Dead Meat Explained

May 18, 2012
By

by Dan Christie

Chance are you haven’t heard of Clarke & Dawe.

But chances are whether or not you’ve heard of Clarke & Dawe you have heard them. Or something very much like them.

John Clarke and Brian Dawe are a pair of Australian satirists who take on major news stories much in the straight-faced manner of Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding -or just plain Bob And Ray, the American comedy duo of the 1950’s famous for such low key brilliance as The Kimodo Dragon and Slow Talkers Of America.

Clarke & Dawe’s best bit in my opinion is The Front Fell Off The Ship -a purported interview with the Australian Environment Minister explaining to an interviewer how it is that the front simply fell off a modern super tanker off the coast of  Australia fouling the coastline with 20,000 tons of heavy crude.

Just Google ’the front fell off the ship’. It’s on you tube.

Yes, you’ve heard Clark & Dawe. Especially if you heard last weeks CBC As It Happens interview with Canada’s Minister of Agriculture, Gerry Ritz, explaining how his government plans to relax restrictions on the processing of already-dead meat for human consumption.  It was a wonderful bit of self-parody -although I doubt Gerry Ritz saw it that way.

The front fell off Gerry Ritz’ ship the moment he began explaining himself.

Such is the  burden of being a Conservative in Canada. You must always take yourself seriously no matter how ridiculous your words. You cannot outwardly appear to get the joke -even though you may actually be the joke.

Already-dead meat okayed for human consumption.

Tens-of-billions of dollars not factored in when buying jets.

$16 glasses of orange juice -only repaid when caught.

Gazebos. Fake lakes.  You’re either with us or you’re with the child pornographers.

Any job is a good job.

Or….the front fell off the ship.

One  explanation for the dour look of the Harper government may lie in the over-representation of ex-cops and ex-car salesmen who fill the backbenches. Chances are the last time any of them cracked a smile was during a G20 arrest or palming off a lemon on the next sucker that walked onto the lot.  You can’t buy that kind of fun trying to stay awake during the third reading of a 500-page omnibus bill, that’s for sure.

But like the Australian Environment Minister, they plug away regardless, seemingly oblivious to the notion that no one believes a word any of them say anymore. Even their dogs don’t trust them. Especially Peter MacKay’s dog, exploited as a sympathy-gaining prop after Belinda tired of his pathos.

The difference between John Clarke’s lying-like-a-cheap-rug Environment Minister and Gerry Ritz extolling the virtues of dead meat is that Clarke’s parody is, if anything, more believable than Gerry Ritz. Sadly, because Stephen Harper prorogued humour the minute he got a majority, no one in his caucus will ever see The Front Fell Off The Ship.

And even if they did, they’d probably mistake it for a crash course in Media Relations ordered by the Prime Minister himself.

Why we keep this topic open

May 17, 2012
By

This letter, printed in the Globe & Mail this morning says it all. It is a plain speaking narrative of a 29 year old who has done everything right and is still un/underemployed. Everybody must read this, but then some of you don’t have to your kids’ experiences must mirror some of this frustration. And until everybody in or out of the workforce understand that the very foundations of our Society will crumble unless we solve our jobs crisis. We are all in this together.

And Jim Flaherty says -

May 15, 2012
By

“There is no such thing as a bad job!” That bloody phrase should be tattoed on his forehead and then shoved where the sun don’t shine! Read this, and it only one of many accounts that proliferate the Internet. Written by a reporter sent to one of the superwarehouses where everything is monitored except the actual working conditions. This joke of a man who has been leading the charge to implement guest workers that will earn less than a regular worker tells us all that he had to drive a cab to get where he is, is now is hectoring us on why no-one will be allowed to turn down a job when on EI.

When the Harpercrits are voted out of office in 2014, there will be any of us just waiting to see where “Jimbo” lands. We bet it will not be the limboland that many applicants for EI find themselves in – outdated qualifications, underskilled and a square peg in a round hole. As the Job centres are regionalised and depersonalised the only notification that one has been cut off because there are jobs out there will a letter in a brown envelope saying that because there was a job listed on the job board and you failed to apply for it you are now cut-off until the case is delved into. More phone calls to a 1-800 number and the prospect of facing a snarly person on the other end of the line (It is hard to be nice to the public when your job is being cut back too) will only increase the level of frustration. Expect more claimants to go Postal people and wonder just who will be the next to be shotgunned by an angry person, especially as the target of the anger – the Federal Government has no presence in your town – it left years ago!

