A question for the Cramahe watchers

Bylaw Officer Jim Harris appears to be taking it on the chin, producing reports that Council doesn't either like or take much notice of. His latest, a treatise on the legality of a patio fence at the Queen's hotel, appears to have produced an interesting Council meeting, to say the least. Bob Owen, of Cramahe Now reports that Mr Harris introduced his report about the option and legality of a year round fence around the patio at a Council meeting. The owner of the fence, Councillor Tim Gilligan Jr (he of baseball bat fame) promptly declared a conflict of interest and then moved to the delegation table and debated the issue with Council. A most innovative use of the C of I regulations.
The upshot was that once again Cramahe Council put the boots to a report produced by Mr Harris, a previous one being the Farmers' Market bylaw controversy, now what? Will Marc "quick draw. I can fire you" Coombs get rid of this officious man, just as he has removed all of the people who displease him. Remember Lee Dekeyser, Ken Wood and other minions of the Township?

The HST - what do we know about it?

OK this is from a non-economist so don't get wound up about the numbers just critique the reasoning. We are going to get a new tax and people will get tax rebates and business will get a lower corporate tax rate. This where it gets sticky. Consumers pay more actual cash but will get tax rebates (up to $1,000 cheque in the mail) and the promise of more jobs from a more efficient business sector. The business advantages are becoming quite clear, they will get a lower tax rate and relief from paying tax on items purchased for the business. The HST is widely seen as a contributor to making businesses more competitive because it does not tax businesses' purchases, including many capital items, that were subject to the old retail sales tax. If this is true then that help for business is good. What isn't good is the lowered corporate tax. Corporate taxes are paid on net income, just like personal tax. You reach the net by deducting expenses from the gross income. The more allowable expenses there are will determine the amount of net income. The rest is profit. Profit can be used in many ways but is usually taken out of the business by the owners. So, in my reckoning if a business owner has profit and don't forget that there is a high amount of net income that is not taxable before hitting the threshold, it's all gravy. Why are we making it easier for a business owner to cut his costs (and increase productivity) - good and allowing the owner to keep more profit - bad?

People with hurt feelings, please line up

Are there any more groups out there that need apologies? If so get in line because there will always be craven, grovelling and vote-seeking ploiticians willing to utter any apology necessary. Today it was the Australians apologising for accepting thousands of kids, who would have starved, and the British PM will follow suit next month (Extracting the most political mileage from the situation Gordon Brown announced he will apologise next month!). As readers may deduce from the words today I have little truck or trade with political apologies. They are a political device that works for Pols but not people. If Pols want to apologise for their transgressions why don't they apologise for not fixing Society's ills. The 30 odd billion spent on the war in Afghanistan could have paid for an expanded heath care sytem an unemployment relief system that maintains families and a host of other remedies to lift us from this man-made recession.

Why I love the CBC and hate it too!

The CBC is a charm, a wonderful experience. If you don't think so go to the website and download the Remembrance Day podcast for the Vinyl Cafe, as an example. Stewart McLean's readings of submitted recollections were dreadfully funny, on topic and very moving and not a tale of battles either. But the network drives me nuts. As with every other radio station in the Country it is really only working half the time, the other half of the day is a repeat of the daily stuff. The other bane is that when events happen every program in the network has to have a story . Consequently, as an example, the Berlin Wall commemoration was pounded to death by every producer in Front St. this week . Driving down the 401, in the middle of the night is a very boring occupation. Miles of miles of white line watching is only relieved by what you hear on the radio. There are five different wavelengths between Toronto and Montreal. After punching the frequencies into the presets you can get seamless broadcasts. But if you listen during the day you have nothing to listen to at night. So love the content hate the repeats.

Sunday #3

Driving down King St, this morning I noticed a plethora of shiny stainless steel waste bins. There are 15, in my count, placed on both sides of King St between McGill and Spring St. I also noticed that there is no advertising on any of the bins. This is a wonderful chance for the owners of the bins to accrue some public acceptance of these shiny montrosities. They could ask local artists to display their work. The bins are not producing one penny of ad revenue now, they should get us on their side by offering the space to local artists.

