At Angry in the Great White North, one union member has a serious issue with Buzz Hargrove’s endorsement of Paul Martin and the Liberals:
I’m a member of the CAW, and am mightily pissed at Hargrove telling us who to vote for, as if we are a bunch of imbeciles that need to be led. FU** off Buzz and take that union hating SOB Martin with you.
Are you a union member or an NDP supporter? Angry is inviting more opinions.
The Lieberals are good at making promises,(for after they are re-elected), but not very good at keeping them. Throwing hundreds of millions of tax-payers money into General Motors and Ford will not prevent them from going out of business if they continue to manufacture gas-pigs.
If union members in these companies think their jobs are more important than the country they LIVE in, they will get what is coming to them, in the not-too-distant future.
OK dave what do union workers deserve? In fact what do workers, unionized or not, deserve? Do we deserve a 40 hour work week? Do we deserve job security? Do we deserve a half decent wage? Do we deserve the security in the knowledge that our jobs are not out sourced overseas? Do we deserve holidays? Do we deserve a safe work place? Do we deserve Workman’s Compensation when injured on the job? Do we deserve to be treated in a fair and just manner? What does the average worker deserve?
The corporations are winning the public opinion battle that unions and associations are bad. It is pretty sad when people are starting to think that 12 bucks an hour is a good wage. Once unions are gone pretty soon miminum wage will be too much.
Right now the best advice I can give to a young person in pursuing a job/career is to make sure that their choice cannot be out sourced overseas.
So again I ask, what does a worker, unionized or not, deserve?
OT:
Scott Reid: “Alberta can blow me”
http://www.conservativelife.com/blog/index.php/canada/2005/12/02/scott_reid_alberta_can_blow_me
From the top to the bottom: Martin’s economic lesson for the kids; Voodoo Economics(TM, Reg.)by AdScam Martin:
“One of the reasons for having a strong economy in Canada is to be able to help people who lose their jobs.”
Paul Martin quote>> Utter nonsense from Martin>> Martin is cracking up.
Domtar announces 1,800 job cuts as mills and PMs close in profitability drive
MONTREAL, Que., Nov. 30, 2005 (Press Release) – Domtar Inc. announced today a series of targeted measures aimed at returning the Company to profitability. The plan includes closures of paper mills and sawmills, the sale of a paper mill and cost-cutting initiatives.
KEY MEASURES ARE:
* Permanent closure of the Cornwall, Ontario mill
* Permanent closure of PM No.10 and PM No.11 of the Ottawa, Ontario mill
* The decision to sell the Vancouver, BC mill
* Closure of the sawmills at Grand Remous and Malartic, Quebec with the intention of creating a value-added project using the existing infrastructures
* A cost reduction program as follows:
o Reduce selling, general, and administrative expenses by eliminating approximately 100 additional corporate and divisional positions, as well as other SG&A expenses
o Implement further cost reductions at the mill level by eliminating approximately 200 additional operational positions
o Consolidate North American administrative offices in Montreal and Cincinnati.>> via
http://pulp-paper.com/inside/stories/wk11_28_2005/58.html
More >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Job losses challenge Canadian Liberal re-election
By Randall Palmer
Reuters
Friday, December 02, 2005
CORNWALL, Ontario (Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin is running his re-election bid on the strength of the economy but his campaign buses ran straight into job losses on Thursday.
In many respects the Canadian economy is ticking along well, with a booming trade surplus and a string of budget surpluses that are the envy of the G7 rich nations. But its manufacturing sector is getting hammered.
The day before Martin arrived at the small industrial town of Cornwall, on the St. Lawrence River, Domtar Inc. announced it was shutting its local paper mill and laying off 520 people because of high energy prices and the muscular Canadian dollar.
It is a story that has been replayed again and again, particularly in the industrial regions of Ontario and Quebec, crucial to Martin’s hope of winning the January 23 election.
More than 220,000 jobs have been created in Canada in the past year, but 129,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost.
“Unfortunately, these kinds of things happen, but when they happen it’s important to understand that we’ve all got to stand together,” Martin, who won acclaim for having eliminated budget deficits in the 1990s, told students in a local high school.
