took place yesterday but most of us would only have focused on one – the Federal Budget. This is where boogeyman Jim Flaherty betrayed his Tory base and introduced a Liberal budget, so liberal it might have been ghost scripted by Paul Martin. No balls on account of the Tories, still pandering to the mushy middle. A middle where the politics of envy still rules supreme. An arena where nasty middle class voters ingrained with a sense of victimhood, Read more »
It’s just come to our attention that the Burd Report’s favourite child, The Help Centre, is hosting a fund-raiser tomorrow and we’d like to make sure all our readers know about it, even if this is a bit last minute. Called the “Empty Bowls Supper and Silent Auction”, it’s being held at Rosewood Estates on 225 Densmore Road in Cobourg on Thursday, March 29th.
Starting with drinks and appetizers at 6 pm with supper to follow at 6:30, Read more »
That’s what this guy wants to tell us. We are sure that in the coming days there will be all kinds of advice given to him by pundits and commentators, but we bet that the overwhelming advice will be to ‘slash and burn’ as opposed to ‘let’s try to eliminate inequality’. The biggest problem in this budget, as well as every other budget, except Municipal budgets, in this Country, is the refusal to accept raise taxes as an option in the budgetary process. Take for example we are told that we are in deficit, we are but why is that bad? Read more »
Today my trusty laptop was acting up and while that’s nothing new, it seemed to carry an ominous significance not usually felt. On the heels of the widespread voting irregularities and dirty tricks uncovered during the last federal election, and now at the NDP leadership convention last weekend, unease and even suspicion arises at every minor glitch. Is that just Bell internet screwing up again, or evidence of some secret intruder intent on disrupting my communications portal or looking for secrets in my files?
While it’s not uncommon for some of us on the Left to develop slightly paranoid tendencies, Read more »
But this guy Thomas Mulcair – was the consensus winner and if die-hard Dippers can put up with an Audrey McLaughlin leadership then even the most virulent anti- Mulcair people will love this guy when he goes up against PMSH. What’s the old saw – “Nice guys don’t win……”? Well the NDP has finally brought a gun to a knife fight, Read more »
Ten years of wage repression after a 20% wage cut, pension rollbacks, watching the CEO get massive bonuses, he is due for another $5million tomorrow; for length of service, at least two Parliamentary back to work orders and a wage on the ramp of less than the industrial wage is it any wonder that a spark could set this tinder box off. The spark was seeing some midle-aged (yes we are using age as an insult) blonde woman coming to pick up the luggage, obviously she didn’t have enough fartcatchers to do it for her, she was recognised as the Federal Minister of Labour – Lisa Raitt and some ramp workers decided to yell at her. “Lisa Raitt came on one of our flights. Got heckled. Entire ramp walked out at YYZ (Pearson),” said a text received by one striker Thursday night shortly after 10 p.m. The workers walked out Thursday night, reportedly after some of them were disciplined for heckling federal Labour Minister Lisa Raitt. – Toronto Star.
We say good for them. The BR is an unabashed supporter of the right to strike (R2S) and in a free and democratic society nobody should be banned from using the act of withdrawal of labour in controlled situations. The R2S is the only weapon that a modern worker has and if you take the opinion, as we do, that the right to work is a two way street between employees and employers then a civilised workplace will be in place and the R2S is something that will never be used. Unions will only happen to bad employers and Air Canada in running their labour relations the way they have done in the past twenty years will never win any awards. Now that they have a friend in PMSH why should they pretend to have any semblance of fairness or cordiality – it is war and the Company has the nuclear option of using the government to back them up.
Banning strikes is a futile exercise and only makes a bad situation worse. Governments must be blind to human behaviour, in the UK for instance they are now mandating that long term unemployed youth be forced to work for Private Enterprise. What kind of stupid politician will believe that any kind of productivity will be forthcoming from recalcitrent employees. Why they wonder where is all this bad product and perhaps sabotage coming from? You can only push reasonable people so far. And illegal strikes are a symptom of a much worse problem. The last bloody people you want to annoy and irk and really get POd is the guy who flys your plane or handles your baggage, especially if you don’t have bulletproof suitcases!
It wasn’t easy but today I managed to secure some time with my favourite editor here at the Burd Report. Purpose: to teach this old girl some new tricks to dazzle the readership with in my posts. That may not seem like a big deal but I really am a technophobe, afraid that any wrong move on my part will at least blow up the BR, and quite possibly destroy the entire world wide web too. I live in constant fear of that apocalyptic moment coming to pass and the entire world online community rising up to smite me in revenge. That fear makes innovation difficult, to say the least. Although Ben has, in the past, assured me that won’t happen, having him here at my elbow while I learned gave me the confidence to try. He’s a good teacher too, never once called me a Luddite and patiently allowed me to make mistakes along the way.
But I’m just a typist, trained to know where the keys are so I can type without looking at either the keyboard or the words I’m typing. That’s how we learned it back in the day and essentially that’s how I still do it. Any computer skills have come hither-thither along the way without much formal training at all. In my working life that was enough since producing legal submissions and reports isn’t much different than good old fashioned word processing, which of course is the phrase that replaced the word ”typing” with the advent of computers. Kind of like how typing became “keyboarding” as soon as men started doing it too.
Just in case anyone is wondering, the strangely curled up cat in the picture is Ginger, aka Gingi, Gingerella, Gingeroni. She is currently very rounded and we’re trying to guess how soon the Big Day will arrive. For weeks we talked about making the Appointment to ensure such an event did not transpire, but she’s so cute, so soft, so sweet, and as a female orange cat, so rare, that we just had to let her fulfill her destiny as a mom once before the surgery happens. When it comes to cats, my handsome spouse and I are both sentimental fools. Applications for adoptive parents are being accepted now for placement in June.
For those who haven’t voted yet look at this video, it makes sense to me, apart from the endorsement for Peggy Nash. But the central question makes a lot of sense – “Who would Stephen Harper hate to have to face everyday?”
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