Two idiots gave James Rozko a rifle and drove him back to his farm, where shortly thereafter Rozko murdered four RCMP officers and then took his own miserable nutty life.
Yesterday in Edmonton, those two nitwits were given substantial prison sentences.
Not substantial enough.
A CBC hockey commentator hasdecried the "pansification" of the sportby anti-fighting campaigners. - news report
Us hockey fans just can't abide
The way the game's been pansified:
The whole excuse for Hockey Night
Lies in the hope we'll see a fight
Where heterosexual heavyweights
Prove real men can brawl on skates.
The thrill for us red-blooded males
Is when some goon who's tough as nails
Reveals the thing he really loves
Is daring guys to drop their gloves,
Which shows that masculinity
Still has a place on CBC.
But now some pansies, fags and gays
Want hockey's men to change their ways,
And turn the coiled enforcer's fist
Into a limp, unmanly wrist,
As if true fans would waste their breath
On games without the risk of death.
So fight back, jocks who fit the norm,
Against the pantywaisted swarm
Who'll strip away our simple joys
And make us all their nancy boys.
Assert your homophobic rights
With hockey's proud, hormonal fights.
Rt Hon David Miliband MP
Secretary of State,
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London SW1P 3JR
16 May 2008
Dear Secretary of State,
My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a
cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing
pigs. I would now like to join the "not rearing pigs" business.
In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on,
and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure
I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies,
as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.
I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type
you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are
there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks
or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not
rearing these?
As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an
accurate record of how many pigs I haven't reared. Are there any
Government or Local Authority courses on this?
My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing
pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was
£1,422 in 1968. That is - until this year, when he received a
cheque for not rearing any.
If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not
rearing 100?
I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to
about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the
first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to
be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not
reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4
million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be
eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not
producing harmful and polluting methane gases?
Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat
2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for
not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing
cereals to not feed the pigs I don't rear?
I am also considering the "not milking cows" business, so please
send any information you have on that too. Please could you also
include the current Defra advice on set aside fields? Can this be
done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to
have several thousand hectares)?
In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally
unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits.
I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general
election.
Dear neighbour,
My name is David and I live in Israel , thirty minutes (or one minute rocket time) from you. I hope someday to have you over for a cup of tea. We have a lovely view from the balcony. On a clear day we can see our jets bombing your neighbourhood.
I think it's time we had a heart to heart. It's time you knew the truth. After all, what are neighbours for? You might have wondered why both you and your parents were born in a refugee camp. Why is it that even though we live only 30 minutes apart, I live in prosperity and you live in poverty and filth? Why you live in despair and hatred while we live in hope and love.
Here is the truth, neighbour:
There really was a Holocaust. I realize you've been taught otherwise. I know that ever since you were a small child you've been told that the Holocaust is something the Jews fabricated to justify taking your land. Well, dear citizen of Gaza, it really happened. Not very long ago. It happened. And guess what? It's NEVER going to happen again. The time in history when Jews were led to slaughter, persecuted, raped and pillaged is over and will never recur.
Never. Now we have our own country. Now we have the bombs. We will never forget what was done to our people and you better not either.
We don't hate you. We don't hate anyone. Jews are a peaceful people. We do not want your land. We don't want oil. We don't want to rape your women or murder your children. We never tried to force our religion on anyone. Our eternal capital, Jerusalem, is open to all faiths to love and to worship. We treat your Arab brothers who live among us as equals. Our hand has been extended to peace with our neighbours since day one. We have proven this time and time again through numerous negotiations and extensive compromise.
We ask only for one thing. Leave us in peace. That's right. We have no other demands. Just leave us in peace. It's as simple as that. If you don't, we will fight back ferociously and mercilessly. We will destroy your homes and your cities. We will make your miserable lives even more miserable. If you don't want this to happen any more, leave us in peace.
Our soldiers are not motivated by hate but by determination. We embrace life and will do anything to preserve it. However, we will kill and die to protect our land and our way of life. That's what they should be teaching in your schools instead of useless lies.
