Riddle Me This

If CBC is to be believed, apparently Danny Williams has renewed confidence in the abilities of his cabinet now that former Premier Tom Rideout has tendered his resignation.

Of course, any true Newfoundlander knows CBC is not to be believed, as the Premier courageously demonstrated recently when he (rightly) pointed out that David Cochrane was unfairly attempting to undermine the mastery of our own domain by doing unnecessarily subversive things like asking questions in media scrums.

But, for the sake of argument, let's take the CBC story at face value and assume that when Yvonne Jones asked the Premier if he had any certainty in the ability of his ministers to do their jobs, he did in fact respond with "I have certainty now that Tom Rideout is gone."

Let that sink in for a moment.

According to Danny Williams, Tom Rideout - a man whose political career stretches back to 1975, who is a former Premier with a cumulative decade of ministerial experience - is incompetent.

On the other hand, Joan Burke's revolutionary "well if the Liberals hadn't screwed everything up during the 1990s, I wouldn't have problems to ignore, now would I?" approach to the Department of Education is positively sublime in its genius.

Kathy Dunderdale's performance in her role as "spokeswoman" of the Natural Resources Department is downright enviable.

And of course, the Honourable Ross Wiseman continues to display stunning prowess in the position of Minister of Health and Community Services, up to and including astonishing four month spurts of illiteracy.

Although, upon further reflection, the question that Jones asked was whether or not the Premier had confidence in his ministers' ability to do their jobs. Which, in his defence, he did answer truthfully: every minister who wasn't Tom Rideout was doing a spectacular job.

This is because in Williams' cabinet, the job isn't managing your portfolio with any degree of competency.

It's towing the Premier's line.