He said he had offered retraining assistance for those affected. Earlier he told reporters in Montreal: “One of the reasons for having a strong economy in Canada is to be able to help people who lose their jobs.” >>more
http://www.rapp.org/url/?W0TH4MMF
dose.csvancouvernews
I’m not a union guy or an NDPer. I don’t believe in job security as it is not possible to make the assertion of secure employment except by the virtue of the individuals value to an employer and you can’t guess who or who may not outsource at any time because you can’t predict the future.
Canadians deserve!
A work week like the French.
Taxes like the swedes.
Eternal holidays like the Germans.
Dining budgets like our MP’s.
Oil money profits like Kofi’s kids..
etc, etc, etc,
Canadians need a swift kick in their brains more than anything. Come on Santa, deliver it!
Sol-idarity for never!
Sol-idarity for never!
Canadians deserve!
A work week like the French.
“Taxes like the swedes.
Eternal holidays like the Germans.
Dining budgets like our MP’s.
Oil money profits like Kofi’s kids..
etc, etc, etc,
Canadians need a swift kick in their brains more than anything. Come on Santa, deliver it!”
Mick J. sums it up very well “You can”t always get what you want”.
So, have some union take some more of your paycheck to tell you how to work, when to work, what to think, what to do & who to vote for. Why not just negotiate for yourself if you feel you are worth what you think you’re worth and maybe start to think for yourself for a change. In the “real” world you aren’t entitled to your entitlements, you have to work for them.
Suck it up!
Dog Soldier…
Employment Standards (weak versions of union contracts)in any province, minimum wage levels, and Workman’s Compensation Boards came from the union movement.
In the market, it would be foolish to expect employer would protect you versus his profits. If your self-employed like me, you’re are only as good as your last job, your cost to the contractor and their bottom line. It is much scarier than having a union to protect me but I just prefer it.
Murders? What murders? Where? In the hotel? Which hotel? Who? Unions in hotels? Murders in TO? There oughta be a law against it.
The hotel dicks>>>>>> clueless. >>>>
Danny Glover, T.O. mayor campaign to improve hotel wages
TORONTO (CP) – Actor Danny Glover and Toronto Mayor David Miller are campaigning with hotel employees to improve wages and give dignity to thousands of “unvalued” workers.
via cnews
The sad thing is that the Liberals can’t save jobs in this country at a 80 cent dollar.
Our economy was humming for the last 20 years because we had a 70 cent dollar(and less).
Governemnt has money because we are overtaxed and because of 70 dollar oil not because of Liberals. In fact if Liberals stole less we would be doing much better.
This just proves that NDP leadership really don’t have much in the way of principles. Think Jack Layton and his deal with the corrupt Liberal government. I wonder what Buzzie boy will get if the Liberals get back in–a Senate seat perhaps?? That would be nice wouldn’t it? A lesson for us all.
Buzz needs to shut his mouth and look at the photo-op. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him put a CAW jacket on Martin! Buzz needs to see that people are not that in tune to strategic voting, where in the last two elections it messed up the NDP. I hope Buzz has a nice chat with Peggy Nash, who is running in Parkdale area of Toronto, and is a vice-pres of the CAS. Maybe she’ll rip his face off!
i love how the union people don’t know what the owners and execs deal with.
see the current issue of fortune for a description of what those of us in the exec/owner class do. GE’s CEO has worked 100 hour weeks for the past 25 years. That’s 14 hour days 7 days a week. We don’t get vacations, we just work in nicer environments, thanks to blackberry, faxes, cellphones, laptops… Nice anecdote about an E&Y M&A partner whose wife would bring his kids top the office in PJs as the only way he’d see them.
We don’t have job security, work 2.5 times legal hours for no extra pay, and have no one “fighting” for us. But we suck it up and work our asses off. Obviously, we also want our employees to follow in our footsteps. We only ask people to do what we do ourselves. If you want a racist society where no one works and where you can have BS like 8 weeks of holidays, 35 hour weeks, and have your cars burnt every night, move to France. Otherwise shut up and get your ass back to work, though I doub our commie commentator has ever held a real job in his life. He’s either a teacher or a union steward.
