News
1. Sipekne’katik to develop in Hammonds Plains
The native band is going to develop its 54 hectares at Wallace Hills. Something like 50,000 hectares have been bulldozed over for development of ticky tacky McMansions through Kingswood, Voyageur Lakes, and the sprawling Pockwock Road corridor, but this development is the first to irk area councillor Matt Whitman. Go figure.
2. Cake Lady gets royal treatment
Ingrid Dunsworth, the Cake Lady at the Farmers Market, so impressed Charles and Camilla with her gingerbread heart and gluten-free chocolate hazelnut cake that the couple are flying Dunsworth to their country estate for the weekend. Well, to be technical, the British taxpayers are flying Dunsworth over, because having cut the dole and reduced public sector pay, the taxpayers are just rolling in money for such extravagancies.
3. Marijuana use eradicated forever
The cops have busted a grow op on Big Tancook Island, and arrested a 57-year-old man. Now that marijuana use has been ended for all time, police can put their limited resources into other efforts.
4. Wild Kingdom
It’s not exactly news, but Ocean Towers has bed bugs.
Views
1. Lights out
Nova Scotia Power’s excuses for power outdages during post-hurricane Arthur, says Stephen Kimber, don’t include the obvious:
There is no questioning — no even mentioning — decades of boardroom decisions to keep cutting back front-line service workers while exponentially increasing pay packages for front-office executives, whose bonuses are at least partly a corporate thank you for their shareholder-pleasing service cuts.
2. More on My Play
Rachel Brighton discusses an overlooked point in the My Play issue:
Muddying the waters is a legal action by a gaming company in Nevada against Techlink, the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, and the Nova Scotia Provincial Lotteries and Casino Corporation (formerly the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation). Safe Gaming System Inc. alleges the parties have infringed its patent for a responsible gaming system.
Brighton goes on to imply that the government should take some unspecified action to help problem gamblers.
As with suicide, means reduction is probably an effective way to prevent at least some gamblers from becoming problem gamblers. Government could and arguably should get out of the gambling business entirely; with VLTs gone, probably some small number of problem gamblers would have no others means to gamble, but the rest would find other ways, either “grey machines” or the internet. And that would mean a huge reduction in government revenues. (Suicide isn’t a perfect analogy, for a lot of reasons, but primarily because suicidal ideation is very often a one-time or temporary state of mind—take away the means of suicide right now and the suicidal person will likely go on to live a long and fruitful life—while gambling addiction appears to be a lifelong affliction.)
There are harm reduction techniques for problem gamblers, but the My Play situation shows that the government can’t successfully impose them. There’s just no good government answer to this problem, beyond education, I think. It’s left to friends and family to intervene, when necessary.
3. Everyone drink!
Tim Olive cites the Ivany Report to support whatever opinion it is he’s pushing.
Government
No public meetings.
On Campus
No public events.
Daily Plug
Katrin Meissner:
I see a group of people sitting in a boat, happily waving, taking pictures on the way, not knowing that this boat is floating right into a powerful and deadly waterfall. It is still time to pull out of the stream. We might lose some boat equipment but we might be able to save the people in the boat. But no one acts.
Time is running out.
Sarah Perkins:
I used to think I was paranoid, but it’s true. She’s slipping away from us. She’s been showing signs of acute illness for quite a while, but no one has really done anything. Her increased erratic behaviour is something I’ve especially noticed. Certain behaviours that were only rare occurrences are starting to occur more often, and with heightened anger. I’ve tried to highlight these changes time and time again, as well as their speed of increase, but no one has paid attention.
It almost seems everyone has been ignoring me completely, and I’m not sure why. Is it easier to pretend there’s no illness, hoping it will go away? Or because they’ve never had to live without her, so the thought of death is impossible? perhaps they cannot see they’ve done this to her. We all have.
Tony McMichael:
It’s sad when a society like ours can’t see further than its bank balance and stumbles blindly into a future when children won’t be able to enjoy the flowing rivers, mountain snow, coloured birds and bush animals. Don’t we have any responsibility for other creatures, forests and rivers? I’m rather ashamed of our behaviour.
I usually roll my eyes when I hear reporters ask interviewees “how do you feel?” Seriously, listen to the CBC for a day and count how many times the “how do you feel?” question is asked. How do I feel? Like I’m being manipulated to get a cheap emotional response for a 10-second radio clip while you ignore more substantive analysis, that’s how I feel.
Still, I’m liking the question when it’s aced by Joe Duggan, a master’s student in science communication at the Australian National University’s Centre for the Public Awareness of Science. Via his website, Is This How You Feel?, Duggan asked people to send him hand-written letters about their feelings about climate change. Besides plenty from regular people, he also received letters from climate scientists themselves, including those quoted above. Those letters lift the professional veil that scientists normally wear to present their work. It’s a remarkable glimpse into their fright.
In the harbour
(click on vessel names for pictures and more information about the ships)
Arrivals
Veendam, cruise ship, Boston to Pier 22
NYK Constellation, container ship, New York to Fairview Cove West
Departures
USCGC Escanaba to sea
Veendam to sea
NYK Constellation to Southampton, England
Footnotes
I’ll be on The Rick Howe Show at 10am this morning, discussing the $45 NSF Fee Centre.
You’re being unfair to Charles and Camilla, by implying that they may be using public money frivolously. Charles has his own income from the estates of the Duchy of Cornwall, which he obtained by … oh, never mind.
The Crown Estate provides a huge – like £400 million/year – net income to the UK. Net, as in “after all the parties are paid for”.
Ah, yes. Ocean Towers AKA Harbour View.
Doesn’t a certain local weekly regularly partner with CAPREIT to offer rental incentives for apartments in that complex?
The article in the Chronicle does say that the Cake Lady is paying her own return airfare and other expenses, so perhaps Charles and Camilla are hard up these days! The cottage will probably be rent free!
I thought I read that the cake lady is paying her own way.
You did; I was going to make the same comment!
Revision or retraction of the statement that the British taxpayer is flying the cake lady over seems in order, unless you have a source with info different from the C-H reporter (last sentence: she’s paying her own airfare and expenses; “guest cottage near the estate” is not a phrase that implies you’re a non-paying guest of the estate).
See here:
https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/the-knights-who-say-nay-morning-file-tuesday-august-26-2014/
I said yesterday that the royals were paying the Cake Lady’s way to Britain. That’s incorrect, and she’s paying her own way. Rule #1 in Canadian journalism: criticism of the royals will bring more response than any other subject. It’s as if they have a special status in this society.