Mayor Entirely To Blame for Strike

Richmond and Surrey have settled, or are about to settle, their labour disputes, while the Vancouver strike continues.

You know why?

For the same reason it began.

Sam Sullivan.

The City offered the union a 39-month deal to take them clear through the famous Olympics. The union countered with 48 months, wanting a good round 4-year number.

Mayor Sam said, "No."

You know why?

Because that would take the issue into the next civic election.

Like he's going to be re-elected. Talk about delusional.

Already, the Ideal candidate is poised and when, announced, will walk into the job.

Getting frustrated already with no pools, no libraries, no garbage pickup?

Call Sam.

He's The Man.

Curb Drug Costs - oh Yeah...

It is a rare enough thing for me to praise the B.C. Medical Association, but today must be the day.

Congratulations to Dr. Geoff Appleton, the BCMA President, and his team for presenting to BC Health Minister, Geoff Plant, the position paper called "A Prescription for Quality: Improving Prescription Drug Policy for BC."

For the full story, read the Vancouver Sun coverage here.

Prescription drugs are now the biggest expenditure of our Health Dollar, after hospitals. Our costs have risen from $259 Million in 1985 to $2 Billion today.

One of the biggest reasons is the outrageously aggressive sales tactics of Big Pharma, who visit your family doctor several times a week.

But the other reason these costs have so drastically escalated - and, as I don't have the full report in front of me, I don't know if this is covered therein - is the enormous jump in psychotropic/psychiatric medications. It is my firm belief that at least 90% of these prescriptions are inappropriate, dangerous and unnecessary.

But, remember that next to armaments and illegal drugs, pharmaceuticals are the biggest industry in the world. So good luck to all of us on cutting down.

At least we can thank the BCMA for hollering a bit of a wake-up call.

Guest Blogger on Langara Station Name

The comment on our "What's in a Name? Only Blackmail," post of yesterday was so good, we had to give it guest blogger status:

"There continues to be a tremendous amount of lobbying and possibly, political interference to switch the name to the Punjabi Market - Langara Station.

I have lived in the community for over 40 years, the corner of 49th and Cambie has always been known as Langara. This area includes the Langara Estates, Langara Golf Course, Langara College and it's even in the Electoral district of Vancouver Langara. The corner of Main and 49th is where the Punjabi Market is located. If the Canada line was going down Main Street, then name the station after the Punjabi Market. Main street is a full 1,000 meters away and has no connection to Cambie and 49th. I live near the Punjabi Market and the majority of it's patrons drive to the market, they don't use transit. However, each week there are 9,000 students and staff trips using transit from Langara. 61% of the residents in the Cambie + 49th area are Chinese, and the Indian population is less than 2%.

I'm shocked that this name issue has once again come up. What ever you think about Translink, they shouldn't be pressured into changing the name. A name change will be very unpopular with the community living on or near Cambie. Guess what they are calling the station at 41st & Cambie? Oakridge! Guess what they are calling the station at Marine Drive and Cambie? Marine Drive! And finally what are they calling the station at King Edward and Cambie? King Edward!

Do you see the pattern? Duh, what else would be call it Kerrisdale or the Jewish Community Centre station? Politics makes me crazy!"

What's in a Name? Only Blackmail.

The NDP can't lose in proposing that the new Canada Line stop at 49th and Cambie be named after the Punjabi market at 49th and Main St.

Even when Translink says, "No," the NDP has gone on record and thus secured their votes for the next election.

But this is a classic case of multi-cultural ethnic blackmail. Vote against our wants and you're a racist. Ha!

The new stop will be called Langara. You know why?

Because it should be.

The stop is immediately adjacent to Langara Estates. Langara Gold Course and Langara College.

Langara College will provide the largest and most consistent daily ridership on the Canada Line to that stop.

The Punjabi Market is not on the line. It is about 6 blocks away.

There is nothing to stop Transclunk from providing the obvious, practical solution of signage around the station pointing to the market.

But the attempt to rename the Langara stop for the market is a classic case of political correctness gone mad.

Strike Points

A few small points about the civic strike.

There are many among us who believe that private sector workers should have the right to strike, but public sector workers should not.

I don't agree with that position.

Strikes are never fun, often disruptive and potentially dangerous and violent. Who ever wants them?

But governments in Canada are now, regrettably, our biggest employers. Are we to deprive more than half of the work force the bargaining tool that others enjoy? What other means are available when management simply says, "No?" When you agree to work for a municipal, provincial or federal jurisdiction, must you be signing a deal with the devil? You can work here, but, above all, keep your nose clean and above all, shut up.

In spite of the fact that many believe we are sprinkled latte culture, we are not that far removed from the dark days of the 1930's. Unions and strike rights are still an important part of the working fabric.

Secondly...I add my voice to the chorus who have been appalled by the idiot mayor using words like "never" and "last offer." If the mayor could get his Olympic medal out of his ass long enough to do some serious thinking, he might realize that he is not a monarch, but an elected official and his responsibilities go somewhat beyond posturing.

More Garbage Talk- Guest Blogger Elizabeth James

As other writers are beginning to say, there has to be a better way to settle labour disputes than to hold taxpayers hostage to political posturing.

