There goes any hope of redemption...

PRIME MINISTER STEPHEN HARPER ANNOUNCES THE APPOINTMENT OF TWO NEW SENATORS

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper today filled two vacancies in the Senate, announcing the appointments of Don Meredith and Larry Smith.   (Thus now having a majority of “Conservative” senators in the upper chamber)

The Reverend Don Meredith is the Executive Director and co-founder of the GTA Faith Alliance .......The Reverend attended Ryerson University and holds a master's degree from California State Christian University.  He is the Pastor of the Pentecostal Praise Centre in Maple, Ontario.

Larry Smith is a widely-recognized in Quebec.......known in Montreal from his days as a fullback with the Montreal Alouettes .........He has received numerous awards including the Commissioner's Award for conserving the CFL (2001),  the American Marketing Association-Marketer of the Year and Sports Personality of the Year

So a football jock come salesman to kick the shit outa ya and tell ya its for your own good, and a preacher who hold a “degree” from a U.S. “Christian” university to pray that the truth will stay hidden. This is the best two individuals that Harper can find to appoint to the Senate? When you consider that Duffy was one the last lot you can see how desperate he is to get his majority in the Senate so that he can rise to the position of Dictator of Canada.

Praise the lord, praise the lord, Harper is nigh........

Blowing in the Wind

This blog has not seen much action of late however after todays experience I thought what is the use of a personal blog if one cannot have a good whine about the weather, old tractors, snowblowing and income shortages.

Out here in the wilds of the Klondike we do not have any 'new' stuff be it Ma's wheels, my tractor or Mikes snowblower but when the tractor gets to be almost as old as the owner then one must expect both to get a little persnickety in their combined dotage. Made in my home country of Jolly old England in the fiftys, whilst I was still wearing shorts to school, the Fergison tractor is a surprisingly reliable old girl but like the old man does not like these -20 wind chill mornings and when asked to gather herself together on such mornings to beat a path out to the road through 18” of snow gets a little cranky.

Today being the first time this year she was asked to do such a chore she was particularly reluctant, I got her heart started but the blood flow to the hydraulics was notably lacking, left to warm up she had a hissy fit and bust her fan belt. Now the old man has been giving her TLC for a number of years, and we have the skills to patch up the old girl when she quits, but why o why does she always do these things when its so friggin cold and windy? So out with the wrenches and off with the gloves, kneeling in the snow praying that it will only take 3 or 4 more trips inside to rediscover my fingertips we go to work to patch her up. Much cussing, wading thru 2 feet of snow to the tool shed, and asking for the wherewithal to have a least one piece of equipment that is younger than my son we bring her back to life. After a while to warm up that blood flow we get the old girl moving, sort off!. Meanwhile Junior blows a path back to the shop with the little antique...... only to find that his belt also needs replacing, (hey he was at least near the shop, lucky beggar!) and that one is only in her mid 20s not her late 50s!

Now Fergi is a game old bugger but 18” of packed snow is a bit much to ask of her so with blower and bucket raised we knock the top foot of white off all the way out to the road and back, now comes the hard part Fergi. Blowing the packed bottom foot of snow takes all she can do and half way out she starts coughing n gaging and almost gives up. Upon checking her out I see she now has a bladder problem and is pissing green fluid into the snow, upon further inspection I see she has heart failure and the old pump has just give out due to old age but the game old bird makes it back to her spot in the snow bank by the house.

Now her cousin died some years ago and we keep her in the mausoleum out back of the shed and it looks like we are going to have to do a heart transplant after first examining the replacement heart for defects or seizures. I just wish I could afford to bring in an outside surgeon but doubt whether any such technician would consent to work in a snow bank in the middle of winter anyway. Ah well I think she is going to get a bit of a rest till warmer days arrive, just wish I could get a rest as well but it looks like its shoveling time for this old antique!!

Now I know that folks out on the prairies will say “cold, that aint cold” and the folks down in London will say “snow, you aint seen snow yet” but Fergi and I, we have had enough of winter thank you very much. Is it spring yet?

Climate Change Deal Reached?

Governments today reached an historic deal on climate change that commits all major economies to greenhouse gas cuts. The deal, brokered at international talks in Cancún, has been hailed as restoring faith in the multilateral UN process but will not reduce temperatures as much as scientists say is needed, and it pushes many of the most important decisions to future negotiations.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ummit-deal

And from E May
It has left me pinching myself. It is all beyond what I had hoped for.... It is not over yet. So fingers crossed...

