Category Archives: Caveat emptor

Caveat emptor, Hmmm, Homeless, Issues, Municipal, Politics

Now That’s a Surprise

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The call by the Abbotsford Chamber of Commerce for an end to the rezoning of property in Abbotsford from the use it is zoned for, to a zoning that permits the owner of the property to use the property for purposes different than its original zoning, came as quite a surprise.

No doubt the neighbours of the Mahogany at Mill Lake highrise are wondering why Allan Asaph, executive director of the Abbotsford Chamber of Commerce, did not speak out against rezoning the property on Bevan Avenue, a rezoning necessary for the developers to build their highrise, given how unfair it was to “…citizens to change the rules.”

Or does the Chamber of Commerce’s “no rezoning” and “fairness to business and citizens” only apply to projects the Chamber is opposed to?

“He [Allan Asaph] said no one disputes that supportive housing is needed….” adding the Chamber of Commerce to those chanting the ‘we need this type of housing but this is the wrong location’ mantra. Mr. Asaph then proceeded to add to the frivolous justifications being given, such as the presence of liquor stores downtown……as if there were no liquor stores elsewhere in Abbotsford and ignoring the fact that a simple phone call will have liquor (or drugs) delivered to your door, as to why all the calls to put the housing somewhere, anywhere, else are not NIMBYism.

What will the Chamber champion next on this matter? Will they join the calls for this housing to be built on the outskirts of Abbotsford, well away from the services the residents need? Why not go whole hog and build Abbotsford’s homeless housing in……..Langley of Vancouver?

Abbotsford Community Services [ACS} has stepped up to provide leadership to get this badly needed housing [first stage housing, a first step to reducing street homelessness in Abbotsford] built. They have proposed a specific location for this housing and secured funding for the project.

So let me be blunt, if you are a member of those whose mantra is ‘we need this type of housing but this is the wrong location’: stand and deliver as ACS has.

Tell the citizens of Abbotsford where, exactly where, you propose this housing be built – as ACS has done.

Give the citizens of Abbotsford the address you consider the ‘right’ location; a specific address, not some vague statements about a mythical ‘better’ location or somewhere in Clearbrook or on the outskirts of Abbotsford or ‘over there’.

ACS is seeking to rezone the property at 2408 Montvue Avenue. What is the street address of the property you propose for the location of this housing?

Specify how you will fund the construction of this housing. Because the funding ACS has from BC Housing is specific to the proposed housing at 2408 Montvue Avenue.

Caveat Emptor: this is the same type of behaviour that cost Abbotsford the $11 million in capital funding offered by the province to build affordable housing for men, matching the funding made available to build the Christine Lamb Residence.

 

“There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”

Will Rogers

Caveat emptor, Finances, Life, Provincial

Motivation: an Evaluation Tool

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There is nothing we can do about the majority of British Columbians having voted to repeal the HST and return to a PST, except suffer the pain and pay the price.

That Bill Vander Zalm, Adrian Dix, the NDP, the media and the majority of BC residents decided it was a good idea to send $1.5 billion back to Ottawa, instead of using it to construct hospitals and other needed infrastructure, is a triumph of motive over rational, thoughtful decision making.

Leaving us to decide “how important is it” that we start construction to replace/renew St. Paul’s Hospital, Royal Inland Hospital, Haida Gwaii Hospital and any other capital projects before the five years (at $300 million a year) of repayment to Ottawa are up.

If it is decided that we cannot wait the remaining 4 years of repayments to begin construction of hospitals or other capital projects, then taxpayers are going to have to suffer the pain of paying the hundreds of millions of dollars of additional taxes needed to offset the $1.5 billion returned to Ottawa.

As stated there is nothing we can do about the return of the PST on April Fool’s Day but endure the consequences.

But with Election Day on May 14, 2013 only weeks away, it behoves us to seek to understand why the majority of British Columbians decided removing $1.5 billion from the BC budget and returning all those dollars to Ottawa was a good idea.

Because with the challenges facing healthcare, education, the economy, indeed the future of British Columbian’s standard of living – we cannot afford such large scale misinformation or foolishness.