For the time being, the scales seem to be tipped in favour of the strikers who not only said they would attend negotiating meetings, they actually rented a room for the purpose - to no avail. News reports indicate that City of Vancouver negotiators refused to meet over the weekend. So, here's a message for the Mayor:

You, Mr. Mayor, are not the employer; taxpayers are. Moreover, those same taxpayers hired you to do a job on their behalf - and part of that job is to negotiate in good faith when union contracts come up for renewal. 'Good faith' is not political posturing in front of TV cameras to state that you will "never" agree to a contract that will allow a strike during the 2010 Olympics. No-one to my knowledge ever said that was their intention.

You may think it's a good idea to take a page out of the Gordon Campbell Book of Political Behaviour, but I can tell you it doesn't wash with most taxpayers - no matter how they voted. Recent reports have shown that many are spending close to 70% of their income just to keep a roof over their heads and feed themselves. Yet you feel you can sit back and do nothing to avert a City-wide strike? Who do you think you are?

Citizens are royally fed up with paying multi-billions in taxes and still having little to no say as to how that money is to be spent, and on what. Recent news reports have been full of the Canada Line story, telling how that project alone is destroying business after business along Cambie Street - and now you want to drive away more tourist business with stinking piles of garbage and the rats that follow it?

It's high time taxpayers banded together and refused to put up with this kind of arrogant free-wheeling on the part of politicians...especially when it's accompanied by gold-plated pay increases.

What is needed is a system that requires both parties to strike a panel of three arbitrators - one for each side and one agreed upon by both sides. Those three, plus two or three people from each side of the dispute get thrown into a room, where they stay until an agreement is reached.

Until then - a caution to union negotiators: It will not take much for the tide of public opinion to turn far enough for taxpayers to call for a pox on both your houses.

Slow is Slow

It is a slow news day.

A very slow news day.

Shall we let the world sort itself out today?

Yes.

Stand By Me Ben E King 1961

More Debate

The argument about private vs. public sector continues in the comments section under "In Response to Michael."

Tammy Faye: Larry's King's Loss

Why did Larry King waste so much time with this foolish corrupt woman?

I know the answer, of course.

The only judgement King makes about people is their TVQ, and Tammy Faye had millions of sorry, lost followers.

JUMBLED POSTS

Please read the argument by my dear friend, "Michael" first...and then read my Response...

Some good, healthy agreement to disagree about public policy...

Please join the discussion.

In Response To Michael

Hi Michael,

Thank you for your comment.

I think it is an enormous stretch of the imagination to fear that a city garbage strike will lead to your home invasion by a totalitarian police force.

More importantly, at the heart of your argument is the admirable American love of liberty and the individual. So many Presidents, including the present dissembler, have made fools of the electorate by imposing bigger and more extensive government on them, while preaching Ermersonian ideals.

While I am largely sympathetic to those views, and in many an instant will still side with them, there is no question in my mind that government has an important role to play.Yes, it more often than not plays badly and makes us yearn again for the dictum "that government which governs least, governs best."

However, cities and sovereign states and provinces and countries do need policy and management.In the course of caring for the sewers and the fires and the public order, governments will employ workers. Yes, it is a sign of our unwillingness to care for ourselves that government is now the biggest employer in Canada, and no doubt the least effecient.

But, here we are. Postal workers, garbage collectors, park rangers and so on.

Now, all of these people deserve some reasonable kick at the cat. That is, within the range of their abilities and opportunities, they aught to be able to afgord some of the many extraordinary comforts of the current age.

The politicians and their managers can. Vancouver City Hall, for example is overrun with people we've never heard of who have been earning in a excess of $100,000 a year for many years.

(My own personal belief is that, if many of those were fired, the garbage men would do just fine, thank you, and so would you and I.)

So...strike on, I say. I will not be voting for ANY of the current City Council come next election. I may fear stinky garbage, but I don't expect the Boys in Blue to drop by, arms drawn, for breakfast.

Michael Looks at the Strike from Another Angle

Michael said...


Hi David-- I would like to disagree with you on your stance regarding the City workers strike. I am opposed to the very idea of "public sector unions' and I would like to tell you why.



If the workers in a company in the private sector elect to go on strike (say, Air Canada) the situation is quite different. If they reach a settlement that either raises the cost of travel on AC or results in a lower level of service, I can choose not to fly with them. If enough people make a similar decision, the company will fail and then both Robert Milton and his employees will be looking for work. In other words 1/ I, as an individual, can reject any settlement and 2/ any agreement must ultimately fly in the marketplace.



In the case of the public sector there are no similar checks and balances. If the city workers and the politicians reach a settlement I, as a homeowner, have no choice but to go along with it.



But let's assume I choose not to. Suppose I refuse to pay the additional taxes that the settlement requires. I will receive a series of polite (then increasingly threatening) letters from first the City--and subsequently from the legal system--telling me that I MUST pay these new taxes. If I continue to refuse then men with guns on their hips (policemen) will come to my home and tell me that I must either pay up or leave my home. If I protest and say "This is my home and I want you to get out of here" they will tell me that I must leave and will attempt to physically remove me. But suppose I am foolish enough to continue to resist them? At some point, these nice men with guns on their hips will draw their guns. If I should continue to resist even then, they may well use these guns (effectively bringing the matter--and perhaps my life--to a close.)