A terrorist is a terrorist. Sorry to be the one to break the news, but it's about time somebody told you that a terrorist is nothing more than a coward. Not a hero. Not a Shahid. There is nothing heroic in blowing yourself up amongst a crowd of woman and children. Anybody can do it. Anybody can hide inside a school or a mosque and blindly fire rockets
into cities, hoping to kill as many babies as possible. There is nothing courageous or admirable in these acts of cruelty. To take pride in an act of terror is pitiful and pathetic. I know you've been raised to believe the contrary, but it is a lie. I have seen how your children are taught to commit suicide. How your suicide bombers are glorified. This is tragically sad. A real hero faces his enemy and doesn't hide in schools and hospitals. A real hero protects his people and will die for them but not among them.
Israel exists and it belongs to the Jewish people. I've seen your school books. I know that Israel has been omitted from your maps. Contrary to what you've been told, the State of Israel really does exist. Look outside your window. We are here and we are not going anywhere. Dear Palestinian neighbour, it's time to deal with the facts. We love our beautiful little country. We will protect it with our lives. You are not getting it. This was explained to you in 1948. You got your country and we got ours. Your arrogant and stupid leaders promised you that you will get the whole thing. Thousands of lives have been lost for nothing. It's NEVER going to happen! While you have been foolishly drooling over our land instead of nurturing your own, we have built one of the most beautiful and successful countries on Earth. We have done it not to spite our greedy neighbours, but rather in spite of them. We've planted forests and quenched the desert. We've drained wetlands and cultivated fields. We built universities, opera houses, superhighways, hospitals, skyscrapers and stadiums. We have millions of refugees, but no refugee camps.
You could do the same. Focus on what you have and not on what you will never have. It takes love, hard work and determination. We can help. We have experts and scientists helping developing nations across the globe. Accept the facts, lay down your weapons and join us in making this great region of the planet even greater.
Remember, we're neighbours.
David Rosenblatt, Sarigim, Israel - Jan. 9th, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d-8hxLMOcg
Let's hear a cheer for the relentless Leonard.
PIGS.
That's the acronym for Portugal, Italy and Greece because of the fortunes they have each drained from the European Union in recent years.
Spain alone has been given in excess of $245 Billion in the past decade.
Ireland was in the same predicament for many years and the EU monies did an amazing job rebuilding aging and often non-existent infrastructure.
Then, Dublin discovered IT and the island became "overnight" a fabulously productive Have Country.
Spain and its dos amigos, on the other hand, show no signs of similar miracles. Their economies are heavily based on construction projects and tourism. Which Canadian has not enjoyed the sights and tastes and delights of these three beautiful countries in recent years?
Thus, Spain, for example, facing an expected 20% unemployment rate by 2011, is urging local consumers to buy local goods.
All of which - by way of saying this problem is not unique to North America - is to introduce the thorny problem of the distinctly "Buy America" flavour in Obama's bail-out plans.
We exported $11 Billion in steel products to the USA in 2007.
Trade Minister Stockwell Day is raising the alarms about protectionist measures and their dire consequences.
He is hardly alone.
Economist after editorialist echoes these concerns.
Trade wars, closed borders and protectionism lead almost inevitably to plunging economies everywhere.
Obama has a serious problem. He may be a reformer, but he is first a politician and it is the votes of those steel workers that got him into office.
His visit to Canada in just a few weeks will be much more serious than a rock show and window dressing.
Is NAFTA to be scrapped? Is the USA's Homeland Security Office going to make the movement of people and goods across our borders even more onerous?
Will protectionist measures set off a massive confrontation with China?
Hunkering down under wintry weather is understandable. But closing the doors is ill-advised.
Let us watch carefully to see what the most interesting American President in many, many years will be prepared to do in the face of this enormous challenge.
A little dust-up at a New Brunswick public school has taken on absurd and national proportions.
Parents complained that their children shouldn't have to take part in the daily singing of the national anthem, which, for the record, is called "O Canada."
The principal of the school, who had any number of responses available, including telling these busy-bodies to go piss up a rope, acquiesced and cancelled the ritual.
Now "the debate" rages.
But I don't even understand the very beginning of this tale.
Why would you complain about your kid singing "O Canada" every morning?
Wassa problem?
We all sang this song every morning at the beginning of class for umpteen silly years and here's the result as far as I can tell.
None of us that I know of has become either a rabid nationalist hiding sin upon sin behind patriotism or a lackadaisical lout without love of and pride in our country.
So your brat will stand on his little feet and sing the song. So effing what?
The parents in Springfield, N.B. were having a melodrama-void day? No extra-marital affairs to begin or conclude? No trips to Aruba to book? No reconfigured curling teams to launch?
We are at war.
Who knew?