Voters must set aside wilful denial, face the need to set priorities, make tough choices and recognize we cannot have unlimited healthcare or other government services UNLESS WE ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR UNILIMTED LEVELS OF SERVICE.

The complexity, lack of easy answers and the importance of beginning to address the issues demanding BC voters set priorities, make it imperative that voters are informed about and understand the actual state of BC’s finances and the ability of those finances to purchase and deliver services (i.e. healthcare) to citizens.

Wise decision making requires the facts, not rhetoric or spin or false ‘knowing’.

Throughout his HST crusade Mr. Vander Zalm ducked questions as to the $1.5 billion repayment to Ottawa or suggested it would not have to be repaid, even though Ottawa had stated if the HST was repealed the money paid to BC to bring in the HST would – not surprisingly – have to be repaid.

That $1.5 billion repayment is – not surprisingly – resulting in painful negative consequences for the citizens of BC. If Mr. Vander Zalm’s crusade had been about the HST and concerned with the best interests of the citizens of BC addressing the $1.5 billion repayment would have been part of Mr. Vander Zalm’s crusade.

If Vander Zalm’s motivation was not the HST or the best interests of the citizen’s of BC, what could his motivation for his anti-HST (let’s repay Ottawa $1.5 billion) crusade have been?

Given that the existence of the BC Liberals offered an alternative for voters to the Social Credit and thus allowed Bill Vander Zalm’s actions as leader of the Social Credit to destroy the Social Credit, it is easy to see how the Liberals and Gordon Campbell became a target of Vander Zalm’s enmity.

In light of Mr. Vander Zalm’s behaviours as leader of the Social Credit there is no surprise in him putting his personal interests above the interests of the province and its citizens by ignoring the damage repaying $1.5 billion would inflict on BC and its citizens and pursuing the opportunity the HST presented to reduce the liberal Party’s popularity (electability),

For Adrian Dix and the NDP the lack of leadership, the inability to forgo the opportunity to gain public popularity at the expense of the liberals and the failure to put the interests of the citizens of BC ahead of Adrian Dix and the NDP’s quest for power disqualifies them from forming the government.

Any party leader and party who would put their personal political interests ahead of the extremely negative consequences that would result for BC and its citizens from repaying $1.5 billion to Ottawa, lacks the ethics and trustworthiness to address the growing number of issues and difficulties facing BC.

To this day Mr Dix and the NDP continue to try to have it both ways, scoring public popularity while refusing/avoiding responsibility for the negative consequences their support of the HST repeal has, and continues to, cost British Columbians.

In taking the easy way out in seeking to bolster their sagging approval ratings, rather than standing firm as was best for BC, the Liberals share in culpability for the negative consequences the repeal of the HST with its $1.5 billion dollar repayment results in.

Motivation, actions and behaviours are far more useful in evaluating stated policies, trustworthiness, character, leadership, ethics and fitness to govern than any words uttered by political parties and their leaders.

While disappointing, in this day and age it is a given that politicians and political parties are about their own interests, telling voters what voters want to hear, not telling voters what they don’t want to hear, avoiding issues etc. It is why one can predict that the NDP platform in this election will be vague to the point of meaningless.

The most important lesson voters need to take away from the HST debacle is not how venal politicians and political parties are, but that the media (print, radio and television) have no interest in and are NOT about informing the public.

When speaking to Mr. Vander Zalm after the return to the PST the media continued to fail to ask Mr. Vander Zalm why he thought returning $1.5 billion to Ottawa was a good idea; what healthcare and other services Mr. Vander Zalm favoured cutting, what hospital construction he favours forgoing, to repay the $1.5 billion to Ottawa.

As Mr. Dix and the NDP run  around the province talking about the failure of the Liberals and the need to build hospitals or spend money on this or that – has the media ever asked Mr. Dix and the NDP how the government is suppose to spend hundreds of millions of dollars when Mr. Dix and the NDP convinced voters to send $1.5 billion back to Ottawa? Did media ever demand Mr. Dix and the NDP explain why they thought sending $1.5 billion back to Ottawa was a good idea? Or ask what Mr. Dix and the NDP would cut and/or forgo to pay for sending that $1.5 billion back to Ottawa.

