OK the summers over

Historically it's all down hill for the weather from now on. August has never been as hot as July and although it may seem hot today it won't last. So now that most of you have taken vacation - last two weeks in July - what's next?

If you are a driver under 22 no drinks that's what. This new measure of Premier Dad adding to the nanny-state and gladening the hearts of MADD may be over the line for libertarians and equality lovers. How can age based legislation routinely over-ride the provisions of the Charter of Rights where age based discrimination is legal? The old argument of a person being able to die for their Country at the age of 18 and not getting a drink is valid. Surely age based legislation should be illegal and the problems of bad drivers and drunk driving for the at risk age groups should be an insurance problem not a criminal or HTA one!

Summer Time Blues

This is the time of year I start yearning for cold winter nights when a big pot of chili or soup on the stove warms up the kitchen and brings smiles to the hungry family. Even though it's only early August it feels like the summer heat has gone on too long, and attempts at sitting outside in the cooler evening can be counted by the angry red insect bites up and down itchy legs and arms.

Enough already! I am as trapped inside by the ridiculous heat and humidity as much as with any snow storm, and at least winter storms end. This summer the weather should have cured any climate change denier of their doubts. We can argue forever if it's man made or natural, but either way it's real and it's happening now, all over the world.

In casting around for the good things of summer, I do find solace in the abundance of tomatoes ripening in the garden, thanks to nightly watering, and the appearance of what looks like a bumper crop of local corn ready to eat just about now. And at least, with a BBQ king in residence, cooking in the kitchen is a task relegated to those other three seasons.

There's also Cobourg's Rib Fest to look forward to, and then the Roseneath Fair to celebrate the coming of autumn. At least the summer ends eventually.

We're not going to talk about politics today, it would only spoil the mood.

An election expense?

In these days of hypersensitivity about frivolous Municipal expenses and spurious election costs will anybody but 'chatterers' make any fuss about this - expensive municipal expenditures. Many questions abound:

• How much did it cost, a full page in NToday is usually well over the thousand mark, 
• If the pages were donated why? 
• How much stafftime was put together to make the Council look good?
• Who authorised such an effort?
• How will it be used by candidates and if it is will it count as an election expense?
• Perhaps this could be the first item of business for the newly formed "Election Accountability committee"?

Just another item for the taxpayers of Port Hope to comment on, the topic has already been buzzing on FaceBook!

The battle of the lists

Lists, used to be a place where jousts took place. Now the battle of the lists is who has the largest collection of names to use in the upcoming election between Brocanier and Partridge. On one side you have John Wright, who was handed to Broc by Peter Delanty (a well placed local liberal), the alleged Northumberland 'rainmaker' and on the other you have Martin Partridge who has been collecting lists for years so that he can fundraise for Liberals of all stripes.

The downside is that anybody who has been connected with the Liberals at any time in recent history will now be fair game for phone calls and other messages from both sides. So how will the general population be hit up by these candidates? Using google we find that Brocanier has a website here even has his own domain name 'gilbrocanier.ca' but no facebook page. Partridge has neither but has powerful allies who could create one in seconds - wait for it.

The BurdReport is told that online campaigning will be a way of reaching the electorate. It will be interesting to see just how "Obamamania" goes hyperlocal.

This just in - Mr. Brocanier will have an opponent in the election

Mr Martin Partridge has filed papers for the Mayor's position in this Fall's election. More to come but the MSM will be all over it tomorrow.

Apropos  to the comment above here is NToday's Ted Amsden's story about Martin and his platform. The BurdReport spoke to Mr Partridge and got the same spin. But the punch of his message is that the Town needs to be looked at in terms of 'value for taxes' and only fresh eyes can do that. After all Mr Brocanier has had four years to make an impact on the public perception that taxes are not high and he has appeared to fail as many taxpayers still do believe that their taxes are high.

Did you know........

....that Premier Dad was in Town today? The love of my life, out walking with her sister came upon a gaggle of bodyguards and an entourage at the 'Dutch Oven' this afternoon. Scanning the local MSM I find there is no mention of the event, [no forward work? ed] but NNews says it will have an exclusive interview up on the website, as of yet nothing.

There is a story about PremDad visiting the Quinte YMCA, but nothing about where else he was today. But if he hit the DO you can be sure it was after the dead white tories had left - they might have had a thing or two to say about his government. Interestingly enough Looo was with him amid a press release from John O'Toole the MPP from Durham that publicly castigated both McG and Loo for their activities with local health care. Ahah - the penny dropped, don't tell anybody you are coming and the liklihood of a demo about local health care is dead, cunning like a fox!