Speaking of teachers!
Exhibits of Librano$ tactics by Chretien/Martin. Same old Librano$ tactics by Martin.
Note the reference to Chretien using another high school in election 2000. The incumbent Liberal MP was Joe Jordan, who pulled strings to allow Chretien into the high school. Dargie’s comments are specious. Joe Jordan was one of Chretien’s spear carriers/fart catchers. Joe Jordan inherited the seat from the previous member, his father, Jim Jordan. Joe Jordan was ousted by Gord Brown, Conservative, in election 2004. Brown will keep his seat. >>> more
Board nixes PM’s request to visit school No partisan politics a
By MICHAEL JIGGINS
Staff Writer
He’s prime minister of Canada, but Paul Martin’s powerful position wasn’t enough to get the doors of a public high school in Cornwall opened for him this week.
Citing policy, the Upper Canada District School Board said Friday it “politely declined” Martin’s request to visit Cornwall Collegiate and Vocational School on Thursday.
Martin had requested to address the students about AIDS awareness day.
Rebuffed, Martin’s campaign team with a phalanx of national media in tow descended instead upon Cornwall’s St. Joseph’s Catholic Secondary School.
“It was a political campaign stop and I think we made the right call,” said Upper Canada board chairman David McDonald.
The Upper Canada board passed in October of 1998 a policy that bans partisan political activities by municipal, provincial or federal politicians in its schools during the school day.
The board’s policy does allow politicians into classrooms by invitation as resources.
That policy, however, did not prevent former prime minister Jean Chretien from visiting South Grenville District High School just six days before the federal election in November 2000.
Current trustee David Dargie helped arrange Chretien’s visit then, but Friday he was standing solidly behind the board’s policy.
“I’m a trustee and I support any policies that are put through by the board,” he said.
Dargie was retired at the time of Chretien’s visit and said he put the Liberal team in touch with then principal Brenda Ramsay.
“I said to Brenda, you’ve got to make sure that you check this through with your superintendent and the director,” he said.
“That’s as far as I got. I was the first contact and handed it over.”
He added later of Chretien’s visit, “If you look at the policy, it was outside the boundaries of the policy.”
Asked why he would have felt a visit worthwhile then, but not now when he’s a sitting trustee, Dargie responded, “My view as a trustee is as a trustee and I support again the decision of the board. I’m not one person, we’re a collective body.”
McDonald said it was clearly a mistake to allow Chretien’s visit.
“Had we been on top of things, we should have done the same thing (as with Martin),” said McDonald, who was a trustee at the time, but said he had no role in the decision.
David Thomas, the Upper Canada board’s director of education, was not with the board in 2000 and said Friday he would not have allowed Chretien to visit SGDHS.
“I would probably adhere to the policy that the board has established,” he said. >>> more
http://newsfeed.recorder.ca/cgi-bin/LiveIQue.acgi$rec=16032
I am a CAW member and, believe me, no member I’ve spoken to takes anything Buzz says to heart. Hargrove is simply the boss of the mob to whom we pay protection money to keep the other mob off our backs.
SoIrish, I’d love it if you were Syd Ryan.
PM suggests alliance with NDP.
From the Toronto Star:
thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1133566818275&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154
…attach http://www.; I did not to direct link & use bandwith here, I hope that is what we are supposed to do.
Hey,
As a teacher I find it quite offensive to hear rhetoric like yours spewed forth with the obvious ignorance of someone who was probably lucky to get a grade 12 education at all were it not for the timeless patience of the very people you slag. I would never discredit your hard work (although with a 100 hour work week how the hell do you have time to spit your venom at anybody) so why would you attempt to discredit mine. I must admit that it is only on few occasions that I put in a 100 hour work week (during football, basketball and track and field seasons-about 25 weeks a year)but it is also on rare occasions that I put in less than 60 hours a week (plus the numerous organizations-minor hockey, Kinsmen, Kidsport, Knights of Columbus, the Catholic Church, local rec board- that I donate my time to)and I too don`t get paid overtime. I am certainly not complaining about my remuneration but I am fairly certain that despite my 7 years of education I am still in a lower tax bracket than yourself and many others in your apparently unskilled labor department. In the future, concern yourself with increasing your own net worth and stop disparaging me because I base my net worth on what I can do to help kids become successful, RESPECTFUL citizens. I can only hope that you don`t and ever have children because I have seen too many adults with attitudes like yours create monsters that end up being pariahs on society. Kind of like you.