Another POV here, and here too

and one from Chris Selley of the National Post

a comment from the Forum at McLeans.ca:

“We`ve lost the right to strike under federal jurisdictions, the cost of education is beyond a good percentage of the population, the right to protest & freedom of assembly are pretty much gone, and now forced labour. Anyone else see a trend?”

No Laughing Matter: Encounter with Lord Black

May 15, 2012
By

Guest Post by Dan Christie

In August of 1990, my wife and I were in Niagara-On-The-Lake at The Shaw Festival to see the opening night of Noel Coward’s Present Laughter. We had floor seats on the right-hand side of the Festival Theatre, ten rows back from the stage, on the aisle. There’s a reason why I remember every detail of that particular night. A very good reason. At a few minutes past 8 PM, the house lights dimmed. The packed house grew quiet. Music began to fill the theatre. The curtain began to rise. Actor’s feet could be seen and, in a few more seconds, we would be in their world, not ours.

Except…..

The curtain only made it about 4-feet off the stage floor before suddenly stopping. Then the music died. The audience began murmuring and the house lights came back up. The curtain went back down. Heads turned toward the back of the theatre where the there seemed to be a great deal of activity. A medical emergency maybe. Or -as they say in the theatre world- a “tired and emotional’ patron being shown the door. But no, it was none of that. It was the R.C.M.P. in full ceremonial, four of them, making an entrance, standing two to a side, and stiffly saluting a V.I.P. party entering late.

And who was this V.I.P. party entering late? None other than Conrad Black. And a man named Victor Rice. And retired Governor-General Mme. Jeanne Sauve. I rose slightly and quietly whispered to my wife that should I not return to my seat within the next five minutes she would probably find me the next morning in a Niagara Regional Police holding cell.

If you can’t show up on time, then the least you can do is follow the directions in the program and wait in the lobby for a break in the action to be shown to your seat. Or wait for the intermission. Above all, no matter who you are, show a little respect for the actors and for your fellow patrons. My wife told me to sit down and shut up, emphasizing the point by digging her fingernails deep into my right forearm.  I grudgingly complied. A thousand other people that night saw Conrad Black, Victor Rice and Mme. Jeanne Sauve.  But not me.  I saw the man who closed the Dominion Store at the end of my street in Toronto, the man -Victor Rice- who closed Massey-Ferguson and….the only Governor -General that ever closed the grounds of Rideau Hall to the public in peacetime. What I saw was nothing but a bunch of over-dressed close-up artists disrupting a much-anticipated opening night.

Conrad Black is back in Canada and for the most part Canadians couldn’t care less. But some of us do care and we’re insulted by his presence. Canada is nothing more than a convenient refuge for the man who threw his citizenship over the side for the dubious honour of becoming a member of Britian’s House of Lords. But before that he began the destruction of both The Port Hope Evening Guide and The Cobourg Daily Star -to say nothing of 35 other small town dailies he turned into blood banks for his ego-driven National Post. Neither of those papers (now owned by Sun Media-QMI) has returned to its former stature.

His attempted appropriation in 1984 of the $56-million Dominion Stores employees pension fund made it all the way to the Supreme Court of Ontario before the money was finally ordered returned. Were it not for Conrad Black’s prediliction for suing anybody that dared stand up to his bullying the English language may never have seen the phrase ‘libel chill’ enter into common usage.

The boxes going out the back door of 10 Toronto Street. The “corporate kleptocracy” . His media fan club – Peter Worthington, Christie Blatchford et al. His associates -like David Radler- who couldn’t sell Conrad Black out fast enough. But let’s give credit where credit is due. What about the $5-million donation to Sick Children’s Hospital that resulted in a wing of that institution being named for Conrad Black? Is it mean-spirited to ask, especially in light of the Chicago trial, just whose money was actually donated. Or who got the tax receipt? I suppose it is. But still…

Would Conrad Black ever have volunteered to teach illiterate prison inmates to read had he himself not been incarcerated? Would he have turned up in a chauffer driven Rolls at the prison gates complete with thesaurus in hand and asked to be let in to do his good work? I have my doubts. Having Conrad Black back in Canada is neither a plus nor a minus. One more convicted white collar criminal in a country practically run by white collar criminals isn’t going to make much difference either way. Beyond keeping the silverware under lock and key my life isn’t going to change very much at all. No one’s is.

But in the end, of all Conrad Black’s transgressions, both those we know about and those we may not, the one thing that stands out, the thing I can never forgive or forget, is Conrad Black’s late arrival for the opening night of Present Laughter. That and that alone should have been reason enough to keep Conrad Black out of the country. Forever.

