Peek-A-Boo. Here’s Lansdowne 2.0

Published 10/07/2023 · Updated 10/07/2023

This is a football cheer so the folks around Lansdowne should know a bit about it:

“If you’re proud and you know it, stomp your feet. If you’re proud and you know it, stomp your feet. If you’re proud and you know it, and you really want to show it, If you’re proud and you know it, stomp your feet.”

Not a lot of foot-stomping around the Lansdowne 2.0 unveiling at a secret time and in a secret place with each reporter going there screened by city media relations.

To the best of your agent’s 46-year knowledge of these sorts of things, such a kick-off for a big project is unprecedented. That’s a nice way of putting it.

Are proud and you know it? Doesn’t look like it. If you’re proud and you know and you really want to show it, you trumpet it from the roof-tops.

Secret City Presser Held In Diefenbunker: Top 10 List

“Hey lookie here. We’ve got a great big beautiful Lansdowne.” But that didn’t happen.

Good news is treated differently. You hold a grand Roman procession through the Glebe with lions and captured enemy soldiers and chariots and the like. The whole nine yards (which is usually what the Redblacks get on their first two downs). But that didn’t happen.

No the city and media relations played peek-a-boo with reporters. “Okay you kids. If you sign up here and show your credentials by this deadline, we will tell you the secret location, password and time.” They even handed out mysterious decoder rings like you used to get in a box of cereal to let you into Bletchley Park.

That’s how sensitive city staff and politicians are to the powerful people behind Lansdowne. They are particularly powerful people, especially around city hall. You might not be able to get a pothole filled on your street but watch staff jump if the Lansdowne folks have a request. You know, like $400 million.

You could go down to city hall and ask for $400 million and staffers would think you are crazy. But it happens … if you are the right people.

So why all the secrecy? Well maybe this Lansdowne thing is not good news and staff, pols and the elves around Happy Town News know it.

You hold a secret new conference, at a secret time, invitation only and RSVP by the end of workday Thursday or you ain’t getting in.

City Sets New Low In Closed Government

And the news conference is on the Friday before Thanksgiving. Well there’s a news black hole if you ever saw one. Folks will be thinking Thanksgiving turkey rather than a turkey off Bank Street. And by Tuesday, everything will be over but the indigestion.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out or city hall wouldn’t have got it. If you’re hiding your news conference on the Friday before Thanksgiving, you’ve got bad news. You’re scared.

So with Lansdowne 2.0 “if you’re not proud and you know it, refrain from stomping your feet.”

Well the folks at city hall know it. They want this Lansdowne thing to be approved quickly, quietly, no fuss, no muss. Because city hall has its priorities and it’s not you.

Too much thinking about this Lansdowne thing and it could fall apart. Hush, hush.

Ken Gray

Western Mustangs Co-ed Cheerleading Team wins 32nd National Championship