Of course not. Bringing up issues would have interfered with the entertainment value, the spectacle and the rhetoric.

And of course, acknowledging their culpability in the repeal of the HST and the return of $1.5 billion to Ottawa would put a damper on media running around crying the sky is falling and we need to spend, spend, spend……..money the province does not have.

Has the media ever asked the teachers what healthcare programs the teachers are calling to be cut so the money can be redirected to the education budget? Because the only budget expenditure large enough to cover the cost of the $$$$$ the teachers are calling on the government to spend is healthcare.

Unless the teachers are calling on the government to eliminate an area of spending (the courts and jails for example) to cover the cost of the large increase in education spending the teachers are calling on. Or perhaps the teachers are calling for the imposition of hundreds of millions in new taxes to be poured into education?

Media does not ask the important question of where the money will come from, it quietly takes its 30 pieces of silver for running the teachers ads calling on voters to vote for their children by voting for any party that will dramatically increase spending on education as though the $$$$$ to pay for spending can be found in a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

“We cannot talk about that, people don’t want to hear it”; “Talking about that would reduce ratings, have people turning off or (shudder) turning to the competition”; If it bleeds it leads; the slick, entertaining programming called news is a profit center where the bottom line – not the quality or value of information presented (or not presented) – is the focus and the motivator.

The owners of the media have every right to focus on making money rather than delivering informative, well rounded, balanced reports that increase, not decrease (as it currently does), the public’s ability to make informed decisions.

If you watch Mike Holmes, there is a viewer advisory displayed at the start of the program and every time the program returns from a commercial break.

To protect voters and citizens from being mislead or influenced by the misinformation inherent in today’s broadcast media programming, programming that passes itself off as providing viewers with news and information, should carry a warning that the underlying operational imperatives of the program are based on ratings and financial considerations – not about the public’s need to know.

Media has become about selling the sizzle and ignoring the fact the meat is badly contaminated with Salmonella, E coli, Listeria or Campylobacter.

A lot of people in the media, and some everyday people, really aren’t in search of the truth. They’re in search of something worse than that. Money, yeah. I think the media’s the kind of a thing where the truth doesn’t win, because it’s no fun. The truth’s no fun.      Jack White

Caveat emptor, Hmmm, Issues

A Fallacy of Words

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While the public is subjected to counterfactual statements like the recent letters about needing to “Put Christ back in….” our schools etc throughout the year – it is at this time of year, the Christmas season, that delusive statements about the need to “Put Christ back in…….” abound.

The cry “Put Christ back in Christmas” seems to have an alliterative lure that those who believe that words are what manifest Christ in the world find irresistible.

You can strive to keep the words out, but you cannot keep Christ out of anywhere that a practicing Christian is because they act as a conduit for Christ’s love.

What this prattling on about “putting Christ back…….” clearly demarks is the distinctness between Christians who self label as Christians by virtue of membership in a Christian religion or church or as is often the case membership in both a religion and a church, and practicing Christians who often don’t call themselves Christians, holding that to be a judgment that only Christ can, or has the right to, make.

A demarcation rooted in the difference between words as the central tenant of being Christian versus your actions and behaviours as the central tenant of being Christian.

The fallacy of using words as the central tenet, is the fact that words encompass a degree of variation in meaning that denies any certainty in conveying exactitude in any message the words may have been meant to convey.

Consider the ubiquitous Thesaurus, a reference work whose sole purpose is to provide alternate choices for a word. For some words there maybe only 5 – 6 words as alternatives; while for other words there are 100+ alternatives.

In these days of rising illiteracy, functional illiteracy, cant, jargon, vulgarism, acronyms etc we are losing, may have lost, an appreciation for and the ability to use the subtle nuances and shadings in meanings among the words we choose to use to convey more accurately and with more certainty the ideas and meanings we seek to express.