 

You would have thought they learned last week

May 15, 2012
By

click on pic to enlarge

Last week the discussion was about giving parking passes to the Cobourg Bowling Club and the value of those passes. It was generally acknowledged that parking passes and free parking has a value – the amount of money that the Town fails to collect when it lets anybody park for free in a metered spot. Also acknowledged by some is that the amount of value represented should be noted as a Community Grant and filed. The reason being is simple, however much good is gained from giving things away we should be accountable and know how much it costs us to give free stuff away and who gets it.

So what happens this week Council is going to give the Farmers’ Market a break – a laudable idea when pursuing local economic development. However in noting that the rental for the space would be the equivalent of a day’s rental of the parking building the motion fails to note that the Farmers not only use the building but twenty-four parking spaces for six hours every Saturday for the season. That comes out to $6,048 – twenty-four spaces for six hours for twenty-one weeks of the Season. Now why is that sum of money not calculated and noted as a Community Grant?

It should be noted that this action and the giveaway of seventy passes to the Bowling Club now means the Parking Revenue account has the potential to lose approximately $10,000 this year and this is in a time when everybody is screaming about not having any money. Obviously we could have the money but choose to forgo it.

Being Thankful in Cobourg

May 14, 2012
By

A couple of recent news submissions from Cobourg’s top dogs, the Mayor and Deputy Mayor, along with a story about dredging Port Hope’s harbour, caught my attention and made me realize that as Stan Frost said in his article, we in Cobourg have much to be thankful for. At the top of the list has to be good government. Our gang of current Councillors, like their predecessors, may be a boring bunch but they keep the good ship Cobourg sailing in smooth waters from one year to the next.

Case in point: Mayor Gil’s article talking about how Cobourg, when it got the chance, formed a non profit corporation to operate our utilities, a move that generates a steady flow of revenue into town coffers every year. That’s no small achievement, and compared to a one time payment like Port Hope got for selling off their utility to a private company who keeps those profits for themselves, it was the only prudent decision to make. Like the Mayor in his piece, I’ll refrain from editorializing, except to say thank you to the Town of Cobourg.

Now we come to the dredging of Port Hope harbour. We’ve written before about how the little town to our west rebuffed Cobourg’s offer to buy a dredger together and share its use, then the angst when they had to pay Cobourg to dredge their harbour for them at a cost that some Port Hopers found outrageous. This year, Council tendered the job out, and has accepted a rock bottom bid for just $15,000 to do the work. It hasn’t started yet but they hope it will be finished in time for Canada Day with the sand hauled out of the water, dumped on the beach, tested, then all cleaned up and away. Top bid was $45,000 with a middle offer of $24,000 under consideration too.

That’s a rather large gap between top and bottom bidder, and makes one curious to see the specifications for each. Remembering that you get what you pay for, this latest decision from Port Hope Council may come back to bite them. It is to snicker that having missed the chance to buy a share in Cobourg’s dredger, which now makes money working in other lakeshore communities, they simply refuse to have anything to do with us or our big machine. The image that comes to mind is that of a pouting four year old shouting “I’ll show you” while waving a fist eastward. Another thank you for good government in Cobourg.

Not many people can make history

May 12, 2012
By

Not many people have the privilege of making history or setting into place monuments or buildings that can make or break the ambiance, atmosphere or character of a complete Town but the first step on that journey will be taken on Monday. The history-makers will be the seven people that call themselves the Cobourg Council.

What they, and the public will see is application for a minor variance on one of the boundaries of a proposed development that will fill in one of the last open pieces of land left in Cobourg’s downtown – the land bounded by Albert St. on the South, First St. on the East and Second St. on the West. Currently used as a parking lot this piece of land has been the centre of Cobourg’s commercial life for nearly two hundred years.

The pic on the right (click on it to enlarge) is a snap of the first plan of subdivision of Cobourg, registered in 1824. You can see the Town has radiated from this land ever since as it developed. So this land is the most historic in the Town and any proposed changes to it will change the very nature of the  beast if not completed to the satisfaction of many.

Up until now the only people to deal with this proposal has been the Planning and Advisory Committee and Town Staff. Now that the developers have found that the only way to maximise the building envelope is to ask for more land to build on it has to come to Council and the Committee of Adjustment has to deal with it. As with all developments this one has plenty of nice flashy paintings and illustrations to dazzle the audience. As an aside the Town could fill a Gallery with its collection of similar illustrations submitted over the years by all of the harbourfront developers and it is our opinion that many of these illustrations hardly resemble what is actually going to be built [enough cynicism - ed] But the pic of the development does show a couple of desirable things. One is that the building is built to the curb on all three commercial frontages, the other is that parking is contained on the site and it is going to be a low rise building; just how economical that is going to be is questionable!