But the texts I am reading are on BOTH the Kyoto Protocol (KP) and Long-term Cooperative Action (LCA under the FCCC). They are both free of square brackets which means the parties have agreed.
The KP text recognizes industrialized countries need to reduce emissions 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020. It also sets out that a second commitment period under KP should use 1990 as a base year. It also recognizes the need to "raise the level of ambition of emission reductions" from industrialized countries.
The LCA text calls for no higher than 2 degrees, and that there is a need to consider keeping below 1.5 degrees. It calls for a "paradigm shift towards building a low-carbon society...". It also establishes a Cancun Adaptation Framework.
http://greenparty.ca/blogs/7/2010-12-10 ... rty-update

Rick's Rant

As is usual Rick Mercer hit the nail squarely on the head....

I like it when light shines on the Canadian Senate. Because there's no doubt about it, it is a very strange and unique place. And let's face it, it has been a dumping ground for political hacks and bagmen since Mackenzie King was in short pants.

We all know it needs reform. So why is it such a big deal that Tory senators killed a bill? I mean the senate has killed bills before, right? Well not really, not like this. Because they didn't just kill a bill, they killed a bill without any debate. And that is the entire reason the senate exists. They are, despite the fact that Mike Duffy is a member, the chamber of sober second thought. And the Tory senators took a bill that had been voted on and passed by a majority of the duly elected members of the House of Commons – the people we actually vote for – and killed it without a debate. To put that in perspective, the last time it happened was the 1930s.

Think about this: Jean Chretien, who we all know, would have sold his own mother to get his own way and embarrass the opposition, he never tried this.


It’s one of those things; it's so undemocratic nobody actually believed any Canadian Government would do it. It's one of those things that’s just not done. And so when Marjory LeBreton, the senate leader, was asked about this, she just laughed and said, “Ha, it's legal."

Oh, that's a great defense there Marjory. It’s legal. It’s also legal to walk up to a veteran, stick a quarter in his poppy box and take all the poppies. But people don't do it. Because most of us, we like to think about what’s right, not what’s legal.  And if you're dealing with people who go through life and don't care about right or wrong and don’t care about democracy as we know it and only care about what they can get away with? All the reform in the world won’t make a difference.

http://www.rickmercer.com/Rick-s-Rant/Blog/November-2010/Kill-Bill--No-Vote.aspx

The Superhighway to nowhere!

“It's the superhighway to nowhere if you don't live in a city or town” So says Connie Woodcock in the Toronto Sun , having written about this issue in the past in my blog here and here it was good to see this article published in a big city newspaper. The comments it gleaned showed the enormous divide that exists between rural and urban citizens, something that was also raised in the senate report on rural poverty referenced here . I will let Connie take it from here:-

“In six months of house hunting in rural Ontario, we’ve come to one conclusion that has become more inevitable the more we look: We have to move into town. We’ve looked and looked and looked but not a single rural property for sale in our area has the one essential without which we can’t work — high-speed Internet access.

That puts us on the wrong side of Canada’s digital divide.

Virtually all urban Canadians can access broadband easily and inexpensively. Thousands of rural Canadians — and not those who live in remote areas — can not. Urban Canadians can use their cellphones wherever and whenever they want. The rest of us can’t.

The CRTC held hearings last week into the future of broadband in rural Canada and whether it should be a basic service that must be regulated and available to all. The first people the CRTC heard from, naturally, were those who don’t want to do it — the big telecommunications companies like Telus and Rogers and Bell. You can guess what they said: Can’t be done; too expensive; market forces will take care of it … blah, blah, blah.

Several service providers said it was impractical, unnecessary and would cost $7 billion. A Telus vice president said the cost was too high and there are other alternatives. It’s enough to make you laugh, unless you don’t have service available and then it’ll make you cry. It’s the kind of argument which, in an earlier age, would have kept rural folk from having electricity or telephone service.

Indeed, Bell Canada, once the only phone service provider, dragged its heels offering private service, leaving many rural residents with party lines as recently as the 1980s. Having tried to do my job as a reporter doing fire and police checks on an eight-party line, I can tell you it was all but impossible. Bell finally finished upgrading just in time for the Internet age to begin.