PS. If you can back up your rhetoric by contributing to society in a volunteer capacity to the same extent I do, I apologize for the pariah part.
Hey needs a vacation.
What Teachers Make, or
You can always go to law school if things don’t work out
By Taylor Mali
http://www.taylormali.com
He says the problem with teachers is, “What’s a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?”
He reminds the other dinner guests that it’s true what they say about
teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.
I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the dinner guests
that it’s also true what they say about lawyers.
Because we’re eating, after all, and this is polite company.
“I mean, you�re a teacher, Taylor,” he says.
“Be honest. What do you make?”
And I wish he hadn’t done that
(asked me to be honest)
because, you see, I have a policy
about honesty and ass-kicking:
if you ask for it, I have to let you have it.
You want to know what I make?
I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best.
I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why won’t I let you get a drink of water?
Because you’re not thirsty, you’re bored, that’s why.
I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
I hope I haven’t called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something Billy said today.
Billy said, “Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don’t you?”
And it was the noblest act of courage I have ever seen.
I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.
You want to know what I make?
I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write.
I make them read, read, read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely
beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math.
And hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this (brains)
then you follow this (heart) and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this (the finger).
Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
I make a goddamn difference! What about you?
So Keith, what exactly is your point?
Your rant only proves that you are another blowhard, angry, bitter, resentful teacher that is stuck on believing that it’s only teachers who really “know” anything.
Try that attitude in the real world and see how far it gets you.
Education is important, but more important than most teachers will ever know in their narrow view of the world.
$80K ! ?
These are rough numbers but you will get the point.
Public service unions from all 50 states and the
10 provinces. Are the single largest pool of capital in the Universe.
At 250 billion per state for all 50 states the public service unions and teachers unions control
12.5 trillion dollars. The Value of the US market in total is only 18 Trillion dollars.
In Canada taking all 10 provinces their total would as rough estimate be about 800 billion, Canadas GDP was a little over 1 Trillion.
If you work for a large corporation your boss is a public service union.
It could be argued that the government doesn’t pay off Canada’s debt because these vast pools of money want a relatively risk free return on a good portion of their money. What better way to get risk free money than to buy government debt. In Canada debt is spread over 30 years with the mean interest rate at 15 years. That would put the average interest rate at about 8 – 12%.
Teachers influence your children, public service employees actually write the laws you are goverened by.
The Power these 2 Union group wield is unprecedented. Even the Robber Barons of the 1920’s didn’t weild this kind of power.
Jeff Cosford
The NL teachers pension now has a unfunded liability of over 1 BB.
The thing all of these teachers and other PS unionists have in common is that they are about to become victims of the greatest ponzi scheme ever – the defined benefit pension plan (DBP). Just ask the GM employees and the Teamsters before them what they think about DBPs. If I was a member of one of these unions I would be looking for a way to exit and convert their contributions into a LIRA that I would control.
Union dudes: your unions have done nothing except raise the standard of living for a lucky few and lowered the standard of living of everyone else. Workman’s compensation is a lame, socialist imitation of what private insurance could easily and cheaply provide. Minimum wage laws cause unemployment. Picket lines are nothing but legalized thuggery. If unions are supposed to represent some kind of advancement of civilization, then I wonder how civilized it is to harass and intimidate the public, shout obscenities and threats at replacement workers, and blow the scabs to smithereens like your buddy did at the Giant Mine.
