Down in the farm team

Monday evening the Council, Cobourg that is, will appoint members of the public to committees. Two people being appointed may bear watching. One is Melissa Marshall and the other is Don Ubell who are being appointed to the Environmental Committee. Interesting is the fact that Melissa was a candidate in the last election. At 34 the youngest in the race and one of the few women. Obviously she wants to stay involved. Don is a man with a purpose - he collects committees. Currently the Chair of the Community Centre Building committee he also works on the Accessibility committee, he may even be Chair of that one too. He needs to fill his time and with three committees, that is one more than a sitting member of Council he will be busy. But will these positions on committees lead to a jump to the "show"? Ther are a couple of other active committee members who might make the jump too - losing candidate Larry Sherwin, is tucked down there as are other active people. Could be a busy period for aspiring candidates in the next few months, will they have had enough of the committee work or will the committee work prove to be a teaser for more?

An insidious file

Yesterday's Toronto Star placed its latest expose on the front page in blaring colour and headlines. "Blacks are three times more likely to be stopped than whites!" and went on to discuss the practice of carding and the recording of more blacks than white. However the Star has it wrong by not going deeper. In its file, that contains many stories on the same theme, not one is talking about the practice of "carding"
Carding is the method that police services use to gather and keep information about people they have stopped, on file. This story details the methods used and the database that abound where non-criminal information is kept.
Field Information Reports
Replaced MANIX as the repository for contact card data, and houses the same contact card details as MANIX. It also gives descriptions for the nature of police contact, such as general investigation, loitering and traffic stop. This data set captures details from 315,000 contact cards filled out on 242,000 individuals from late 2007 to end of 2008.
This information is gathered by officers on duty who come into contact with the public, make notes for whatever reason and the that info is moved to a database, FIR see above.
Flashback to the overthrow of the East german government years ago. What did the population do? They went to the HQ of the Stasi and ransacked the files. Every person in the Country was in a file that listed associates, traits and other information. Does anybody else see the comparison here?
The practice of anybody, and this case its the police, gathering and keeping information, without that information being able to be checked for veracity and context is odious, but even more odious is the practice itself. How can a free and civilised society condemn the Stasi and then condone the FIR being run by the Police in Toronto and even perhaps our local police?

When will the Star condemn the practice?

James Doolittle for mayor

The ego of the man, Jamie Doolittle, quoted in a letter to the paper today, "Councillor Bob Spooner, after all of my previous writings, has listened to me, other readers and various editorials and coverage of this issue in this newspaper. Well done." If he has led the charge to fix the park to HIS satisfaction just imagine what he could do for the Town. Go for it Jamie don't live up to your surname!

Well fancy that

Will all the bashers who came out of the woodwork last year when the BurdReport questioned the need for a "Doctor's Retention Committee" please be still. Last night our esteemed MPP lou told hamilton Township that there is no shortage of doctors and he will not be lobbying his Preem for the area to be included in the "underserviced". Read about it here. A quote from NorthumberlandToday says it all "There are doctors right here in Cobourg looking for patients" and the Port Hope Community Health Centre is returning $300,000 in provincial money because it doesn't have enough patients to hire the third doctor it was funded for, he said.
On the other hand it does swing the issue politically from Ms Kim Rudd, the Chair of the Committee to Attract Doctors" and the nominated candidate for the Libs, to the Cons. Wonder what Kim will say now? But at least the Cobourg Council should be able to take the funding request from the pre-budget discussions and save the taxpayers money.

A couple of points

In this story, NNews, here the subject of naming rights for the new Community Centre is reported. The first point that should be noticed is the attitude displayed by Councillor Bob - "don't interrupt me when I'm preaching" - Spooner with his reply to Councillor Mutton when she made some points about the report. “I really resent the idea of someone picking apart this report,” he said. What a statement! obviously Bob's experience and longevity has given him a Cromwellian complex, well let's paraphrase Cromwell, Bob - "Your useless body has to go"
The second point is that by adopting the naming report, whereby names of the complex and its constituent parts have had a value placed on them, have we eliminated the possibility of naming the place, and its rooms, after local notables. For example if we wanted to call the press bench the "Layton Dodge Room" who would pay for it and could we even do it for nothing? I guess Oscar Wilde was right - we know the price of everything but the value of nothing.

