Rewriters to the front!

As I spent the weekend at a family wedding enjoying the niceties of life in Ottawa - $7.00 beer and $25.00 entrees - there was no time to make comments about local life. The situation wasn't helped by the fact that the Town hasn't posted the Executive Committee agenda on the website for the third consecutive time in six weeks (anyone see a pattern here?). So a few webposts that I picked up in the last 12 hours.

Right-wing attack dogs attack each other: A youtube clip that is mighty entertaining here

Older drivers cause accidents! A piece that I would have liked to write but didn't - I chickened out. Jus a tale from a week ago. I was called to an incident on a Sunday afternoon at 5pm. After I had pulled the older man from the ditch I asked him to sign the invoice. "Sign on the X" I said. "Where's the X, my eyes aren't so good!" And he wonders why he hit the ditch. Article here

Just what we need in Cobourg to ensure an online presence: Here's an article about a law in the US that mandates an online presence for municipal business - about time.

For the really political nerds

Mcleans mag weblog is published here, read it if you have absolutely nothing else to read and lots of time. Macleans.ca liveblog - Canadian Leadership Debate - Day 2 : Blog Central : Macleans.ca Blog Central

And this site, a blow by blow realtime reaction to every word spoken last night. Red lines bad green lines good and to check specific responses by the leaders mouseover the blacks at the bottom.

And an ad that I approve of - Garth Turner's page and a link to youtube. Here

A primer on the subprime mess

Read about it here subprime works - Google Docs

Monday reads

Finally the right decision:
The Police Services Board has finally made the correct decision - to make the Acting Chief the real Chief. Paul Sweet has finally been recognised as the person for the job, ten years too late. Congratulations Chief.

Another slow election week
Will those who have noticed an election taking place please stand up. Talk about the 'phony war' just what is going on. Hardly any signs, one All Candidates meeting and little else. Oh Elizabeth May did turn up on Friday for a whistle stop at the Cobourg VIA station. Very artsy-fartsy: a jazz band, lots of older people and plenty of signs, well as many as about 35 people can carry. Waving sunflowers she said nice things for about three minutes, and then got back on the train. As one disembarking passenger told me, "It's been like this at every stop but there were more people at Oshawa."

Just who can you trust?

An amazing story about the aftermath of a lottery ticket purchase is detailed here - Lottery cash frozen as family feuds over winnings
Even more amazing is that there is only $200,000 left to quarrel about.

We found it - with subtitles

As a reaction to the Conservative cuts to the arts a Quebec video has been a runaway success. Half a million hits in the past couple of days. Unfortunately the youtube version was unilingual. Now CityTV has put up the video with subtitles and it is here and it is very very funny.

A few jottings

First things first:
Good news for a baseball buff who likes the vacation spot in Las Vegas, here. Let's play in Vegas! But seriously with the BJs out of contention this morning, how will this help when the press in Vegas complain about the lack of the will to win by their ball team, kinda sounds like the Rogers team !

Where's the paperwork?
For the second time this month no agenda was published online for the Executive meeting of Cobourg Council. Makes one think that they either don't care about the public or they just prefre to soldier on in secrecy. Sad!

Election signs:
Two items; one was an email from a regular who asked if the County bylaw is unconstitutional and the other a brilliant rebuttal to the question, "Why is Paul Macklin asking to be re-elected ? The first answer from me is that I don't know if the County law is unconstitutional and it will cost a lot of money to find out. "Postering" - the practise of putting up posters on public property has been cleared by the Supreme Court in a case in Peterborough many years ago, perhaps "signing" could be proven allowable as an extension of that case. But folks get your money out to pay for the lawyers to prove it. The second point - Macklin's signs - was easily explained in a beautiful piece of semantical polemic (wordy academic argument). Since Macklin had been elected more than once he was entitled to ask to be re-elected again. Not being the incumbent doesn't make the use of the word exclusive to the incumbent. Pity Arnold McCurdy, a few elections back, didn't think of it when he recycled his signs in a municipal election and took a lot of flak for it.

A few election sites to watch:

• Adam Radwanski's "Election rating" here. A regular grading of the leaders's performances.
• Election prediction, local style here. This site is part of the "Election Prediction Site" where people log on and give their opinions about the election, ridings and seat projections.
• "Campaign Perspectives" - Carlton Univerity's J-School election project here
  
• Macleans blogs, a collection of election thoughts here

Email me your favourite election site please and we'll make this list longer

Someone with too much time, or an egghead professor!

How about a lesson in physics applied (no pun intended) to election sign placement Effort, load, and silencing Garth Turner's sign whine

OK, thoughts for the week

First the election:
One week down and what have we seen? Signs - NDP in the west and CPC in the east. A couple of local statements and that's about it. More to come I hope.

Letters to the editor:
Being away for the week of September 4th I missed a doozy of a letter about conditions in Victoria Park and perhaps an opinion about the weekend users, I can't say any more I do not have a copy of the letter written by Art Cockerill. If anyone has it could you send it along. Any way the letter writer, a personal friend of mine, has taken it on the chin for being misguided and perhaps unaware of the real conditions, as neighbours see it, in a couple of rebuttals. The neighbours do not like the influx of users because they abuse the park: monopolising picnic tables, using the Pavilion without a permit, using BBQs, making noise and most unusual of all - defecating on the beach, this is apparently performed inside portable latrines, confrontations with bylaw officers and a whole host of other complaints. But this is tippy toeing around the main issue to some - these weekenders are not white! Obviously a situation to be studied again by Council.
Postscript
I have read Art's letter and find it to be very clear in his criticism of Councillor Spooner beating around the bushes by reporting that he has many complaints about people in the Park but refusing to disclose the main complaint - the visitors' skin colour. Art as usual is calling "a spade a spade". I fear that the legitimate concerns of the residents will confuse the issue by veiling it. The residents should ask themselves if good clean white folk would produce the same complaints. It is the volume of traffic not the kind of traffic that produces problems in the Park.

Here's my speculation:
The Kraft sale is creating a buzz, here's my contribution to the rumour mill. If the buyer uses it for an industrial use who knows who it could be. But if as I suspect the buyer is a deep pocketed commercial/residential developer it could be our old pal Mitch Goldhar. This is the guy who owns "SmartCentres" and builds WallyMarts all over Canada. He is familiar with Cobourg and it's Mayor and Councillors, he even contributed to the longest serving Councillors campaigns, a couple of weeks before the final vote to approve the application, creating quite the local controversy at the time.

The most important piece of this sale is not the buildings, not the land but the sewage capacity allocated to the acreage. Kraft needed a humungeous amount of sewage capacity to be able to run its rice producing line and that capacity has not been reduced, in fact Council has kept it in reserve despite the possibility of using it to forestall the need to build another treatment plant. So the potential to immediately build is enormous.

If this is the case, and I think it may be a long shot, the following rule should apply. We need a Community Centre. This and any other developer should give us one in return for such a windfall sewage capacity.

Just my opinion!

What the *****

Gasoline up13 cents because of a hurricane in Texas. Two things come to mind - why do we have to pay more when we don't get one cc from Texas, and why do we send our gas to Texas and put our prices up. Answers please and remember "Steve" promised in the last election to roll back taxes if gas went over 85 cents, so don't believe a bloody word this man may say about this big hike.