Canadians are fat and lazy. And yet we use sales tax dollars collected
from poor people's gym memberships, bicycles, sneakers and basketballs
(and income tax on their meagre salaries) to pay for things like
television, paper books and paper magazines.
Everybody benefits from socialised healthcare and education. We are
surrounded by poor people and it is quite useful that they not infect
us with tuberculous or put rat poison in our food instead of salt
(when you can't read, that becomes and honest mistake). We don't have
those things because we are generous. We have them because we are
selfish. Indeed, you could argue that being a progressive social
democrat is an act of selfishness. And I'm OK with that.
What I'm not OK with is bad public policy. Subsidised single family
dwellings via government guaranteed mortgages, for example. Subsidised
books are an other. The biggest cost in a book is the container
(printing and distributing it), and yet we subsidise them despite the
obviously cheaper alternative: ebooks.
We inexplicably subsidise rail transportation despite having plenty of
room for busses on our roads and airports that are nowhere near
capacity.
We subsidise Canadian magazines but not Canadian websites. How does
that make sense? And why are we subsidising the written word in the
first place? And TV? TV! Really! Is there anything of social value
gleaned from a nationally focused medium that painfully ignores local
issues and culture that are better served by local radio, theatre,
live bands and newspapers/websites?
Sure, the upper-middle class pay a lot of taxes. But by placating them
with things like the CBC, subsidised Maclean's and Via Rail, we are
helping them ignore the real mystery of federal spending: 28 billion
dollars a year on the military despite Canada having no enemies.
2014-05-24
Does New Brunswick Need Universities?
New Brunswick's need for a French language university is dubious at best. There are only 250,000 Acadians in New Brunswick, and Quebec's quality universities are right next door (and indeed arguably closer to Edmundston and the Acadian peninsula). Worse, because tuition is very low in both Quebec and France, it is very difficult to attract students from those regions.
The University of Moncton makes up for it by attracting students from Africa. 18% of students pay around $10,000 a year to attend Université de Moncton. Unfortunately, there are still classrooms with 1 or 2 students. Every graduate program at the Univerité de Moncton is in a constant struggle to justify it's existence.
The situation at New Brunswick other universities isn't much rosier. There are only 500,000 English speakers in New Brunswick. And yet there are 3 English language public universities. And once again there is no shortage of quality institutions right next door in Halifax.
Someone needs to do the math. There is a huge opportunity cost here. Perhaps the money should be redirected to student loans or bursaries. Granted, if you are a francophone high school student living in Moncton, you'll be able to attend university at a fairly low cost if you don't mind living with your parents. But for the vast majority of Acadians, Moncton is no more practical than Rimouski or Quebec City. Dito Mount Allison in Sackville for Anglophones.
At the very least, funding should be denied to private freak universities like Crandall in Moncton. Although it's location is practical, accepting students of different faiths and then forcing them to abide by Crandall's brand of Christian morality and forcing students to attend "chapel" twice a week, is simply wrong.
Half of New Brunswick's budget comes from the Federal government. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. There is an oil windfall out west and New Brunswickers deserve their slice of the pie. However, I fear the easy money is being squandered. Students aren't winning and neither are New Brunswickers.
(The author of this blog has a university degree obtained in Quebec and works in a Moncton call centre).
2014-05-05
Blair Lawrence in Moncton Ward 2 Will Raise Taxes
Blair Lawrence and his opponent Mike Dawson are both running for Moncton's Ward 2 seat vacant because of the death of Merrill Henderson. The election is May 12th.
Do either of them have a web page? Nope. Although Blair Lawrence does have a public Facebook page and Mike Dawson has a Kijiji page (!!!). So after spending way too much time gathering information from the Internet about the two candidates from various sources, here is a summary:
Blair Lawrence:
-Positions on anything: Unknown. He could be against puppies for all we known.
-Education: Unknown.
-Work: Subject coordinator for the Anglophone East School District. Former vice-principal and teacher at Bernice MacNaughton High School (located in Ward 2). Subject taught? Unknown.
-Lives in ward?: Don't know.
-Volunteer work? Capitol theatre and Frye Festival boards of directors.
Mike Dawson.
-Position on anything: Unknown.
-Education: Not listed on his Linked-in. But he is former military so I'm guessing high school and whatever he learned in the military.
-Work: Former military (20 years) (including at Moncton's Garrison located in Ward 2). No current job. How old do you have to be to get your military pension?
-Lives in ward? Don't know.
-Volunteer work? Various committees with his church.
So there you have it. That's it. That's the only information you have to base your decision on. Good luck.
Blair Lawrence's does have a Facebook page. To be fair, it is a public page so you don't have to log into Facebook to read it. Unfortunately, I don't think you can link to specific pages on Facebook. If you are patient enough, you'll eventually land on his April 3nd posts. He is in favour of "integrity" and "long term growth" and he also tells us what his job is (oddly enough, only in French).
Blair Lawrence is also on Twitter. I suppose you could ask him questions.
The salary for the part time council job is $18,000 a year.
-Mike Dawson on Allevents.in
-Mike Dawson on WhereEvent.
2014-05-03
5 Years and 14,500 Tweets
5 Years that I've been on Twitter. 5 years. So lets see: 14,500 tweets/(365 X 5)= 7.9 tweets a day. Hmm.
I don't know about 2009, but right now, Miley Cyrus does indeed have more followers than Ashton Kutcher.
Paul Wells joined later that year. He now has published 47,000 tweets.
2010 was the year of the iPad. I was obsessed. 870 tweets in March 2010, 28 per day! Only 33 tweets a year later, but still obsessed with the iPad.
In May 2012, some nimcompoop at Yahoo killed Geocities. The CBC still survives.
2014-05-02
6 Honest Truths A Woman Can Learn About Herself After A One-Night Stand
That title, my friends, is why I am blogging from my basement apartment instead of from wherever successful bloggers blog from. Success measure by money, obviously. The Woven empire though of that title. Not me. The best I could come up with was jibes at Gerard Kennedy and nonsense about puppies. Sigh.
Anyway, Woven just bought Uproxx, a "blog" I recently discovered from a lesbian friend I added after joining Facebook. It is actually quite good. Not Wall Street Journal good. Mind you. But good enough.
Photo of the Mad Men star stolen from Uproxx (who probably stole if from someone else). If you own the copyright to this picture, please be advised this blog generated 83 cents last month and that the owner lives in a basement apartment.
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