worrying is the fact he regards dissent as destructive in one sentence and then bemoans the impending restrictions on personal liberties that he sees arising in another.
Oliver Ramsay
Bowser