Wither The Opposition?

A regular commenter to this site raised a very good question the other day, something I've been wondering about me own true self.

Campbell blah, blah, blah...yes, fair enough.

BUT...where is the NDP?

What are they doing to take advantage of all the self-inflicted wounds that the Liberals are offering them?

Where are the rallies, the town hall meetings, the press conferences are whatever else it takes to keep the heat on the current administration?

Yes, it's the HST.

But it is also the consistent pattern of Playing All the Big Games, while letting the little people hang out to dry.

It is the heartless and cruel approach to health and education and families.

So very many thousands of British Columbians have had it with this government and yet the NDP has stayed curiously off the radar.

What the heck are they waiting for?

America may be slightly mad in the heels, but if this were Colorado or New Jersey, the Official Opposition would be on TV and radio every night, screaming bloody murder and building their voter base.

Where are the Opposition Stars? Who are the Names? Who is positioning himself or herself for leadership?

If this is excitement, I need a pill.

Wake up Little Suzy...puleeeeze.

Pay...and then pay Some More

We pay enormous amounts of money for public education.

That money is called taxes.

Taxes on practically everything, but especially school levy taxes on home ownership.

(We also pay considerably for private education, but that's another story and another argument.)

Think then about the peculiarity of this headline:

Coquitlam considers school bus user fees

School boards in the TriCities are now suggesting that parents should have to pay to get their kids to school.

Melissa Hyndes, the chair of School District 43, which covers Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody, Belcarra and Anmore, said the school trustees have ordered a report on the proposal.

Hyndes said trustees want to know how much the district could save by implementing a user-pay system. The district currently spends about $1.5 million on school buses.

Similar proposals have been considered in the past, but have never been implemented because of opposition by parents and trustees. Any new user pay system would not go into effect September 2010, but could be a possibility for 2011.

Some parents say the free service is unfair to those who pay for their own children's transit passes.

*****

This fun little announcement comes on the same day that You Know Who has declared that he will run for a fourth term as Premier in 2013.

Hey parents in the TriCities...better start saving up to buy your kid a skateboard.

Never You Mind

O.K. Now it's official.

Members of Parliament are refusing to let Auditor-General Sheila Fraser examine their expenses, saying she has no right to look at their books – and they don’t plan to give her one.

The combined Houses of Parliament spend some $500-million a year.

But your MP's and Senators feel it is not our business how they spend tax dollars on themselves.

Welcome to Feudal England.

One of the Great Albums of All Time

And someone Printed it and Sold it to her

We were sitting in the window seats of a coffee shop the other day.

A young woman, perhaps late twenties, early thirties, jaywalked across the busy street in front of us.

She did this casually.

She was wearing a bright red T-shirt.

This is what the T-shirt declared in very large bold leters:

JUST DO ME

Just do me.

Just do me?

Clearly this young woman is not working for Rape Relief.

Clearly this young woman has never heard of Rape Relief.

Possibly she's never heard of terrible things that happen to women every day of the week around the world.

Yes, even here in Supernatural.

Why aren't all of the women and at least half the men in this idiot's social circle telling her to think about what she is doing?

Is there someone who thinks this is clever or funny?

And if some madman attacked her, what would be her defense?

I was just kidding, your Honour?

He should have known that.

Just Drill Baby, Drill

Turns out it wasn't an "act of God" after all.

Seems it was that old Triple Threat: Greed, Graft & Incompetence.

Always bound to get someone dead.

In this case - the Gulf Oil Spill - 11 people died in the explosion and the oil spill is ruining coast lines, livelihoods and communities.

Between BP's rush for crude at any cost, sloppy and sleepy management of the site and corruption of government regulators, this was entirely a man made disaster waiting for the green light.

Can the likes of Gordon Campbell and Stephen Harper be trusted to approve off-shore drilling with real and secure safety measures in place?

Come on, get serious.

Life is a Trial...especially in B.C.

Six and a half years.

The other day, I found myself thinking about the Basi-Virk case.

I was struggling to remember when all of that began.

Such is the beauty of the internet.

On Dec. 28, 2003, police executed a search warrant on the legislature in Victoria and seized documents and other evidence.

I cannot help but suspect the highest reaches of the current administration from having some hand in causing all these delays in bringing this case to trial.

As the story revolves somehow around the selling of BC Rail - with a little sidebar of narcotics thrown in for good measure - one wonders who has what to hide?

But we seem to specialize in justice gone astray in this neck of the woods, do we not?

How about 25 years?

Trial date on Air India anniversary dismays families

Perjury case to be heard 25 years after terrorist attacks that killed 331 people

Inderjit Singh Reyat has been accused of lying only 27 times under oath in the original trial that acquitted B.C. residents Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri of charges of murder related to the Air India disaster.

The old saw about "Justice delayed is justice denied," seems to have been strongly out of favour in these parts for at least a quarter century.

