Paramedics Strike Continues

I had an opportunity to interview Cam Stockdale, the regional health and safety officer for CUPE 873 on Friday. Cam tells us about the current state of the strike, why last week’s offer was rejected and the general state of the union.
It is very important to support paramedics. Each and every one of us have had contact with paramedics at some point. My neighbours have been ill in the last few months, we have dealt with many striking paramedics over the past few months. They have always been courteous, tempering compassion with a sense of urgency. And set the system continues to be misused. When the frontline runs smoothly, the rest of the system is far more efficient. To those who live in areas just outside of Metro Vancouver like Hope, Agassiz, and Whistler were left with NO cars. For Whistler, Pemberton and Squamish are the closest. Hope’s closest is Chilliwack (about 40 minutes away) or possibly Boston Bar. This is unacceptable! Write your MLA’s, blog about it, do what you can to bring attention to this issue. Our paramedics deserve much better than two dollars an hour (www.saveourparamedics.com)! Google Cam Stockdale in the next few days to find the interview posted on his website

Desperate Cash Grabbing Strategies, Mega-Houses and Dog Poo. Yes Dog Poo

Well here comes a large Province post again. The biggest story of the day… the Liberal’s raising the limit on the BCLC Play Now website. This isn’t some pithy raise of a hundred bucks or so. No no, this is an 8000 percent raise. The previous limit was $120 per week. The new limit; $10 000 per week. The best part about Michael Smyth’s fabulously written column, the photo of Rich Coleman on the front and Smyth calling Coleman on his sell-out. Coleman was adamantly opposed to online gambling, much less raising the limit. He is now fully supporting the Liberal’s decision to increase the limit. Ah, how does it feel to turn your back on your principles Rich?

Next page. Surrey council is considering allowing “mega-homes” back into their neighbourhoods. Which means (depending on the lot size) houses from 4550 to 6500 square feet can be built. First of all most of the monstrosities do not fit with the neighbourhoods. I’m not saying every house should be the same, but they should all be relatively similar in style and size. Next, what in God’s name does any family need with a 6500 square foot home? Miss Opinionate and her family (totally 5 people) live in a 3500 square foot house. We can all agree that it is too much. Many people have made the argument that extended family live with them. That’s fine, I get that. My uncle and his family moved in with us for awhile many years ago. In the same square footage that we live in now. It was fine, plenty of room for all. So once again I ask, what do you need with a 6500 square foot house? It is a completely impractical, waste of money, and a killer on the environment. Then again the majority of people (sorry for the forthcoming generalization) give little thought or concern to the environment anyway. Just looking at the cost of heating alone and the energy required is astronomical. Obviously I am against mega-homes. 

Probably the funniest and stupidest article I came across today is the headline “Dog Poo, $600 000 Down the Drain”. What? Apparently Vancouver animal shelters paid 600 grand to have the drainage systems upgraded and widened. Let me be clear here, there wasn’t actually anything wrong with the old system. A city engineer says the two and four inch drain pipes were too narrow for the waste. Why were they too narrow? Worker’s will not shovel out feces, dog toys or hair. It all gets hosed down the drain. What (there was a lot of that through this article)? Are you serious? Who rinses a dog toy down the drain? For God’s sake people, where is your common sense. As to the poo, no one is asking you to physically touch it, you use a shovel. If you can’t handle dog poo why are you working with dogs? Again, common sense.

Something a Little Different

Ok, I generally try to keep these posts non-personal, just focus on the story and what I think about it. This one is personal. What happened to manners? As part of the generation I am about to trash, I wonder how people missed the boat on this. Should it be a required subject from preschool straight through high school? Or even into college. This all stems from the train-wreck day I had. I recently started a new job. Now generally most people tend to say “Hi, I’m Blank, nice to meet you.” or something equally as bland, but polite. The Assistant Director (at the company I currently work for) said (rather gruffly) “Who are you?”. Well nice to meet you too. Of course I responded politely with the first quote above. Later today the aforesaid AD makes a snide comment about my car and the fact that she doesn’t believe I can afford such a thing. Again, I keep my cool, respond politely and tell her that while I am at school I still choose to work part time. Not mentioning that it is none of her business. But again manners prevented me from making a rude, snarky comment. Two hours of solitary, demeaning work gave me plenty of time to stockpile though. 

What do you say when someone says “Thank you.”? The general (and again polite) response is “Your welcome”. Yet another simple etiquette lesson that seems to have evaporated. Another lady drops off my faxes into a box by my desk. So each time she does I say “Thank you.”. She does me a favour, I appreciate it. She says nothing, just turns on her heal and stalks away. So I made a point of saying it louder and louder each time. The most I got was a hiss somewhere near the end of the day.

