Let's scan the entrails
The election is over - anybody notice it in the first place. What a bore and snoozefest. Snippets below
- Did the Tory campaign ever get off the ground, apart from being sabotaged by the central campaign Cathy Galt's team suffered greatly.
- Firstly the vicious nomination battles split the party and left the Cambellford rump running the party. Unfortunately seven people can't run a party.
- Secondly you have to know where you are going and have some organisation, filing the nomination papers with only three hours to go is a good sign that you either couldn't get 100 people to sign the papers or you were completely disorganised.
- The loss of 8 points in the polls now demonstrates that the local riding association has to rebuild but in which direction - Cambellford and the hicks or Cobourg/Port Hope with the Bill Davis leftovers?
- Loooo and his fiberals are crowing a lot but why; they had 96 votes less than last time. What a water treader!
- The greens did well getting another 3,181 votes than last time but will they stick or were they POd tory votes, they, the greens, don't care and will float off into lala land thinking that they are on a winning track. I just hope that their new voters don't look at the economic policies or else they will leave as fast as they came.
- The Ndippers also did well, with a very good candidate, getting another 1,371 votes and moving up 2% points over last time.
So what can we expect in the next four years? Nothing that hasn't happened over the last four, in other words bland and boring politics that will ignore the real issue of our area. Rising property taxes is the killer issue and nobody is looking to the root cause. Nobody will want to upset the municipal apple cart and dismantle the fiefdoms of Northumberland. Municipal redundancy and duplication is the problem here and we don't solve it by allowing the County to expand a bloated bureaucracy and keep the fiefdoms. New land use policies and planning for the shifting demographic that cannot take up the slack of reduced industrial taxation, caused by the high dollar and deindustrialisation, with their high property taxes and coming user fees, has to take place from the Central government. We know that the Barons of Northumberland (the seven mayoral dwarfs) cannot do this for parochial reasons so Premier McGuinty has do it for them. But he won't and so in four years time the electoral issue will be property tax reform.
This really upsets some people.
The staggered traffic lights at the beer store/No frills corner are perplexing, especially for the drivers sitting behind bozos who don't know how to navigate this large intersection. I even saw one frustrated driver sitting in the Beer Store Rd drive in the outside lane all the way around the other drivers sitting in the Division St lanes just to show the bozos how to get through the intersection. It's simple folks - if you have a green you keep on driving. Perhaps traffic Engineer Ted MacDonald should be stationed at the intersection and be ready to jump into traffic, like a squeegee kid, just to tell the bozo who stops on the red, instead of going on through, what to do. After all wouldn't a "No Left turn" sign positioned in front of the Park St. intersection have done the job of controlling traffic and would have been a lot cheaper than new lights?
This should upset people
MP Garth Turner has published here a story about the Conservative party's data mining operations. Very interesting and bit freaky, the Harpercrits making enemies lists and noting info about joe blow. Another instance of 1984 coming around to haunt us.
This really upsets some people.
The staggered traffic lights at the beer store/No frills corner are perplexing, especially for the drivers sitting behind bozos who don't know how to navigate this large intersection. I even saw one frustrated driver sitting in the Beer Store Rd drive in the outside lane all the way around the other drivers sitting in the Division St lanes just to show the bozos how to get through the intersection. It's simple folks - if you have a green you keep on driving. Perhaps traffic Engineer Ted MacDonald should be stationed at the intersection and be ready to jump into traffic, like a squeegee kid, just to tell the bozo who stops on the red, instead of going on through, what to do. After all wouldn't a "No Left turn" sign positioned in front of the Park St. intersection have done the job of controlling traffic and would have been a lot cheaper than new lights?
This should upset people
MP Garth Turner has published here a story about the Conservative party's data mining operations. Very interesting and bit freaky, the Harpercrits making enemies lists and noting info about joe blow. Another instance of 1984 coming around to haunt us.
1 comments:
The election is over - anybody notice it in the first place. What a bore and snoozefest. So what can we expect in the next four years?
Nothing that hasn't happened over the last four, in other words bland and boring politics that will ignore the real issue of our area. -- Ben Burd
Wally Keeler:
The sharks are circling; they smell the blood seeping from the killer issue of rising propertytaxes. Yep that’s the crack-cocaine of political issues that will divert the general populace from their reality-show mainlining and hip pain.
Politics is bland and boring because people are generally comfortable with their lives. My 60years of life in southern Ontario has been one of freedom and prosperity unprecedented inhuman history; I expect it to continue and improve.
Julian Simon (1932-98) renown Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland asserted,”the material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today’s Western living standards. I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse.”
In the days prior to my vanishing virility, I used to travel into the communist dictatorshits ofEastern Europe on assorted smuggling operations and performance/exhibits. The politics wasnot bland and boring – politics was exciting because it was dangerous. The stakes were high – loss of freedom (such as it was) and possible loss of life. To be fair, my freedom and life, was hardly in jeopardy, even when I was there – the worse I could expect was to be slapped,punched and then tossed out into the free world.
I took these risks because I was a Boomer, a child born into freedom and prosperity, and Ienjoyed freedom for free – I never paid a price for it. So I love this world where the killer issue is property tax and where people wax apoplectic over bozos at traffic lights. There are hundredsof millions of people throughout the world that would be willing to risk life and limb to suffer from such issues. All too often our politics is a gregarious whine; “There’s a fly in my crepe suset.”
Ben Burd said:
This should upset people: MP Garth Turner has published here a story about the Conservativeparty's data mining operations. Very interesting and bit freaky, the Harpercrits making enemies lists and noting info about joe blow. Another instance of 1984 coming around to haunt us.
Wally Keeler:
This is hardly an issue. Horrors! Big Brother is watching. Yep, sure is. I am sniffing paranoia inthe air. Well, here is the reel news, Little Brother Watches Back. I can data mine to my heart’scontent. The general public can do the same thing. This is a good thing. Transparency. The young are the Wizards of Pod. When cell phones cheaply broadcast to a world audience, and the world stashes the images on millions of hard drives for all sort of subversive purposes, this is a good thing. When wrist watches can broadcast the indiscretions of politicians, priests,police, and blog meisters, we are well-informed.
I can dive into the data mines of human rights orgs, Facebook, Youtube, and other assorted minefields of personal and impersonal records. Shakespeare asserted that all the world’s a stage – in the 21st century all the world is a tv studio and everyone is a potential papparazi. Can you feel the digital love?
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