Where stupidity, bad taste and bloody-mindedness rule, people of reason step into the breach.

So it is on Wednesday.

The provincial Progressive Conservative government keep digging their hole.

In one of the worst rollouts of a government brainwave, the provincial Tories aren’t messing with their licence plate plans.

The Wild Rose Country slogan is being replaced by a government website address you can Google with ease and don’t need on a licence plate.

The public have no vote on whether the Wild Rose Country slogan should stay.

There is no say at all on a slogan or whether a website address really captures the true spirit of Alberta.

As a joke of a consolation prize, the public does have a vote at alberta.ca on three crappy licence plate designs.

They are cooked up for free by the 3M Company, an American outfit who just happen to sell reflective sheeting for the licence plates.

There is no place to vote None of the Above.

The three designs are worth what the government paid for them. Nothing. 3M should stick to Scotch Tape.

The best the province can muster is to tell us they will tally up any comments about a new licence plate e-mailed to: newplate@gov.ab.ca.

But the tired Tories will not hold a competition to choose a design for a licence plate despite all the artistic talent in Alberta.

Nor will they give Albertans a choice about a plate slogan.

This is not small potatoes.

This is about identity and, though the long-in-the-tooth PCs have trouble finding any of their own identity, Alberta does not have that problem.

Amid the idiocy, creative guy Derek Anton at the well-respected Edmonton graphic design firm Graphos comes up with a plate design last Friday complete with a jagged upper border on the plate formed by mountain peaks.

“Alberta is a spectacular province. We believe Alberta deserves a spectacular licence plate,” says Laurier Mandin, top gun at Graphos.

Mandin guesses with little effort what’s behind the PC song and dance.

“This was the only way they could take Wild Rose Country off our licence plates,” he says.

“I’m not a big Wildroser, by any means, but I think it’s a little annoying if you’re an Alberta PC and every time they look at the licence plate it says you’re in Wild Rose Country and that’s the official opposition eating your lunch.

“You’ve got to do something about it but you just can’t yank it. You’ve got to have a whole new plate.”

Mandin thinks people resent how the plate decision has been force-fed to the rest of us. Dropping the slogan without asking the public makes it “impossible to ignore the political connection.”

As for the design it’s not a pretty thought.

“We don’t want something bad. The three options are bad,” says Mandin, saying the choice is between “ugly, ugly and ugly.”

“They look flat. They’re not inspiring.”

The province phoned Wednesday to tell Graphos if their plate got enough support they would hear back from the province.

Er … but their plate isn’t one of the three choices on the government website. Yes, people can e-mail a vote but that isn’t an easy as picking a choice with a click.

The controversy does not go away. Mandin gets what the PCs don’t get.

“I do understand the licence plate is an Everyman issue. It affects everybody in one way or another.”

The Wildrose launch their own design competition Wednesday.

The party’s MLAs put up $2,500 for the winning designer’s charity of choice and $500 as a cash prize, with submissions until Aug. 3 at noon.

Rob Anderson says the party came up with the competition because “we don’t want to be embarrassed for the next ten years with how ugly our licence plates are.”

He calls the three 3M designs “atrocious” and “painful.”

“I don’t understand how on Earth these could be the best three designs,” says Anderson.

It’s like saying you don’t understand how a slapstick comic always slips on the banana peel.

At the very least Anderson hopes the provincial Tories will see the winner as “significantly better than anything their buddies at 3M came up with.”

As for the Graphos submission, Anderson says it’s “far superior” to the three government choices.

Does the summertime buffoonery in Toryland surprise the pull-no-punches MLA?

“A few years ago I might have been surprised,” he says.

“Now, not so much.”