Campbell Calculus

Here's how we compute in B.C. under the regime of The Monumental Premier.

If you are a poor parent and your children have been placed in foster care, your housing allowance is now being cut from a family rate of $570 a month to a single person’s rate of about $375.

The government will save the taxpayers $195.

Of course, if your housing allowance is now $195 less than it was last month, you may have even more trouble than usual paying for your home, which in turn reduces your chance of getting your children back and out of foster care ad its intendant costs.

Lovely.

Of course, there is no problem funding the Site C dam, the new roof for The Playpen, the new convention centre, etc...

How do Campbell, Hansen, the Housing Minister, the Minister of Children & Families and the rest of these carpetbaggers sleep at night?

Probably very well.

Because they have a personal belief system that allows them to ignore this kind of human suffering in their own back yards.

Footnote:

Many of you will now tell us that parents whose children are in foster care are loafers and bums and that they are hardly citizens at all.

Thank you very much in advance.

Merry Bloody Men

The Cannes Film Festival is in full swing and the press can't say enough about the new Russell Crow/Ridley Scott version of "Robin Hood."

The press had yet to praise or condemn the film. They are too busy gushing over the stars.

On Monday, February 8th, I posted an item about this release, called "Merry Men."

If you missed it, here it is again.

Crystal Balls

Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" was published in 1932; George Orwell's "1984" in 1949.

In these two seminal and brilliant novels of the future, people were stunned and regulated automatons.

They were controlled in all their behaviours by overshadowing central governments.

They watched and were watched by TV screens.

They took soma tablets to stay happy.

On Monday, I was walking in the 'hood.

A girl of about 15, dressed in the uniform of a very expensive private school was walking towards me.

She was texting.

Of course.

She's a Happy Little Consumer Unit.

Her family thinks she's a person.

On Friday, I had a late breakfast with my son.

At the table next to us, two people met and texted and said, without looking at each other, "Great to see you."

They are Happy Consumer Units.

HCU's.

Somebody has mistaken them for real people.

But less frequently these days.

People in the UK are pissing so much Prozac into the toilets that the water systems are polluted with Happy Medicine.

One in ten Americans has a prescription for an anti-depressant.

HCU's rule.

The pharmaceutical bill is in the many, many billions of dollars, euros and yen.

Hank Haney, Tiger Woods swing coach, decided the other day to jump from the Tiger ship. After working with Woods for several years very closely, how did he break the news to his biggest client and a man he calls his close friend?

He texted him.

Tiger Texted back.

They may speak soon.

All the good HCU's are texting, watching the Big Plasma Screen and popping the Happy Pill.

Half the people driving in the lanes next to you are HCU's stoned on Happy Meds.

The rest are texting and talking on their cells.

Brave New World.

1984.

We thought it was just literature.

Cellar Jazz Club - Go...You'll LIke!

Youth-In-Asia

When the geniuses at the top of the heap that calls itself CBC Radio Two decided to Youthenize its formats, they scrubbed most of the classical and jazz playlist.

They decided that their audience was just too, too old.

Missing the point that Canada has been getting older by the day.

So enough already with the Ellington and Scarlotti.

In with the...uh, the...

What they've managed to do in the past few years is come up with a playlist that appears to be unique in broadcast worldwide.

They play a kind of pop/rock/folk/funk/hip/blues that apparently is known only to five guys in Nova Scotia.

This is Fall-Through-the-Cracks music.

It's music that never sells an album because it s second rate drek.

Oh, it's soulful alright.

It's cute and clever on occasion.

It's just not memorable or hummable or impactful.

It's Loser Tunes Inc. is what it is.

Somebody's cousin is running the shop.

Investigate and change, please.

Unparalleled Beauty

Readers to the Barricades

I buy most of my books online from Amazon.

One-click checkout.

And - presto!

Five days later, my book is in my mailbox.

Why would I stand in line at Chapters/Indigo to give them 20-50% MORE?

I buy the second most books from Book Warehouse because it is Book Warehouse...i.e., cheaper than Heather and her picks.

I buy finally from those rare and disappearing one-of book stores where people actually know their stock and products and can actually hold a conversation. There is one in Kerrisdale (Hager Books, 2176 West 41st) and actually several in Ganges on Salt Spring Island (Watermark Books is especially good.)

All of this is in aid of agreeing with this morning's editorial in the Globe, which calls for an end to the ludicrous system of book buy in this country that serves only to inflate the price of books for you and me.

The editorial correctly argues that this is an unnecessary and punitive trade barrier.

End it.

At Rest

Ever wonder what your elected government is doing these days?

The answer is simple.

And they even boast about it.

The answer is...nothing.

Case in point.

Ontario police chiefs go en masse to the Ontario legislature to seek a number of changes to the Police Services Act.

The changes are interesting, but not the subject of this item.

The subject is the lovely response from the government.

Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister Rick Bartolucci made it clear during a meeting with the chiefs that he has no plans to introduce changes during the remainder of the government’s mandate – the next election is in October, 2011.

In other words - go piss up a rope.

We are using the tried and tested true methodology of Jean Chretien - Do Nothing so no one can ever accuse you of doing anything bad - This is how to get elected and re-elected and then elected again.

So there you have it.

Canadian governance in a nut shell.

Don't ask us who have been elected and are collecting fabulous salaries and expenses and are spending public tax funds at astronomical rates to actually do anything 'cause we are not going to, so there.

Gerry V.

has hit a number of nails on the head with his comment yesterday about the deadly and costly over-prescription of psychotropic pharmaceuticals. In particular is the pronounced use of anti-depressants and other poisons among women. When will some women's groups rise up in united voice to stop this clear enslavement of women? This barbaric attempt by male doctors and by society in general to "calm" women's miseries with happy pills?

Just wait, David. It shouldn't be long before bitterness is declared a disorder if not an outright disease. Thats right. If you get laid off from your job or go through a nasty divorce, you could be suffering from "Post Tramautic Embitterness Disorder". Look for it in the newest DSM.

I personally like the "Intense Explosive Disorder" which explains why some people have hissy fits or fits of rage. Treatment for such a rare condition? Yep, you guessed it. Valium.

By the way, the most commonly prescribed drug in B.C. is Tylenol 3. Lipitor is number two. Seroquel, an anti-psychotic medication, is number 7 on the list.

In North America in 2008 the most commonly prescribed drug was hydrocodone. The number 2 drug was lipitor. Out of the top 50 most commonly prescribed drugs, 10 of those 50 were antidepressants or anti-psychotics. That represents 20% of all prescription drugs prescribed in North America in 2008. That's 20% of a conservatively estimated 65 Billion $ industry. These stats were provided by the AARP.

What's somewhat interesting is that twice as many women are prescribed these drugs compared to men. Now you can draw many conclusions from this statistic, but it makes me wonder if maybe this is why women live 10 years longer than men on average. (That last statement was made with tongue in cheek)

Lena

The news of Lena Horne's death reached me just as I was finishing yesterday's morning blog, so I put in the YouTube video below.

Today, please read the NY Times bio, which, by no means definitive, is pretty good.

Lena has so much more than a singer and a movie star.

She was a one-woman force for good in the world, a dynamo.

She says that she learned everything she ever knew about singing from her great friend, Billy Strayhorn, the genius who wrote and arranged so much of Duke Ellington's signature music.

Lena struggled with and against and broke every color barrier in American life.

She was fearless and emotionally rich and complex and all of that was revealed in every note she sang.

Reconfiguring "Stormy Weather" into the version that she sang much later in life and the one you can see and hear below, she said it took her an entire lifetime to fully occupy and understand the song.

Nobody LIke Her, No One Even Close - R.I.P.

This is your government at work

Drunk driving and selling cocaine have found new friends in B.C.

While the government is churning out press releases about how they are getting tough on impaired drivers, turns out many of these scofflaws are getting off scott free.

As are many coke dealers.

Why?

Because there aren't enough judges to hear their cases.

Why?

Because Gordon Campbell's government is spending half a billion on a new roof for The Playpen, and other Monumental Projects.

What the Gordo Government is not doing is hiring enough judges to hear criminal cases.

Now the office of the chief judge of B.C. Provincial Court has warned that court delays will only worsen unless the provincial government reverses budget cutbacks.

The Provincial Court has 16 fewer judges than it did in 2005.

Nice.

Why not just advertise in the Toronto Star and all the Prairie papers?

Come One, Come All to the Land of the Stupid.

Drink, Drive, Snort, Deal.

No worries, mate!

No judges!

Mental

Between 1988, the year after Prozac was approved by the F.D.A., and 2000, adult use of antidepressants almost tripled.

By 2005, one out of every ten Americans had a prescription for an antidepressant.

IMS Health, a company that gathers data on health care, reports that in the United States in 2008 a hundred and sixty-four million prescriptions were written for antidepressants, and sales totalled $9.6 billion.

The March 1st edition of The New Yorker magazine featured a book review by Louis Menand. The article was called Head Case and the two welcome new books are Gary Greenberg’s “Manufacturing Depression” (Simon & Schuster; $27) and Irving Kirsch’s “The Emperor’s New Drugs” (Basic; $23.95)

I say 'welcome' because, in my opinion, psychiatry and pharmaceuticals are both corrupt and rogue industries.

They are joined at the hip and they cost our health care systems fortunes.

These two new books have a familiar and necessary argument: Psychiatry is guilty of taking ordinary human personality traits or experiences or conditions (sadness, anxiety, stress...) and pathologizing these into a lucrative business for itself and for the drug manufacturers.

The 'discovery' of the 'remedy' creates the disease.

Reading this article may save you or someone close to you a big mess of trouble.