What will be the largest peacetime security operation in Canadian history?
Not the visit of President Obama to Ottawa next month.
No.
It will be the Olympics, of course.
Now the tab for all those 12,000 police, private security folk and members of the armed forces who happen to not be dying in Afghanistan during those 17 days was originally underestimated at $175 Million.
Anyone who knew anything about these matters, like the FBI, fell down laughing at these first numbers.
Clearly this was a typical G. Campbell snow job.
So.
What is the real cost?
Is there a pattern here?
First the Olympic Village and now the Port Mann Bridge.
Turns out the private company that is supposed to be in partnership with Kevin Falcon and the Provincial government to twin the mighty bridge, turns out they may just be running short of bucks.
So, guess what?
I know, you fingered it out, didn't you?
We - that is you and me who pay taxes on everything - we will provide the Macquarie Group a loan for one third the costs of this little project.
Heck, that's only hundreds of millions of dollars.
Now that budgets and deficits and bailouts are routinely quoted in billions and trillions of mind-numbing dollars, what's a paltry $700 Million tween friends and buds?
Gordon Campbell, more than any other public figure I can think of, has trumpeted for years now the glories of P3's or Public-Private Partnerships or, as I like to call them, PPPs or Pee,Pee, Pees.
Nice idea in a bread box somewhere in a kitchen long ago and far away maybe.
But here in the real world what keeps happening to these mighty alliances over and over again with frightening regularity is that the Private guys run mysteriously out of juice and we the taxpayers rush in to save the day. How nice of us.
Minister Falcon assures us - and don't we feel assured by his assurance? - that alles is gut because the tolls will pay for the bridge.
Uh-huh.
Perhaps the BBC blunder was an auger of things to come.
The normally Perfect Broadcasting Corporation offered an hysterically funny miscue the other day.
An interviewer was quizzing someone on the upcoming Canadian budget and what we might expect.
Amazing enough that we colonials would make the Big Time Show.
But what added to the hilarity is that a title was emblazoned across the screen and stayed there for many minutes throughout the chatter.
Here's what it said:
CANDIAN BUDGET
Eh?
When are Candians know to drop an "A?"
Well, now we have our Candian budget, and I am not smart enough to comment in any deep and useful way about all the minutia of this document.
But I do think this.
This is a patchwork, a quilt of unrelated, unthemed, non-ideas.
It is a bit of this and a bit of that with no discernible guiding principles.
It is short-term stuff with no strengthening long-term vision or goals.
It is not horrible; it is just not much of an anything. What we would have called in another era "a dog's breakfast."
I thought the Globe's editorial was sound and much worth a read.
Should Ignatieff and Layton bring down the government on the basis of this document?
Absolutely not.
We have enough on our plates to deal with without the costly and pointless absurdity of yet another election and another government.
Should they harass Harper into fine tuning this budget?
Sure, by all means.
Then, go back to your corners and get on with the business of Parliament.
Such as it is.
As yet another debt rating agency puts Vancouver into the dark negative column following the Olympic Village mess, I find myself wondering why two or three of the greatest culprits have been mysteriously shmeer-free.
Sam Sullivan.
Gordon Campbell.
Larry Campbell.
I didn't ask for the Olympics. I didn't go to Prague to wave the flag. I didn't blithely sign documents that would indebt the city for years to come on shaky land deals.
Did these three, for example, get some mystical-political get-out-of-jail-free card on this colossal blunder?
Of course, the current Mayor Robertson must work hand in glove with the Province and he not likely to slander or attack the Premier.
He is also a reasonably gracious man and, while he didn't shy away from scrapping with Ladner during the election, he is also unlikely to take unnecessary potshots at Sammy or Larry.
Leave that to me.
I'm just a citizen and a payer of taxes at every turn, who would ask that those responsible for truly bad decisions stand up and be counted.
DZIEKANSKI DEATH
VANCOUVER -- Firefighters who rushed to Vancouver's airport in the minutes after Robert Dziekanski was stunned by an RCMP taser found a pale, unresponsive man face down in handcuffs as officers stood metres away doing nothing, a public inquiry into the man's death heard yesterday.
Richmond Fire Department Captain Kirby Graeme said when he arrived in the early morning of Oct. 14, 2007, the officers weren't helping or monitoring Mr. Dziekanski, and at one point even refused to remove his handcuffs so he could be properly assessed.