Well that was quick, wasn't it?

The Canadian Champion of leafleteering - Rick Norlock, the Squire of Warworth, appears to have won this one. Despite the news of our very own MP owning the highest bill for leafleteering and casually dismissing his opponents, as people who do little except oppose communication efforts ;he has obviously won the battle of public opinion. I say this because his opponents, the putative nominated candidates for his job, will have to wait for an election All Candidates Meeting, where they can debate this huge waste of public money because the public are not interested. There is no groundswell of angry people banging on Rick's door to tell him what they think. A story without legs!

Sunday #2

I am not a great fan of Conrad Black because of his attitudes towards unions - he hates and and will smash them at every opportunity, I do admire his writing. In this column to the National Post he describes the delight of being a prison tutor. Just the way it is written in an understated British wry way; he talks about his experience as a, albeit reluctant, tutor of soon-to-be High School graduates, is impressive to me.

Sunday #1

The controversy about the Community Centre Fundraising, will probably die down after Monday night. At the next Council meeting a motion will be adopted that apporoves the hiring of "The Fundraising Network" for $75.000 plus disbursements. In a conversation with the BurdReport the coordinator of special events, for the Town of Cobourg, Lara Scott, revealed that this Company has been in business since 1999 and are Toronto based. The partner that has been assigned to Cobourg is from Kingston. His name was not given as it will not be public until Monday evening. So the question of the value of the disbursements may become an issue if he insists on commuting to Cobourg to complete his duties. But the bigger issue of not getting substantial support because some segments of the community believe that this money is a waste of time, has been ameliorated as the original estimate for the work to be done was $150,000. But some heavy hitters and donors think that the money being spent here, from donations, is a total waste of money., it should be completed using local "champions". In addition although the Staff has signed off on this RFP and declared to to be consistent with Town Policy, some local fundraisers, who might have submitted to the Committee claim that the scope of the RFP was too extensive to be responded to in the time allowed for a turnaround. They think that despite what the CAO says about the process the fix was in, before it even started.

I don't normally do this but it is priceless

We all get jokes in our email, and we all usually delete them as soon as we see it. But this one is a keeper"

Curtis & Leroy saw an ad in the Kentville Advertiser Newspaper in Kentville, N.S. and bought a mule for $100. The farmer agreed to deliver the mule the next day.
The next morning the farmer drove up and said, "Sorry, fellers, I have some bad news, the mule died last night."
Curtis &Leroy replied, "Well , then just give us our money back."
The farmer said, "Can't do that. I went and spent it already."
They said, "OK then, just bring us the dead mule."
The farmer asked, "What in the world ya' ll gonna do with a dead mule?"
Curtis said, "We gonna raffle him off."
The farmer said, "You can't raffle off a dead mule!"
Leroy said, "We shore can! Heck, we don't hafta tell nobody he's dead".
A couple of weeks later, the farmer ran into Curtis & Leroy at the Co-Op grocery store and asked:
"What'd you fellers ever do with that dead mule?"
They said,"We raffled him off like we said we wuz gonna do."
Leroy said,"Shucks, we sold 500 tickets fer two dollars a piece and made a
profit of $898."
The farmer said,"My Lord, didn't anyone complain?"
Curtis said, "Well , the feller who won got upset. So we gave him his
two dollars back."

Curtis and Leroy now work for the government. They're overseeing the Harper's Economic Stimulus package.

A political reality check

One of my favourite political sites is called ThreeHundredEight.com it is a site devoted to opinion polls and the examination of all poll results at the macro level. A reality check on the websites that claim that one party or the other is either over the cliff or rising to the moon!
As the EKOS poll is examined in the light of the others the 10% lead, as of yesterday, is put into perspective by the last paragraph of the latest post, "The biggest thing to take from this poll is that we're back to square one, back to October 2008. Which means no one has a reason to go to an election. "

So all of you partisans out there please comment, is this site worth the paper it is printed on or do you detect political bias) after all all sites have them!)