Consider even the ‘simple’ Dictionary:

A book, optical disc, mobile device or online lexical resource (eg dictionary.com) containing a selection of the words of a language* giving information about their meanings, pronunciation, etymologies, inflected forms, derived forms, etc, expressed in either the same or another language, lexicon, glossary. Print dictionaries of of varying sizes, ranging from small pocket dictionaries to multi volume books, usually sort entries alphabetically, as do typical CD or DVD dictionary applications, allowing one to browse through the terms in sequence. All electronic dictionaries, whether online or installed on a device, can provide immediate, direct access to a search term, its meanings, and ancillary information: a Japanese – English dictionary.

*Language: 1) a body of words and the system for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area or the same cultural tradition i.e. the two languages of Belgium, the French language; the Yiddish language. 2) communication by voice in the distinctively human manner using arbitrary sounds in conventional ways with conversational meanings. 3) the system of linguistic signs or symbols considered in the abstract (opposed to speech). 4) any set or system of such symbols as used in a more or less uniform fashion by a number of people who are thus enabled to communicate intelligibly with one another. 5) any system of formalized symbols, signs, sounds, gestures or the like used or conceived as a means of communicating thought, emotion etc. i.e. the language of mathematics, sign language.

Thus attempts to use the bible as a cookbook (take Sunday mass, add tithing, judgment and condemnation of fellow human beings because of your moral superiority, support for inquisitions, crusades, witch/heretic burnings, etc etc etc…..) to arrive at the ‘formula’ or ‘ingredients’ that mixed together make a Christian are doomed to fail.

This fallacy of words making the bible a ‘cookbook’ is compounded by the nature of languages and translation between languages.

The meanings of words in one language have subtle (or glaring) different nuances than do the corresponding (or what are considered corresponding) words in another language. The English word love does not carry the exact meaning of the French amour (noun) or aimer (verb). Indeed as you can see in going from the English love to the French language you use different words depending on whether you are referring to the noun or the verb.

A translation from one language to another should not give rise to a single word but a word plus the necessary qualifiers to convey the nuanced meaning of the word in its original language.

Compounding the difficulty of attempting to convey the meaning of a word in one language through translation into another language is the impact the biases of the translator have and the effect the knowledge and skill of the translator has.

The biases, knowledge and understanding of the reader of the reader of the translation also have an impact, a significant impact, on the interpretation of the meaning or message of words.

“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

 Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott [attribution: “my priest friend Tom”]

One must also recognize the effect that a lack of concepts can have not just on translation but on the form of the expression of the idea takes in the original language.

Take the Christian creation myth of the Universe being created in six days. The ideology of Creationism is based upon the words the Christian creation myth as set out in the bible being meant literally.

Yet, call to mind how little was known about our world and what was not known or understood about our planet, other planets, solar systems, galaxies, the Universe, physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, etc at that point in time that the Christian creation myth came into existence.

How would you explain the big bang to someone who had no concept of nothing?

In the beginning less than nothing existed, then a tiny spark appeared, causing an immense explosion, as the energy of the explosion cooled it gave birth to the elements the first generation of stars were formed from, the death of this first generation in novas and supernovas gave birth to the heavier elements contained in our generation of stars, planets……and by the way the elements human beings are made of – humans are made of star stuff. And the Universe is still expanding outwards from the initial explosion that was 15 billion years ago; and using a telescope you can look out into space and look back into that distant past.

How would you explain the big bang to someone who did not know the world rotates around the sun, some of the lights in the night skies are other planets in our solar system (what a solar system was), that the majority of lights in the night skies were stars whose light takes tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of years to get to earth (by the way what is hundred, thousand, million, billion?)…….

You could not.

How many truly understand the big bang today? How many are comfortable with the idea of the big bang to have a degree of understanding? How many are overwhelmed with the ideas inherent in the big bang and seek simpler, more human/earth sized in scope explanations to cling to as an explanation of the origin of the Universe. How many find that comfort in the Christian (or another) creation myth?

Finally you have the fact that the Christian gospels were clearly written as theological documents in the context of early Christianity rather than historical chronicles and their authors showed little interest in an absolute chronology of Jesus or in synchronizing the episodes of his life with the secular history of the age.