What workers need is the same thing that capitalists need: a free market. No employer can afford to exploit his workers in a free market, because if he did, it would be easy for another employer to come along and hire away his workers. The same goes for free markets in insurance, housing, food, automobiles, health care, medicine, and everything else that you buy. No one who sells to the public can rip them off as a matter of policy, as long as the public has the free choice to take their money elsewhere. Unfortunately a free market in Canada is what you DON’T have in many areas, and those are precisely the areas where everyone is ripped off.
Unionized private industries in Canada are disappearing forever. Their workers used government-granted immunity to suck the profits dry and now those jobs are simply blowing away. The last refuge of unions will be in the government, with their hammerlock on John Q. Public’s pocketbook. Until they drive away the last investor and the last entrepreneur, the effective tax rate is 99%, no one has a good job, but the minimum wage is CAD1,000,000 per hour.
“In the future, concern yourself with increasing your own net worth and stop disparaging me because I base my net worth on what I can do to help kids become successful, RESPECTFUL citizens.”
So Keith, tell me how going on an illegal strike while defying court orders (in British Columbia)helps kids become RESPECTFUL citizens. Do you say to them, “look, I broke the law and even though I am a felon its really OK because I did it all for you”
Isn’t that kinda like saying, “Look son, I know robbing the liquor store was against the law but I did it all for you and yhour mom”
Oh yea, I forgot, you said you were defying an unjust law. So that makes it OK, right?
Teachers make me want to “puke”
Horny Toad
Maybe we should ask Buzz, with the layoffs coming in the auto sector if it would not be more beneficial to reduce the GST, making vehicles more affordable, creating more work, more sales, more jobs�������
But we all know it isn�t really the workers buzz is concerned about, other than leetching his livelihood from the union dues so he can run around spend their money preaching the virtues of sodomy.
Truly Union business……….isn’t it?
What are Union members getting for their money, other than a dingbat taking their money and using it to pollute society and their kids with his kind of disgusting imorallity.
I suppose Buzz thinks its okay to take taxpayers money for adscam too?
I’m an Albertan teacher.
I think there was a place in the past for unions to create fair work conditions. I also want to believe that there’s a place for unions today, but most of what I see from the various unions, including my own, has drifted so far from legitimate grievances, that I’d rather not have a union right now. In Alberta, every teacher pays a little over $1000 per year for our association, to do what?
You’re right that a LOT of unions use their dues to promote political causes that they have no business addressing. Why, for instance, is my provincial association pro-abortion? Why do they have anything to say about the issue at all? As individual contributors to our society, teachers can do just as well as anyone else to debate the many issues that come up. We don’t need an association declaring a mandate to push for things outside the area of education.
“No employer can afford to exploit his workers in a free market”
No wonder you’ll scare the shit out of people. That era died a long time ago. Employers could not afford a free labour market and they all made sure they all kept wages down and conditions cheap. There’s no profit in treating workers well. Without minimum wage laws – it wouldn’t be 8 bucks an hour, it’d be 3.
Steve:
You really learn how a free market works.
Use some logic and think it through. It is not in the interest of the Union to have low unemployment in the labour market. It begins to make them irrelevent. Low unemployment creates competion for labour. Competition for labour increases wages.
Justzumgui put into words what I have been trying
to figure out how to say for months. His analysis is dead on. Read what he has to say and take it to heart those are the facts and they are undisputed.
This report shows all Canadians that at transformative election is upon us.
Compare/contrast Harper/Layton/Martin in re their attitudes to their personal choices for the health care of their family members and themselves.>>>
Harper is a great leader; Harper loves his family; Harper loves Canada. Harper is our next Prime Minister; Harper is now our Prime Minister.>>>
Harper, Layton raise other issues
VANCOUVER (CP) – It’s enough to give a political party leader a headache.
Stephen Harper wanted to talk about the Conservative party platform on crime and punishment Saturday.
Jack Layton said his NDP would take a hard line to end the long-running and costly softwood lumber trade dispute with the United States.
Both leaders were campaigning in British Columbia and focusing on issues that are high on many agendas there.
But the debate somehow turned back toward health care – the magnetic North of almost every federal election campaign.
