What is the VQA

Sleeping With The Enemy 21 Comments

Anyone who follows MP Michelle Rempel on Twitter knows that she has an affinity for wine. I share that enjoyment. (and for craft-beer, being an all-grain home-brewer)
You would also have noticed that she has been advocating strongly for the Canadian wine industry in recent weeks. Being unaware of any problems in the Canadian Wine industry, I was curious what the issues were, so I asked her. She pointed me to this Global News report. So, as gathered from that, she’s advocating for strict country of origin laws regarding grapes and grape juice.
This after the US Congress was nice enough to eliminate their Country of Origin labels on Alberta Beef. Nice!
Course anyone who actually cares about wine would immediately ask, isn’t that what VQA Ontario and the BC Wine Authority ensures. The VQA statutes state the VQA label be prominently displayed on the same face as the front label. What’s the problem here?
Well, apparently it is an issue. Instead of telling people what VQA is, we should run to the gov’t and have them lawfully sanction those Canadian businesses looking to just sell wine.
So, Michelle, consider this a public service announcement.
Buy this:
VQA.png
There, now we don’t need more stupid gov’t regulations on successful industries to make up for uninformed and uncaring buyers.

In The Mail

Books 22 Comments

Economics For The Disinterested

“After many years of frustration about the absence of realistic information
about economics for a lay person I decided to research the topic and write a
book for the layman. This book outlines how an economy comes about, what
drives people making transactions and what means are used. It is a simple
explanantion of what goes on around us in the world and how to make sense of
all the activity. The book then goes on to show how the government and
banks, especially the IMF and World Bank, influence and inhibit our
financial freedom and how this interference causes all the problems of
economies around the world. Finally, a section explains a little about how
to best arrange your financial well-being since we have not been taught this
in grade school or any other school later in life.” — Lutz Jacoby

Y2Kyoto: Money For Nothin’

Climate Cult Y2Kyoto 9 Comments

An assessment of the Paris Agreement;

“The Paris Agreement will do little to reduce the rate of warming but will divert trillions of dollars into low-carbon technologies, thereby reducing innovation in other areas, slowing economic growth and hindering adaptation and resiliency,” Julian Morris, vice president of research at Reason Foundation, writes in a new policy brief examining the expected results and effectiveness of the Paris climate deal.
“Innovation and associated economic development will likely be the most effective means by which humans address climate change. But the commitments made under the Paris Agreement would divert trillions of dollars into low-carbon technologies and government-funded schemes for mitigation and adaptation, thereby undermining the bottom-up processes that drive more widespread innovation and, as a result, impeding the ability of people to adapt to climate change and other threats,” Morris says. “Given the potential for the Paris Agreement to result in harmful and even counterproductive restrictions on economic activity, it would appear that ratification is not in the interests of the majority of signatory nations.”

We Don’t Need No…

Alternative Subsidy 12 Comments
Energy Matters;

EU primary energy consumption peaked at 1839 Mtoe in 2006 and since then has fallen by 11.8% to 2014. Many countries display this type of pattern and it is pertinent to ask why decades of energy and economic growth has turned into a decade of energy decline and economic stagnation? There are a number of factors that may explain this but a prime candidate is the energy price inflation that took place in the period 2002 to 2008 that culminated in the finance crash. The earlier spike in oil price back in 1980 produced a similar though more short-lived effect. It is also pertinent to ask to what extent on-going high energy prices are caused by EU energy policy that targets CO2 emissions? Other factors include the ongoing € crisis and unsustainable levels of debt.

Pathological Liars Need Love Too

Uncategorized 12 Comments

Ms Kai Cheng Thom, a “trans woman writer, poet and performance artist based in Montreal,” bemoans the fact that “disorders like violent psychopathy” are “generally considered unlikeable,” possibly hazardous, “even in social circles that consider themselves progressive.” And that, while the public at large may be sympathetic towards people suffering clinical depression, “compassion for psychopaths, pathological liars, or narcissists” is, inexplicably, harder to come by.

It’s so terribly unfair. Something must be done.

It’s Probably Nothing

It's Probably Nothing 6 Comments

Bloomberg;

China will lay off about 1.8 million steel and coal workers as President Xi Jinping drives efforts to cut the country’s industrial overcapacity and reform it’s bloated state-run enterprises.
About 1.3 million workers in the coal industry and 500,000 in steel will be cut, Yin Weimin, human resources and social security minister, said Monday, according to a transcript posted on the government’s website.

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