 

So, if attempting to use the bible as a ‘cookbook’ forces the assumption words can convey an exact meaning mires Christian churches and religions in the fallacy of words, and that the fallacy of words is not hard to see – for those who are not to blind to see – why are churches and religions that mire themselves in this fallacy of words so popular?

Because being a ‘cookbook Christian’ is easy.

Gilbert K. Chesterton was correct in his observation that “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”

Practicing Christians view the bible as a guide for a spiritual journey; a journey you start on by living your life, of behaving, by striving – through your actions – to become the Christ. And while this view may well be relatively easy to come to, walking the path, striving to become the Christ is a daily struggle requiring a focus on asking oneself how would Christ act in this situation? How do the words and behaviours of Christ tell me to act?

Christ’s words “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” are, for human beings, incredibly hard to take into your heat to live by.

To put living by Christ’s words, commands, behaviours and actions into perspective consider Oren Arnold’s Christmas gift suggestions: “To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.”

Were you among those who were of the opinion that the police should have captured the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter  so he could have been ‘properly tortured’ for his actions? Can (do) you forgive him? Do you want to bring back the death penalty, even though experience and recent history have clearly shown that doing so would result in the execution of innocent persons? Does “you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette” justify taking innocent lives so you can reap vengeance on the guilty (or those you judge to be guilty)?

Practicing Christianity by striving to live your life by acting in accordance to the words, teachings, behaviours of Christ is not only hard it is very uncomfortable, often requiring you to take positions (against the death penalty) that are rather unpopular and that require you to stand against the herd.

The book “Religion for Atheists” suggests that atheists, as part of understanding the overpowering lure and hold churches and religions have for the so many, need to recognize that Christian religions and churches are, or have become, about satisfying human social needs. That churches and religions have become social clubs where you get together with people who share your mindset, pat each other on the back about how wonderful you are, holding forth about being saved by virtue of your membership in a church or religion, confabulation about your morally superior to those who don’t agree with you.

Although ……applied to Christian churches and religions, the psychiatric meaning of confabulation [“the replacement of a gap in a person’s memory by a falsification that he or she believes to be true”] contains a full measure of truth.

Being a member of a Christian church and/or religion holds several advantages over being a member of a Service Organizations [Kiwanis, etc]. Membership in a service organization is not limited to only those who agree with you and as a result what you choose to believe can face challenge. Service organizations work to improve the community, without making judgments as to worthiness. While service organizations serve to fill human social needs the are about service to the community and in serving the community these organizations perform a great deal of hard work.

Christianity is not about popularity, it is not about getting together with people of the same mindset and who agree with your thinking.

If we are all in agreement on the decision – then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.
Alfred P. Sloan

More than anything Christianity is not about being easy.

One of the ironies of the past year was the WWCD pencil invasion. For several weeks many of those belonging to our local Christian churches and religions were running around with pencils marked WWJD, treating them more in keeping with a shared in joke or handing them out to persons they judged in need of saving.

These individuals, churches, religions were focused on the words, not the actions and decision making process living your life within the bounds of what Christ would do demand.

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often. Mark Twain

In the North of Abbotsford has arisen a fancy new Tower of Babel, the occupiers of which have cut their support to the food bank. My understanding of the reason they turned their back on the growing number of hungry in Abbotsford is that the hungry in Abbotsford are not Christian enough or the Food Bank is not Christian enough or some combination thereof.

What does the Christianity of either the Food Bank or those in need of food from the Food Bank have to do with anything?

Given the growing tide of hunger in our community is not the question that should be asked whether there is hunger?

Turning away from the hungry because they (or the Food Bank) are not Christian ‘enough’ screams “We are not Christians – no matter what we label ourselves.”

No person or group of persons who live the teachings, behaviours and actions of Christ could, much less would, chose to turn their backs on, deny love and help to, the growing numbers who suffer hunger in Abbotsford. Anyone who would, or does, turn their back on the hungry  makes a clear statement that whatever they may claim to the contrary, they are not Christian.