And nothing much has changed. Now the big companies think I can get along without the kind of Internet service 95% of Canadians expect as their right. My house does have high speed access but I’m one of the rare lucky ones. Few others in my area do. Satellite service is available but it’s costly and unreliable and experts say it’s unlikely to improve significantly. Cellphone technology is even more expensive and unreliable. Yet we’re only a two-hour drive from downtown Toronto.

Ironically, the Internet is probably more important to people in rural and remote locations than it is to urbanites who have easy access to the whole gamut of cultural experiences. It evens out the playing field. Some kid in Iqaluit isn’t ever likely to see the inside of the Art Gallery of Ontario, but with broadband, he can tour the best in the world or get access to the same vast store of information urban kids take for granted.

This is also huge for rural people who need to be able to have the same business opportunities everyone else has. My husband and I couldn’t do our jobs without high speed. If you want to know just how desperately it’s desired, all you have to do it go into town to my local library any afternoon and watch the librarians refereeing use of the free wireless service.

This week, Liberal MP Marc Garneau, with whom I’m amazed to find myself agreeing, told the hearings if rural people aren’t guaranteed access, they’ll be second-class citizens. “All Canadians should have equal opportunity to succeed, no matter where they live,” he said.

He’s right. The CRTC must regulate broadband access and force compliance. Government subsidies would help and the sooner the better. Broadband needs to become the same basic right telephone service is to make sure everyone can access the future.

connie.woodcock@sunmedia.ca

Republished by permission of the author.

Biodigester online soon

The Chatsworth and Georgian Bluffs biodigester, the first of its kind for a municipality in Ontario, is now producing gas and the hydro produced is expected to begin to feed the grid later this week This seems to be a win - win for local residents, not only does it provide a safe method of disposal of septage and other wastes but will, through tippage fees and hydro feedback tariffs, pay for itself and eventually make some money for the townships. Way to go Councilors, once again the little guys show how it should be done!

The Owen Sound Sun Times says:- The organics-to-energy facility was originally intended to be a solution to septic sludge disposal, which the province planned to ban from being spread on agricultural fields. Municipal officials now plan to quickly expand the list of acceptable waste to ensure a reliable supply of raw material. Fat, oil and grease from restaurants, leftovers from slaughterhouses and vegetable and fruit scraps from kitchens are expected to be added to the list.

Georgian Bluffs council authorized the township to take out a $1.2-million, 15-year debenture from the Bank of Montreal to pay for its share of the project's cost. Chatsworth also secured a $1.2 million loan. Revenue from the biodigester, expected to be at least $322,000 a year, will be used to pay back the debenture, township officials say.

Earlier they reported that :- Chatsworth and partner Georgian Bluffs will receive two-thirds of the money needed to build a biodigester for waste disposal. The municipalities are getting $1.66 million of the $2.5 million needed from through the communities component of the Canada Builds program.

The other $833,333 will be split equally between the two neighbouring municipalities. The biodigester will be built just south and east of Kilsyth, at a Georgian Bluffs-owned property about four kilometres north of the boundary with Chatsworth. The location was chosen because Georgian Bluffs had a ready site.

There seems to be a little confusion as to exactly how much the townships are on the hook for but either way its a great initiative and may actually help to reduce our taxes in a few years.

Where to draw the line?

The following was a response to a blog post by E May on the Green Party web site...

With municipal elections over and many having taken place using “alternative” voting methods, some of which enabled voters to make their choices over a period of a week prior to closing, I recently mused whether, should this trend ever get to Federal voting, whether opinion polls should be banned during that period. It seems that like political party advertising, opinion polls have a overly strong effect on voter preferences, particularly in the last few days before the polls close.

We SHOULD be voting for the best person to do the job, bearing in mind the overly strong influence that party politics has upon the actions of that individual after he or she is elected, that is not however how it works. Negative advertising, strategic voting based upon the latest polls, and Party Politics has a far greater influence than it should, but can we eliminate or reduce these things? In an open and democratic society (and I am starting to wonder if we can continue to describe Canada as such) can we dictate who says what and when?

Drawing the line between free speech and political interference with election processes is a very difficult line to draw but given the direction that such things are going is one that perhaps needs to be defined. When the ability to blast the airwaves with advertising has a measurable outcome as to the results (even if that outcome is to not vote) it is time to reconsider the rules, if for no other reason that the less affluent amongst us may well be disenfranchised by not being able to heavily fund those partys that may better represent our interests. Recent revelations that publicly funded utility companies are funding political campaigns reinforces my belief that we must look at restricting the manner in which such advertising is used and funded.