To both of you (who I honestly hope read this) it’s time to go back to etiquette school. And since I appear to have too much money I will even pay for it. To my readers who agree with this post, comment! Let your polite voices be heard in a world riddled with rudeness.

Gordo Goes for Three Straight

Gordon Campbell has gone for three straight. He won a majority government in last night’s election, 48-37. He is the first premier to do this since Bill Bennett in 1983. 

Carole James claims the people wanted someone with experience in these uncertain times. Ok, Carole, I will give you that. But many likely chose Gordon for the fact that he is the lesser of two evils. And maybe the fact that he actually seemed to have a plan to pull B.C through the recession, a plan that didn’t include spending billions of dollars and putting us back in debt. Hmm could that be?

Campbell says his party won because his election campaign was clean, not a smear attack. Miss O does recall saying to Papa O that if she were to make her decision based exclusively on ad campaigns, she would vote for the Liberals.

Congratulations on making history… again Gordon Campbell

Election Day

Hello!

It is election day in B.C. Miss O loves election days. It means a chance for change, but tends to end up being just as it was.

It means the campaign (or smear depending on your perspective) ads are done. They start out great, then they just get annoying!

Polls are open 8am to 8 pm, plus there were four days of advanced polls. You have no excuse! Rock the vote and have your say!

More to come in a bit

B.C’s Lackluster Election

Ok so I borrowed the title phrase from Jon Ferry’s column in today’s Province. But he does make an excellent point. Today’s leaders are quite simply boring. Gone are the ballsy, cigar-smoking Churchills of yesterday, only to be replaced by the dull albeit steady Harper’s, Gore’s and Ignatieff’s. The minor exceptions are the James’ and Layton’s. They are no more interesting, all they do is whine. What is a voter to do? 

This campaign is so bleh that I can’t say any more. 

First Past the Post, or Single Transferable Vote?

Part of the May 12th election will be a referendum on electoral reform. Yes or no? I’m sure many of you are surprised that I haven’t written about this yet, considering how many of my posts are about politics. The simple answer is um well, yeah. And that is kind of how I feel about this STV system. 

Let me explain a little bit here. First of all, in elementary school, there was a federal election when I started social studies. My political junkie of a teacher thought it would be a great learning process. It actually was, just didn’t seem like it at the time. We learned all about the first past the post system that we currently use for both federal and provincial elections. For the most part, I have no problem with the first past the post system. The one thing that I still question is if one party (say the Liberals for example) can have 60% (I’m using large, rounded numbers for an easy example) of the popular vote, how do they not win the election? It just never made sense to me. If the popular vote is saying that 60% of British Columbians will vote Liberal, how can they turn around and say the New Democrats win? It just never clicked. Unless people lie (really wouldn’t put it past a great number of people). I get the differences riding to riding, but overall. Just didn’t click. 

Single transferable vote makes even less sense. Essentially with STV you have far less ridings, but more candidates. For example, the city of Vancouver would be divided into four regions, north, west, south, and east. Each of those ridings will have say ten candidates, rather than the five that each smaller riding would have. Voters would rate their choices on the ballot, supposedly leading to less wasted votes. Each voter would put the numbers one to ten beside each candidates name, in their order of preference. The candidate with the most ones would be the first candidate elected for that riding. Any non-preferred votes would then be transferred to the next candidate on a voter’s list, therefore eliminating the potentially wasted votes. The transfer of votes occurs when the single voters number one candidate does not get elected. They move on through the ranked order until your candidate is selected. The candidate’s affiliated parties are then pulled out to determine the winning party and new government. The majority of this information came from Wikipedia, in a special BC-STV article. 

One of the primary reasons for changing to STV is to have people vote for the individual candidate, not the party itself. On one hand this is a good thing. Vote for the candidate who best represents what you want. Fair enough. On the other hand, you must take into consideration the party the candidate is affiliated with. If you happened to really like NDP candidate Joe Blow, but don’t agree with the NDP policies, are you really going to vote for Joe Blow anyways? I did this in very first federal election I was eligible to vote in. I liked a particular candidate over all the others. I didn’t agree with his parties policies. After the election results were in, it seemed like a wasted vote. 

Is the issue black and white? No. Is first past the post perfect? Absolutely not. Does it work? Yes. Is STV the way of the future? I don’t know. Should it be? Maybe. I say combine the better qualities of both methods, develop a system that works in BC,  and be a leader in worldwide electoral systems. Be an example rather than looking to others. 