Sometimes Councils do dumb things

Port Hope Council often does things that puzzle the constituents. Buying a potentially liable piece of contaminated real estate for little return, carrying a 6 million dollar liability for the Police Service and now refusing to name a street after its most famous living persona - Farley Mowat.

As an interested observer the BurdReport is puzzled by a few things. One is a good reason why a street should not be named after him, the other is an explanation of the vote by the majority of Council and also the absence of a naming policy that would allow/disallow such a thing to happen.

I should suspect that Farley is embarrassed by all the hoo-hah surrouding this proposal, but if he was he should have told the public and the proponents that he wasn't interested, perhaps if he did the Council would then be offended by the snub. Still the episode was allowed to string out and now the answer is no. It's a good job that he and his wife choose to summer on the east Coast as he is missing this confusing saga.

Where's Rob Ford when you need him

Rob Ford is a bombastic populist who is obsessive about Council and public servants' salaries. he also lives and works in Toronto so why should we care about what he thinks? Because sometimes he may be right. In these days of public suffering and the impacts of high taxes anything that can set the public mood is well received. One of his siren calls is to freeze public salaries and for Councils to take a wage cut. Whether that is a correct thing to do is debatable, what is not is the sentiment that wage increases for one sector are not on. With the private sector being hammered with job losses and a poor recovery,  wage increases are just a pipe dream for most people.

So what do we find on the Council agenda tonight? A proposal to give the non-union staff a 2.5% increase in their wages. Is this setting the right example for restraint and if salaries are 75% of out municipal tax billl what is the tax impact? And more importantly as we come into the bargaining season is this the minimum raise to be given, or do we pick favourites and give the cops the 2.5% and then force the Public Works to accept half of that as is done most bargaining seasons.

A week of hot air

This week has been a puzzling one for pundits. On one hand you have Minister Clement holding tight to his decision to abolish the long form of the census. On the other you have just about every organised group in the Country and all those who rely on the data inside the long form complaining very loudly. Finally you have the Head Statisticion resigning in a very public manner saying not only can he not be part of a system that uses skewed data but complaining that he may be subordinate to the Minister but the information isn't.

The move to abolish the long form and replace it with a voluntary survey that will be sent to more homes will not provide reliable data and is based on dogma. That's the view of the opponents. Minister Clement says that the form is intrusive and punishes those who refuse to participate with jail terms. 

The move to abolish census forms is a conservative phenomenom that is being replicated by newly elected NeoCon governments. Posh-boy  Cameron even vows to abolish the census all together in five years. The reason is that because governments set public policy on statistics if you have no stats then you can freely enact silly but neo-con legislation. The classic example is the Harpercrits move to spend billions of our tax money on crime bills when crime is declining. Without the StatsCan figures nobody can contradict the mantra that crime is rising, when it is obviously not.

It is not certain if the Cons will change their minds, perhaps they won't until internal polling shows that is either a winner or a loser. All it does is expose the hamhanded political moves of our Prime Minister, enough of them will dent his reputation, and we can hardly wait for it to happen.

Just what is going here?

We have two prolific writers in Cobourg. One gets paid to do it and one just , well does it. Professor Robert Washburn, a former journalist for the Cobourg Daily Star and now a Professor of New Media Studies at Loyalist College writes a  biweekly opinion piece for the CDS   NorthumberlandToday. His style is to apply his journalistic skill to the problems of the day, usually municipal issues and point out faults in the system for those who may not be aware of the finer points of current issues.

The other guy, is a person who's been around the block many times in his career as a watchdog of Council, he even ran in the last election for Deputy Mayor against Gil Brocanier. But in his latest series of letters to the editor Manfred Schumann is causing local watchers to wonder just what is really going on. Now that he has finished flailing Gil Brocanier for whatever perceived sins of the day he may or may not have committed he has picked up on Washburn's columns. His latest rebuttal of the the last column is here and it follows the style of the last rebuttal of the previous column - a really milqutoaste and prosaic criticism of the column but the thrust of the rebuttal is simple - lay off the criticism of Council they are doing the best they can. Surprising support from a guy who has had nothing but scorn for some of the positions that Council has previously taken.

Perhaps as Councillor Turck of Port Hope said last week about an asinine comment made by Jeff Lees's comments about Council remuneration, "It must be an election year!'

Manfred has not made a decision about filing nomination papers yet, or if he has he hasn't made them public. Maybe he has decided after all these years, "You have to go along to get along!"