This revelation to the public should spark major debate amongst Council watchers and amateur planners not to mention the NIMBYism that may be provoked by the downtown merchants who, if all the ground floor units are destined to be commercial will see a large amount of new retail space that could swamp the existing stores. Going back to the debate about the construction of a Parking Garage in Covert St in the 80s this writer can remember the main opposition to it coming from the perceived beneficiaries – the DBIA. The reaction to this amount of new commercial space from the DBIA will be interesting, to say the least.

One of the problems so far has been that the process is normal so far. The public has had no look at this plan and its potential impacts upon the area.Also the developer has been negotiating with the Town Staff for the best deal for him – the best return on his dollar. One of the tools in his pouch is a very weak proviso in the Official Plan that states that the minimum amount of commercial space required in a “mixed residential/commercial” development is far less that the amount of space that fronts on existing streets. The developer’s needs have to be balanced against the wants of the public and in this case because the public has not seen this plan yet that competition is one sided. So the amount of commercial space devoted to the revitalisation of Albert St may not be enough for his return. In that case Albert St may not be wholly commercial on its frontage. But until we see the Siteplan the public will not know.

However what we do know is that the Town must, in the follow-through of this development, insist that all of the ground floor units be commercial and not residential. How else do we plan for the commercial development of the Town for the next one hundred years. First glances at that this plan may be just that – a plan. How many times have we seen developments taken through the siteplan stage only to be flipped so that the developer can extract a profit and have none of the risks entailed in the building. For instance why do we not see a third floor of condos? Obviously because the site can only accommodate enough parking for two, that can be easily handled by underground parking, but at extra cost. As it is the question of parking for so many shoppers downtown has pushed the concept of a parking garage downtown back onto the field and the Town will be on the hook for that.

There are so many questions raised by this project. The good things of the project also bring baggage and the disposition of the baggage will be up to an enlightened public and a questioning Council. The biggest mistake this, or any other Council sitting to see this, would be to take the easy route and be dazzled by the glitz and the promise of more downtown residents and just give approval at every stage because the desire to question may not be there. The last influx of downtown residents, in the Lakefront condos, didn’t contribute much to the downtown’s GDP, we are still waiting for a downtown Grocery store and a greengrocer, two businesses that depend on density. We may end up with much of what we have already, not enough people and definitely not enough commercial development for the next Century if Council is not strict on the minimum amount of commercial space to be allotted in the proposal. If not all we have gained is another hundred housing units that will be occupied for a portion of the time, hardly an economic generator for the downtown.

 

The Irony of It All

May 9, 2012
By

Sometimes the illusion of justice is particularly foggy, especially when it comes to children and the practices of the Childrens Aid Society. While parent and family groups dedicated to exposing the murky thinking of the CAS travel around Ontario trying to raise attention to their cause, nobody pays too much attention. After all, they’re the people whose kids have been snatched by the Society, so compared to the professionals who made those decisions, their credibility is shot before they open their mouths.

Recent shocking news out of the city suggests perhaps we should pay more attention to the aggrieved, Read more »

A letter to the Editor

May 6, 2012
By

Modern Times: Charlie Chaplin warned us about this. He warned us in 1936 in a silent movie called ‘Modern Times’. It was in ‘Modern Times’ that Chaplin’s Little Tramp became hopelessly entangled with the soul-destroying machinery of efficiency, machinery that threw people out of work at a time when work was needed most. Read more »

Questions for Monday evening

May 5, 2012
By

Monday evening Cobourg Council will see this (look up and click for a bigger image) Read more »

Another win for the opposition

May 4, 2012
By

Contrary to one of our regular commentators who thinks that we are patronising the readers by one of our sidebar boxes that states “things we read but you might have missed” we are going to do it again. Last nights elections in the UK would not have been the highlight of many peoples’ TV watching but for those of us who drool at the sight of an election Read more »

It’s heating up

May 2, 2012
By

The Port Hope Police situation that is! For those who have not been following the situation it is very simple – some people on the PH Council want to see if they can get cheaper policing costs and have commissioned a study to find out. A correspondent from PH has supplied us with this summary and has issued an appeal for the citizens to demand another public meeting to discuss the issue.

Daniel Christie       2 May 08:25

By now, most residents of Ward 1 Read more »

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