So, unlike the Air Canada example, the contract that public sector unions negotiate with the City is, in the last instance, extracted by the use of deadly force. I offer this for your consideration.

Onwards Strikers

Like you, I am dreading a summer of rotting garbage.

But let me say this before it all starts to get to me:

I am in total sympathy with the workers. Even more so with the forestry workers.

Life is simple.

The CEO's and mandarins live in Shaughnessy (Artist friends excepted.) The workers don't.

Strike till the bastards give you more of what they've got.

Billy Joel - Leningrad

My, my...the Piano Man is really so much more...

Clinton is Not a Black Boy

What the President became famous for a young man will be forever branded "a dangerous sex offender."

Such is the twisted, blind road of criminal justice in America.

Read the story here.

And face this fact. Oral sex has been around for a few hundred thousand years. A few million people have endulged. Someone is indulging as we speak. Lucky them.

There is an enormous difference between rape or coercion and consensual activity.

The only difference between this kid and the President is that the kid didn't have the big desk in the oval office to protect him.

Let's hope that this Georgia case clears this young man. If it doesn't serve Clinton with the papers now.

Lack of Vision TV

There is freedom of the press and freedom and speech and then there's are common sense and common decency.

Vision TV's airing of a Jihadists monologue is beyond the pale. Their license should be yanked, or at the least put into serious jeapardy until they can stop rationalizing the lazy airing of hate.

You can read the entire story here.

But here are some of the (low) highlights:

In the hour-long talk, Israr Ahmad said, "Jihad in the way of Allah, for the cause of Allah, can be pursued either with your financial resources or your bodily strength when you go to fight the enemy in the battlefield."

"So jihad, the highest form, is fighting in the cause of Allah."

Mr. Ahmad runs a seminary and bookstore in Lahore, Pakistan, and his writings foresee the "global domination of Islam," compare Jews to "parasites," describe the Holocaust as "divine punishment" and predict the "total extermination" of Jews.

His followers in Canada include terror suspect Qayyum Abdul Jamal, who was arrested last summer for his alleged role in a plot to detonate truck bombs in downtown Toronto.

According to Mr. Jamal's wife, Mr. Ahmad was her husband's teacher and mentor.

Mr. Ahmad is not just a religious scholar. He heads a self-described "revolutionary" organization called Tanzeem-e Islami, which wants to turn Pakistan into a fundamentalist Islamic state.

In his book Lessons From History, he writes that the revival of Islam will begin in Pakistan, because it is the only country that "has the potential for standing up against the nefarious designs of the global power-brokers and to resist the rising tides of the Jewish/Zionist hegemony."

Islam will come to rule in four stages, he claims: the Ultimate World War in the Middle East, the appearance of the anti-Christ, the extermination of the Jews and the "domination of Islam, over the entire globe."

Another Mistaken Judge

What is "family?"

It has been argued successfully in a number of court rooms over the years that a "family" is not necessarily consanguineous - blood related.

A family might be an assembly of like-minded idealists, people dedicated to some common vision or goal.

Why then do we have this social mantra that above all and at all other costs, "the family must be kept together."

I cannot tell you how many sensible, if heart-broken, children I know have prayed for their fractious, dysfunctional "families" to call it a day. The shrinks go on about the destructive force of divorce. But not often enough do they talk about the positive and healthy values of dissolving toxic and dangerous relationships.

All of which is to say how appalling it is to see yet another wrong-headed judge make another horrifying judgment in a local court.

A man beats up his wife and is given a conditional discharge.

The judge, quoting the accepted - and ignorant and blind - common wisdom, says, "Canadian society has an interest in promoting and keeping the family unit together."

Question for the good judge:

Does Canadian society have an interest in keeping family units together in which the father is an out-of-control brutalizing pig?

Next question:

Does the good judge read the papers? Does she have any idea about the rash of domestic violence against women in local "Indo-Canadian" families?

Has she heard of Paul Cheema?

The judge said that the man to whom she gave a conditional discharge after he attacked his wife has "suffered the embarrassment of having to discuss this matter..." in public.

Poor baby.

Last question (same question I asked last week in a similar circumstance):

How can we remove judges from their duties when they demonstrate with chilling clarity their inability to perform those duties responsibly?

What is Essential?

Choices.

Life - and acting - are always about choices.

So, explain if you can to this bewildered Alex in Wonderland the list of "essential services" the mayor assures us will continue through the stinky strike that looms ahead.

Along with police and fire, water and sewers are enshrined The Carnegie Centre, the Pride Parade and the Fireworks.

Huh?

The Carnegie Centre is a daily gathering place for Honduran Dope Dealers, Hookers and $100,000/year Poverty Pimps.

Less than one tenth of one per cent could care less what happens to the Carnegie Centre.

Sting - My One and Only Love

Now, here's a pretty good singer, his own true self, with the same song...