Comments on The Burd Report: The never ending tale - give me your money!

I support the United Way. The Labour movement has ...

2009-10-20T16:29:26.004-04:00

I support the United Way. The Labour movement has always supported the United Way.

When United Way fundraising is successful, it is good.

GEE! I hadn't thought of it quite like that!

2009-10-19T21:16:19.333-04:00

GEE! I hadn't thought of it quite like that!

Ehrenreich's target is actually not optimism o...

2009-10-19T15:25:02.752-04:00

Ehrenreich's target is actually not optimism or positive thinking. It is "the ideology of positive thinking." She doesn't object to us being upbeat, just to us being told to be upbeat when we are not actually feeling that way or do not have a reason to feel that way

What they won't tell you about this charity ga...

2009-10-19T14:35:28.776-04:00

What they won't tell you about this charity game is that they are raising funds to provide the social services that used to be the responsibility of government. Remember how that worked? We paid our taxes and government funded the services that all of us need.

Now we still pay taxes but government has shucked off all those so called soft services, and the affluent play silly games like this to raise money so they don't have to feel guilty about their excesses.

For the rest of us, it means dropping a few items in the food bank bin at the grocery store and we too are off the hook.

We could help more by ganging up on our politicians and demanding they fund social services properly, which in the end would be much better for everybody.

Two more convictions by United Way can be seen by ...

2009-10-19T12:16:27.530-04:00

Two more convictions by United Way
can be seen by clicking HERE

To raise the most money possible, they should have...

2009-10-19T09:04:51.255-04:00

To raise the most money possible, they should have a dual-stream possibility.

It would work like this:
such-and-such is in UW Jail,
pay $1 towards bail money to get him out, or,
pay $5 to offset other's bail money and try to keep him in.

When it comes to someone like Bill Patchett, option 2 would raise bags of money.

The darker side of this, if I can call it that, is...

2009-10-18T11:41:44.987-04:00

The darker side of this, if I can call it that, is the Keystone aspect of the Kops getting involved in this kind of thing. I find it somehow off-putting. Maybe even more money would be raised if everybody just sort of tasered each other and rolled around on King Street while costumed volunteers gathered up the cash falling out of their pockets. I suppose my cynicism has something to do with Barbara Ehrereich's 'Bright-Sided' about how relentless glee has turned America into a nation of happy slaves. As Ms. Ehrenreich says "Positive thinking is neither." Bill Patchett, a positive thinker if ever there was one, would be about the last person I'd want to get stuck next to on a long-haul flight. But, Ben, you hit the nail on the head with what I hope was a purely facetious title for all this local anaesthetic: Cobourg culture.

DJC