“However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?”  Buddha

Before the Christian churches and religions in Abbotsford, the province of BC and Canada waste time worrying about “putting Christ back” in Christmas or schools etc, they need to focus on” putting Christ back” in their churches, religions and themselves.

Business, Caveat emptor

Truth Hiding in Advertising

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Truth in Advertising

“What does having the fastest Internet in Canada mean to you?”

That’s the question asked in Shaw’s latest advertising campaign to lure customers to purchase (or upgrade) their Internet services from Shaw. The image that goes with this question is of someone downloading their ‘favourite program’ while they rush out to talk the cabdriver, rush back to collect the laptop and rush out and into the cab.

The question posed and the images create an impression of impressive speed for Shaw Internet services.

What Truth lies in the Question?

The fact that you are paying for the fastest Internet in Canada does not mean you are getting the speed you are paying for. That is why contracts for internet services have within their wording the proviso ‘up to’ however megabytes per second you are paying for. Should you test the actual speed of your internet services you will almost assuredly find that, as speed tests of the actual speeds versus ‘up to’ speeds have demonstrated, you are not getting the speed you are paying for. Hence the need for the ‘up to” proviso to protect the service provider from refunds or price adjustments.

The images of the show being downloaded in the time it takes to rush out to the cab and back falls under both ‘up to’ and more importantly the excuse “it is them not us”. For most of us it doesn’t really matter what our download speed is, the limiting factor is what the download speed of the site you are downloading from (uploading to) is.

Except for a very few sites, the download and upload speeds are such that paying for higher or highest speeds is a waste of money.

Does paying for the highest internet speed mean you can download a show in the time shown in Shaw’s internet commercial? No, but should you contact Shaw to complain  “it is the downloader, not Shaw” that prevents you achieving downloading a program in the time promised (an implied promise) in the Shaw commercial.

“What does having the fastest Internet in Canada mean to you?”

For all but a select few it means you have bought a ‘mirage’ and are paying too much for your internet.

For me “What does having the fastest Internet in Canada mean to you?” means that the Federal Government needs to stop paying lip service to competition and bring meaningful competition into the markets where monopolies, or effective monopolies, exist (Cable, newspapers, wireless, banking, internet services, TV and radio ownership, news and information programming, etc) .

It is well past time the Federal Conservatives remembered that they are in Ottawa to serve the best interests of ALL Canadians and not just the interests of the wealthy and big business.

Unfortunately for the future of Canada and Canadians. putting the best interests of Canada and Canadians as a whole above the interests of the wealthy, business and those special interest groups they favour, is not part of the Conservative’s Ideology. And as we all are well aware, if it is not part of the Conservative’s Ideology it cannot be Reality and therefore does not exist in the Conservative Universe.

behaviour, Caveat emptor

Ignored to Death

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During a conversation several members of the homeless community posed a question of ethics, an ethical challenge about the behaviours and actions of the people, institutions and organizations in dealing with an individual – and the fact that these types of behaviours and actions were not unique to this individual.

The ethical challenge applies not just to those directly involved but included the governments whose actions have created the conditions in which these behaviours can or will occur. It also included all of us who have created the ethos [the fundamental character or spirit of a culture] of British Columbia and Canada.

The ethos of a community, a province and a country are not created by words or piously beating our breasts and declaring to the world how wonderfully pure we are and impure others are. No, the ethos of our society results from our actions AND our inactions. The ethos of Canada is the sum total of the behaviours of ALL of us, not some mysterious them.

Mr Dix, before you begin blaming the Liberals and declaring how innocent you and the NDP are – you are at least as culpable, as blameworthy, as the Liberals. It was you Mr Dix who ran around the province taking the politically popular position of extinguishing the HST and ignoring the devastating negative consequences extinguishing the HST who have on the most vulnerable, those most in need of help in BC. An ethical opposition would be focused on speaking for the most vulnerable for they have no voice that will be heard to speak for themselves. An opposition focussed on scoring political points so it can gain power and form the next government is an ethically challenged Political Party.