Minutes earlier, the same four Mounties had confronted the Polish immigrant, who had been throwing furniture around in the airport's international arrivals area.
"To see a patient face-down, handcuffed and not being tended to in some way, shape or form, I thought, 'Something's not right here,' " said Mr. Graeme, a firefighter with more than two decades of experience.
The above are the headlines and opening paragraphs of a report in this morning's Globe. I think it tells us more of what we need to learn and raises the questions again about these four officers of the law.
Read the full story here.
As a recently retired paramedic I, of course, side with my former colleagues.
They are grossly under managed by a cadre of "old timers" or those brought up by the old timers. Their management style is still a hierarchal one with those near the top getting all the support and consideration while those at the lower levels are still looked on as "part time wannabes". Hence the governments disdain and offering only 2%. They never get to know the real side of the story.
Government has always looked on and used the BC Ambulance Service as a "cost over run buffer" for their screw ups in other areas of health care. Their budgets are constantly being raided by other ministries or areas within the health ministry. Their managers are very inept at getting and retaining planning and operating funds and never know what to do with what they've got because it comes at them in unplanned for dribs and drabs.
Having said that the Union Management side of the equation isn't much better. There isn't a professional manager within the organization and that's why they are asking today for such a high raise. It's to try and make up for the way they have been held back by an uncaring health ministry for the last 14 years. Unfortunately they won't get it. The unprofessional union negotiators will again be fooled by their professional negotiators and the hard working paramedics will again bear the brunt of this ineptitude.
Paramedics deserve to be paid as much as any policeman and deserve the respect that so often alludes them. This eludes then due to the fact that they are seldom seen at the "scene of the crime" so to speak. By the time the media arrives to tell the story the paramedics have already been and gone, off to the hospital and performing unsung miracles en route. Paramedics face life and death situations almost every shift where a policeman might only encounter one occasionally.
It's certainly time that they were re-reimbursed for their sacrifices and skills. 18% would be a good starting point.
When I reported my very favorable recent experience with the health care system to a friend the other day, he added that we couldn't as a nation continue on the current path.
He argues that, while our system is wonderful, it is unacceptably expensive, eating up roughly 50% of all government budgets and climbing.
What should we do?
Allow more private practitioners?
Cut back services?
Do serious audits on hospitals, for example, to cut away administrative costs?
Learn how to cost out surgical operations?
Pay doctors flat rates?
Allow nurses more responsibilities?
Please share your thoughts on this crucial and central issue. We are an aging population and the costs for our health care can only increase.
Can we afford what we have? Can we afford to not have what we have? What can and must we do to make it all more workable?
I encourage you on this page to a full and vigorous debate.
Thank you in advance.
When you read the stories about a possible strike by paramedics here on B.C., be sure to read the fine print.
If this job action does, in fact, occur, ambulances would not be parked. Paramedics fall under the province's essential-service law.
However, the public would be effected.
The workers are asking for parity with the police, which means a 31% wage hike.
The province is offering 2%.
Clearly, they are both out of their trees.
My basic sympathies are with the paramedics. They do great work and they are, time and time again, amazing in their calm, smooth professionalism under often dreadful circumstances.
But 31% is not going to go over with a world in financial mourning. How about 18%?
And the government's 2% offering is sheer insult.
Let's hope some good old common sense and reasonableness prevail -and quickly.
Signs of the recession?
1) The biggest growth company around is McDonald's.
Fuelled by fear and small pockets, Americans and eaters world-wide are charging to the arches in record numbers. More than 1,000 new emporia will open around the double cheeseburger globe this year.
Conclusion? Poverty is not healthy. But we knew that, didn't we.
2) Pharma-giant Pfizer has bought almost giant Wyeth for $68 Billion.
Pfizer's biggest sellers?
Viagra, Zoloft and Lipitor.
At least, Lipitor has known recognizable medical uses. It's the number one prescribed pill to combat bad cholesterol numbers.
Viagra...well, you know. And Zoloft is one of those highly debatable psychotropic drugs which, aside from being monstrously over prescribed, are polluting our waterways after the anxious piss the residues into the sewage systems.
Wyeth's number one elixir is Effexor - an antidepressant. Only $4 Billion a year in sales. Lovely.
Conclusion?
Heart-stopping bad fat foods and questionable instant cures for daily stress are the growth industries and always have been.
Who knew?
We were busy eating salads and fish oils and riding our bikes. What ever were we thinking?