A radio show host asked Harper if a loved one was in pain and the public health system was backed up, would he turn instead to privately funded care.
“I’ll just say that as a father and husband, you will do whatever you need to do to take care of your family,” Harper said.
Asked again if he would seek private health care, he added: “If that’s what I had to do.”
For Layton, it was far more than a hypothetical question.
The NDP leader said he’s faced such crucial issues with close family members several times, and has always stayed in the public system.
“I can understand the choices people are having to make here,” Layton said in Burnaby, B.C.
“My dad had Parkinson’s, my wife (Olivia Chow) was diagnosed with cancer, I ended up in the emergency ward with appendix (problems). These are real human decisions.
“Olivia and I have talked a lot about this. We would not support the idea, personally, of buying our way to the front of a line.”
Chow had surgery to remove her thyroid gland a year ago after being diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She underwent radioactive iodine treatment in February to eradicate remaining cancer cells.
Prime Minister Paul Martin wasn’t campaigning Saturday.
But in his weekly radio broadcast recorded for Sunday, Martin said his minority Liberal government has tried to reduce hospital wait times for Canadians.
“We’re investing $41 billion over 10 years to keep our public system strong,” Martin said in a transcript of his broadcast released by the Liberal party. via cnews
Sheila Copps
Sun, December 4, 2005
The ‘Get Sheila Tax’
By SHEILA COPPS
OTTAWA — If I had to rewrite history, the one chapter of my time in politics I would like to erase is the sorry story of the GST.
…
Now, in one clever move, Harper has managed to hammer home the image of Liberals as promise-breakers and dangle a tax break in front of Canadians that even Finance Minister Ralph Goodale characterizes as sexy. Even Harper knows that sex sells. >>> more
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Copps_Sheila/2005/12/04/1336345.html
>>>>
Bookmark this. It’s toast/finis for AdScam Martin & the Librano$$$
Hey Buzz, take a look at this
http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=3798
See Douglas Fisher’s column today, a nice demolition of CBC, CTV and the Globe:
http://ottsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Fisher_Douglas/2005/12/03/1336192.html
Mark
Ottawa
There’s no profit in treating workers well.
You seem to be pro-worker, yet the only possible interpretation of this statement is that you think that workers are such stupid slugs that they will work just as productively for crap wages as they will for high wages.
Here is an eye-opening story of how a free market benefits workers and employers in the absence of unions. Looking at the headlines this week, I would say that the non-unionized, free-market version of Ford Motor Co. was plainly superior to the unionized, government-regulated version.
keith,
Sorry, but i didn’t work all that hard in high school. Thankfully, I’m smarter than my teachers and was the top athlete and the top student in my hs. I mopped the floor with teachers in debates, was recruited to be involved with all sorts of intellectual and athletic representation for the school, created and coached teams, lead service clubs, ran student government, etc.
But i’m sure you’re much more knowledgeable and capable than I am. I know how much harder an arts program followed by teacher’s college is than waterloo engineering followed by an mba.
I’ll denigrate teachers because they are useless, pretentious twits who believe themselves to be intellectuals yet couldn’t manage to get a grad degree in English or pass the LSAT. Call me when you get a real job, or, alternately, when you start a private school that actually teaches rather than simply warehousing kids for 6 hours a day.
Yours in loathing,
hey
Justzumgai…how very Walmart or Pinochet of you:
Citing the Nazi funder Ford or a hack at Mises isn’t dead-on analysis.
The free market will never look after the sewers, health care, safe water or the living conditions we all expect…no profit. Everyone as entrepreneur leads to only part time work as long as your useful and everyone lives in a swamp. Just don’t get old or sick and unprofitable.
I am not a CAW member but i notice Hargrove sounds like a Librano….maybe he want`s to be part of the “FAMILY”….you know Brown Envelopes,Entitlements and stealing taxpayers money!! More reason to vote Liberal…NOT!
Steve,
How very socialist of you.
The free market looks after all of it. Except maybe in Socialist havens like North Korea and Cuban. Or did you forget that all employees are working for wages to benefit themselves? Employees are in it for the profit. Just smaller scale than a corporation.