I welcome comments on this issue, especially if anyone has something to add about STV. There has not been a lot of press about STV so if you have any information to share with Miss Opinionate readers, please contact me by filling in the form below.

Liberal’s Are Riding the Slippery Slope

I honestly didn’t even make it all  the way through my trusty Province this morning. I made it to the second page before I was so outraged I had to come tearing up to my office to write this post. 

Solicitor General (well previous now) John Van Dongen has resigned. Ok, fine, makes sense kind of. The article says he resigned due to public outcry over his license being revoked for speeding tickets. What??? I really must know what the hell (and I’m sorry for cursing but this is absolutely ridiculous) is going through British Columbians minds if they will declare a man who generally did his job well, step down because he speeds. In that case, you, you, you, you, and myself (pretty much every B-Cer) has sped at one time or another. In fact, most people do it on a daily basis. Should everyone of us be fired too? What is wrong with this picture? People use your common sense here. If it turned out that Van Dongen had a criminal record for assault, robbery, or anything along those lines, then he should step down. For speeding tickets, anyone who called for his resignation is insane. If I lived in Van Dongen’s riding I would support him 100%!

Further in the article Carole James is being Carole James and whining incessantly about how could it ever have taken this long for the Solicitor General to step down. Oh and lest we forget that he waited a week before telling Premier Campbell. Oh my word, he waited a week, hang the witch! Oh my, again with the common sense. Ms. James, he was speeding. Get over it. While we are talking about getting over things, get over yourself! My goodness, you are nothing but a whiner who plays petty name-calling style games that as children we go time outs for. It’s time for you to go back to your corner Carole James! 

Ok on to page two. I confess I made it about three paragraphs  (so really like three sentences) into Michael Smyth’s column before charging  up to my computer. The first sentence killed me. It was the right thing for Van Dongen to do, by stepping down. Then he added my favorite phrase, “even if it’s a tad tardy.”. Really, it was the right thing, it was tardy. Again, he was speeding, not beating his wife. For sweet holy sake, where has the common sense gone in this province? He accuses Campbell of having “a wobbly moral compass.” mainly for not firing Van Dongen. Maybe (and a little piece of me has just died for saying this) Campbell is the only one left who saw this for what it is. A man who made a few errors in judgement (minor errors at that), who accepted the consequences of his actions like a mature, responsible adult. John Van Dongen, you have Miss Opinionate’s support.

Province Letter Writer- Increase Carbon Tax

In the Letters to the Editor section of the Province, someone wrote a letter to Carole James. The objective of the letter is to not have James remove the carbon tax (if her party is elected) but to increase it. Apparently us fair British Columbians pay far too little in carbon taxes. We are over-dependent on fossil fuels and yada yada yada. 

Do you know why we are so dependent on fossil fuels? First of all, there are no other viably affordable options. Yes hybrid vehicles are coming down in price, however when the large battery dies (approximately five years after the car was purchased) , they are so expensive to replace that the entire vehicle will end up in a junk yard. 

Secondly, our infrastructure (especially in the suburbs) is designed to promote vehicular travel (not well at the moment but that is a whole separate issue). The majority of people (although it is slowly changing) live in residential neighbourhoods where the closet market is a ten to fifteen minute drive. Metro Vancouver was simply not designed to limit vehicular travel. 

Furthermore, our transit system and bike lanes are limited as well. As Miss Opinionate has mentioned before, Translink is severely behind other well developed metropolitan areas. As to biking to work, school, etc, on many arterial routes, this is pretty much a suicide risk. 

Finally, life is just too bloody expensive already. Metro Vancourites are already so overtaxed that an increase is likely to send many people into financial ruin (ok I may be exaggerating just a tiny bit there). Realistically, the majority of people are barely scrapping by these days. So an answer to the current economic woes is to tax people even more, which in turn curtails any additional spending, thus many businesses lose revenue. 

Miss Opinionate is lucky. She is a full time student, who thankfully still lives at home rent free. She works one-day a week, which barely makes her car payment, much less gas or insurance. And she is one of the lucky ones. She can list several examples of people (with or without kids) who are far worse off than she is. It is simply not feasible to drain even more tax out of these people. 

As a final note to the letter writer, by putting your views in a newspaper, you are destroying many trees by supporting the publication of the Province. Does that concur with your environmental beliefs?

Miss Opinionate Podcast

Miss Opinionate is excited to announce the pending arrival of Miss O podcasts. She has already started recording, a link will be posted soon. Or check the iTunes store. 

Thank you for the last year faithful (and new) readers!