I originally met George shortly after becoming homeless. At least at one point I was the homeless one and George the housed person. I cannot say who the real George was because I did not met George until after he suffered a traumatic brain injury. Yes at the time I met him George could be a little crusty. And yes, George did use illegal substances.

Flash forward to the first half of 2011 where George and I had a conversation, with George speaking about his feeling that after more than a decade he was starting to get to where he was before his brain injury.

The next time I ran into George, he was fresh from the hospital where he had just lost some toes to circulation problems. Regular meals at the Salvation Army, nagging by the Salvation Army’s parish nurse and others who knew George, led to him turning up at the Salvation Army almost dancing. He was so happy he was nearly dancing because he had just come from a check-up where he was told that his physical health had improved so much they would not have to remove more toes as expected.

When I saw George again recently it was quite a shock because he looked terrible – death warmed over terrible – looking like a walking corpse. He was fresh out of the hospital where he had an operation on his stomach. The operation has left George feeling unwell, in a lot of pain and thinking (as do most who see him) that he will, sooner rather than later, be dead.

Hardly surprising then that he is not a fount of sweetness and light. George shares his discomfort, pain and fear through angry, loud, abusive verbal outbursts that include a lot of swearing and are unpleasant and offensive to be on the receiving end of. Which makes George a royal pain in the ass to deal with.

Been there, experienced that, wanted to throttle George.

And while I can understand and sympathize with “I don’t have to put up with being sworn at like that”……..being an obnoxious, loud, verbally abusive, swearing pain in the ass does not deserve the death penalty.

Dumping George onto the streets is imposing the death penalty because in his current state of health he will not survive being homeless on the streets.

Nobody wants to deal with George so they try to dump him on someone else. A situation the Abbotsford Police found themselves caught in when the hospital, which George had been more or less dumped on, phoned the police to remove him for his swearing and angry verbal attacks. Normally, if there is no place to take someone in Abbotsford that someone ends up on the street.

The Abbotsford police ended up taking George to Chilliwack to find a place for him to stay for the night and avoid having George die as a result of being dumped onto the streets by police.

Since them George has been in the hospitals in Chilliwack, in Hope and back in Abbotsford because no one wants to deal with George and get rid of him as soon as they can dump him on someone else.

The homeless community, noting George’s absence and concerned about whether George was alive, enquired about what was going on and what George’s current fate was. They raised the question of ethics when another member of the homeless community supplied information that George had gone from the Chilliwack hospital to the Hope hospital to the Abbotsford hospital where George currently was.

Last year Dallas, who had struggled with drugs and recovery, found himself in the shelter and depressed as he again struggled with addiction. Not the ‘I am so depressed’ that most people have experienced and think of when they hear someone is depressed, but the life sucking black hole that is true DRESSION. Dallas sought help as he spiralled down into DRESSION, at Emergency at the Abbotsford hospital.

Only to be turned away as he hadn’t tried and was not threatening to kill himself or someone else. So he left the hospital and tried to kill himself. Unfortunately he was successful.

Ted’s feet had been frostbitten and not treated. When using Ted is loud, verbally nasty, tries to physically intimidate people and is a bully. When circumstances resulted in me applying antibiotic and bandages to Ted’s foot one evening, the, the black damage of frostbite on his toes together with the bare, open flesh where the frostbite damage had resulted in the loss of skin and flesh was such a concern I managed to get his foot looked at by a nurse the following day.

During the course of the examination Ted stated that his foot was not as painful as it had been. I enquired if that might be because of the high level of drugs he had ingested and he conceded it might be. He knew he could lose toes, foot or leg to the frostbite damage, vowing he would rather die.

Because Ted is a royal pain in the ass and very unpleasant to deal with, Ted is another who the system and society strives not to deal with. Ted did find a rather unique way to get help, robbing a bank in Abbotsford, walking down to the bus stop and having a seat until police arrived to arrest him.

The countdown has already begun for the next person slated to be ignored to death in Abbotsford.

 

“A society is ultimately judged by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members”

Hubert Humphrey

“The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick and the needy, and the handicapped.”

Hubert Humphrey