And the evil Wal-mart corp. Largest retailer in the world because people are forced to shop there. Forced to work there. Forced to be non-union. That last bit is what drives the lefties nuts.
Unemployment is low in BC and Alberta. Full time jobs are up. That’s the free market pal.
enough
If the CAW aren’t a bunch of imbeciles needing to be led, then starting acting independent. You a**holes are regularly supporting the NDP en masse because your union leadership tells you how they are the only “friends” of organized labour.
The only “friend” of organized labour is the party that can ramp up the economy, so you and the rest of your jerk brothers can keep your jobs.
That definitely isn’t the NDP. You want to see hell in a handbasket when it comes to the economy, there’s your choice.
The CAW deserves turncoats like Hargrove and Georgetti. With friends like those, you might as well move to Malasyia, because that will be the only place in the world in the next 20 years that will be making cars for the big three.
Anybody see former BC-NDPer Joy McPhail on Question Period today? Brian Tobin tried to jump all over this, but Joy, a staunch lefty, smirked at him and said it wasn’t such good news after all, because if he had been there, and the media had shown what REALLY happened, he would have seen that Martin was greeted with only lukewarm applause and NO applause when he left the room. She said the day of union leaders telling members how to vote is long gone, and these peoploe have issues like everybody else and will vote for the party that suits them. Smile gone from Tobin’s face, but John Reynolds was beaming. The NDP, even with their admitted differences, are being very nice to the Tories, giving credit where due, etc. I think Layton realized that philosophy aside, he could easily work with Harper if the Tories won a minority.
I think that Question Period is rerun on the CTV newsnet at 5 or 8 p.m. EST. You can always mute Gidget. She’s starting to sound a lot like a tittering Anne McLellan.
On teacher bashing,
What is wrong with people that they have to see things in absolutes. I am a teacher, and I know mnay in my profession who do it an injustice, but I know just as many who give up their souls to help children that no one else (parents included) have taken the time to teach about life.
I’m not sure what Hey does, nor does it really matter, he has made a success of himself, but for some reason he seems to think it is in spite of those who taught him, not because of the collection of skills that they helped him to develop.
Each occupation has its challenges, and we could easily denigrate an entire group by the actions of a few, but isn’t it more appropriate to raise the level of debate to what can we do to improve the system, as opposed to looking at whose fault it is that there are problems?
Just a point, we legislate the number of children allowed in a day care, but we don’t in the classroom. what does that say about societies priorities?
I agree. For public schools, K-12, we should probably set the limit at about 35 per class, 30 where practicable. But what does this have to do with the G&M and born-again Christians?
I’m sorry, please ignore that last comment, I had a phase synchronization error.
The free market will never look after the sewers, health care, safe water or the living conditions we all expect…no profit.
What is it about free markets, capitalizm and profit that offends you. Without free markets you have an environmentally disasterous soviet landscape.
With profit, companies pay taxes and have the economic means to solve problems. At the same time we consumers can, through the levers of purchasing decisions and often do, influence companies in their practices.
Statism vs. capitalism. It’s a no brainer.
30 kids per class… hmmm lets do the numbers here, that means that the average class time per subject is approximately 1 hour ( more in high school less in elementary) so that means each student gets 2min of instructional time/assistance, assuming that not a moment is lost to things like, opening books, settling down.
A class maximum of 20 is more appropriate
The reason why I don’t understand that class size level, Actor, is that I (and I suspect many readers) went to schools with class sizes of 30 to 35, and we seemed to turn out ok. Nobody has yet explained to me what has changed since then.
There are a few differences. I speak from an elementary school background, where many of the students who would have been in segregated programs have now been integtated into the regular classrooms but without the supports required.
Also if you compare curriculums, the scope and sequence of what now must be taught is considerably greater than it was years ago.
Where you may be able to have 30+ kids in a high school setting, having that many students in an elementary setting, with all of the extra expectations is almost unmanageable.
Then why not decrease the integration and cut the fluff from the curriculum, instead of bankrupting public education?