Category Archives: The Issues

Provincial

GIME!! GIME!! GIME!! Screams Gord! In Sneak Attack on Public Purse

Leave a comment

Bad for other public servants BUT GOOD for us! Behind closed doors, in hiding from public scrutiny, the Liberal Party and Leader Gordon Campbell (with the NDP aiding and abetting) in effect told his fellow British Columbians that the rules are for everybody else, NOT them. Claiming no money is available for those in need or other badly needed program expenditures and beating up and contracting out jobs of those seeking raises, the government gave itself a 31% raise. Apparently the idea of holding the line on monies paid from the public purse is good only until it affects his pocketbook. With more and more citizens homeless, on welfare, living below the poverty line or struggling to make ends meet the government decided that exorbitant raises were the best use of the taxes taken from hard-press, hard-working taxpayers.

I am truly disappointed in Carole James deciding to sell out. Anyone who cared for their fellow citizens who have, and continue to, sufferer at the hands of this government would not have gone along with this heist from the public purse. Principle is a concept that obviously the politicians in this province are totally lacking any understanding of, much less having any principles. Despite their claims, the current Ideologues in government have no sense of fiscal responsibility.

If leadership is creating a state of mind in others, what kind of state of mind are Gordon Campbell and his cronies creating in BC? Do we really want to be living in a province where ‘Greed is Good – at least for ME’ and ‘Special Classes/Cases’ exist? Can we afford these overpriced, overpaid, under-working, underperforming and morally bankrupt politicos?

With their inability so clearly demonstrated these politicians should be paying us!

Consider, Municipal

Crime Wave coming to your neighbourhood!

Leave a comment

-courtesy of the downtown Business Association and
your City Government

One of Newton’s Laws of Motion is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. With objects or bodies in motion or at rest this lets you calculate what reaction you will get from your actions. With people it is not so nice and neat when it comes to the reaction you will get from your actions. But, should you choose to use your brain for more than a spacer to keep your ears apart, knowing you are dealing with people permits you to anticipate the kind of effects you will get from your actions. Assuming you care about what effects you will get from your actions. If you are concerned only about yourself, you need only consider the effect the actions will have for you and not about the effect they will have on your fellow citizens and business people.

This point was brought strongly to mind at the Global Harvest pancake breakfast for the homeless and hungry on Saturday January 21, 2006. Usually it is packed but on that day the crowd was sparse. The continuing efforts of the downtown business people and the city to drive the homeless elsewhere is beginning to have an effect – dispersing the homeless to other parts of the city. Looking around the emptiness of the breakfast I could see these actions were having an effect. It is now to far for some homeless to travel to make it to the breakfast – especially given our poor weather of late.

So what? The charities are set up to feed the homeless and hungry centered around the downtown area. When you disperse the people and close down places like Street Hope you are creating hungry people. These hungry people are going to need – food. In dispersing them or closing down/driving away the charities that feed the hungry you are in fact denying them access to their regular food sources. Can you honestly say that YOU would just sit there and starve? Neither will they. They will steal the food or they will steal items they can sell for cash to buy food. Resulting in a crime wave spread throughout the city. If those responsible for these policies of denying food to the hungry/homeless claim any crime wave was as an unexpected consequence of the efforts to clean up downtown – all I can say is that being brain dead is required not to be able to see the kinds of problems creating all those hungry/desperate people would have.

So, if at some future point you find yourself standing and surveying the direct effect these policies had on you through the theft of you property (TV, computer, jewelry etc.) remember to thank your city government and the Downtown Business Association. Make your thanks appropriate: voting in competent, intelligent representatives and boycotting downtown businesses.

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
Aristotle

Homeless, Provincial

Liberal Party’s Homeless Creation – Part 1

Leave a comment

I have acknowledged that it was mental illness that led me here. I have no words that would express just how thankful I am that I had started on the road to mental health and had built up a support system that helps me through the rough patches. If I had to depend on the so called ‘assistance’ system for help I shudder to consider how badly I would be doing or how ill I would have been driven to be. While the pettiness and stupidity of having to RE-register and RE-file may be driving my crazy; it currently remains just the craziness of any (semi)sane person coping with insane demands.

Far too many others are not so lucky. When you close mental institutions, facilities and programs the people do not cease to exist. Transferring them onto welfare may sound as if you are not abandoning them, it may permit the government to claim they were being cared for, but that is not reality. I have found what could only be termed ‘disgraceful numbers’ of the mentally ill trapped at the mercy of the system without any of the help they really need or driven onto the streets as homeless.

Some of those addicts that so many look down upon, were created by the Liberal policies. They are those in need of Mental Health aid abandoned by society. To escape the demons in their heads they turn to self-medication, for they have been denied any other help. The Liberals can claim what they want, their actions have denied these people adequate aid and in leaving them alone and without help the Liberals must accept responsibility for their homelessness, self-medication and addictions.

Some of the abandoned end up in the ‘care’ of the justice system, lacking the mental health help they so badly need, their illness plays itself out in their acting out and leads to incarceration. I suspect it would be far cheaper to provide mental health care as opposed to jailing them. I know it would definitely be more productive in providing help to these lost souls and far more ‘just’.

Some drop into the ranks of the homeless and onto the streets. They struggle to survive, day to day, but without the mental health resources they need they are condemned to continue this day to day struggle for survival without any chance of recovery and getting out of the ranks of the homeless and back into life.

Some live a twilight life. They exist in the system; shelter of some type, food enough and minimum basic needs met. They exist; they live, but are denied life.

We are our brothers’ keeper.