Give me one good reason

With a typical Steve Jobs hyper-launch the world was introduced to the Ipad. A ten inch display, an enlarged Iphone but without a phone, what can it do? That will be the question for those people willing to lay out $400US for the cheapest version or $829Us for the full kit. As a non smart phone user I cannot appreciate the value of the "apps" that abound but even if all of the thousands available for transfer to the Ipad were moved over I still fail to see a use for this pad. After all can it translate scribblings with a stylus into intelligable text, can it take a picture, and in Canada can it use the 3G network? Not yet!
I remain to be convinced of its usefullness - I am a sceptic - convince me otherwise.

Postscript, thanks to Wally and his browsing of Youtube - a non political use of the Hitler clip; he, Hitler, doesn't like the Ipad either. Watch it here

What a bunch of hot air!

Lou Rinaldi delivered a dubious retort to a very intelligent question on Monday night. Cllr Stan Frost asked why the province was being inconsistent by banning municipalities from offering bribes to business but allowing bribes to doctors. Rinaldi replied:
"Our government has looked at every possible way but, at the end of the day, we don't want to tell municipalities how best to spend their money. Under the present law, there's nothing the province can do."
Well Lou change the law you have done it before: bicycle helmets, no stunt driving, no cell phones or smoking in cars and the list goes on. So long is the list of measures that curtail individual liberty that the Premier is known by some as "Premier Dad".
To handcuff municipalities with a doctor shortage and then tell them that in order to attract doctors it is OK to bribe them is reckless fiscal policy that wastes local ratepayers money. We don't want to spend this money but some Councils are convinced that it is the only way to get them here. There's an election this year Lou, some may remember this remark as political nonsense and vote accordingly.

Guest Post

Deb 'Connor

Stockwell Day at Treasury: OH NO!

Recent news that Harper has shuffled Stockwell Day into the Treasury Board, where he will wield the knife on program cuts, has me worried. With Flaherty whispering in one ear sharing tactics learned from his former boss, Mike the Knife in Ontario, and Harper in the other reminding him of their Reform roots, this will be bad news for all the widows and orphans out there, not to mention the immigrant population, the unemployed, the homeless and anyone else too dumb to be rich in this country.

With corporate taxes and taxation of the wealthy at a historically low level in Canada, this callous government is vowing no new taxes, despite the ever growing deficit they created with their dubious stimulus programs. Announcing that beating the deficit means cutting programs exclusively, they have just eliminated a worthwhile source of revenue without a thought of the consequences.

So what sort of programs are they likely to target? Looking at where these guys come from, it's a safe bet that programs and services that protect women's health, like access to abortion, and immigrant settlement will be vulnerable; so will education, research, First Nations, poverty reduction (such as it is at the federal level), and the regulatory framework we rely on like meat inspection. That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure readers can add their own lists of potential victims of the upcoming federal cuts.

Secretly, I suspect old Stock and the boys are relishing the thought of the havoc they will wreak on Canadians when he starts waving his axe around. They probably figure having a huge deficit is worth it for the fun they will have decimating all the services and programs they hate anyway with the deficit as their ready made excuse.

And just what did they do with all that stimulus program money? Will we ever get to find out if we got what we are about to start paying for, for years to come?

More reflections on the protest

This protest will be the subject of many post-mortems. But as far as I am concerned it was a huge success in one thing - the apathetic body of Candians twitched. And even more importantly the arcane topic of the Canadian Constitution is being examined. Who is supreme Parliament or the Ruling Party? This document tracks the number of people who attended the Country-wide ralllies. The numbers are not important because the very action was. Political scientists and management consultants will tell you that a letter to the editor/Council represents 50 like minded people an appearance and personal statement is good for 500. What does the act of 25,000 determined people fighting freezing temps represent in the court of public opinion?

A very disturbing trend, and one that should come back to bite the Ruling party is the attitude embedded by the statements that Government is working well without Parliament. Both Jason Kenney, a public Minister, and the PM have said this in the last three days. Wow what strange statements! Does that mean that if this attitude is left unchecked then we will have Parliament doing nothing else other than ceremonial constitutional requirements? It also should be noted that constitutional requirements appear to be lacking these days, the request for proroguing parliament was in the form of a phone call, not a personal visit.

So, Get back to work and make the Constitution work the silent majority has demanded it.

BTW scan this video for any political hacks, few seen just ordinary folks who braved the cold.

Oooops, couldn't resist this one

A report on the NorthumberlandToday's online edition about the local libs AGM had this picture and a caption. Pity the paper mixed up candidates and parties. I know Stan Grizzle used to be a Liberal, and an NDPer but is now the Green party candidate. But I hope Kim Rudd doesn't get ribbed about this too much today, might take away the impact of her speech today.