OfficiallyScrewed

Potholes need the touch of a child

Mulder

I used to fish a lot. But through all my fishing excursions, I never, EVER, touched a catfish. Call me squeamish, but those guys have nasty whiskers and are bottom feeders. I won’t eat them, touch them, and heck, I would rather not even think about them. It’s just one of those things. So, whenever I caught one I would just cut line and let it go. This had me wondering things like what happens when the fish tries to eat? Would the hook rust? Would other fish look at mine and laugh? Or is that hook sticking out of his lip going to set a trend followed by the youth of today?

Well a young boy was wondering the same thing and asked his dad the same questions…..sort of. The father and son were so touched by this thought that they worked and developed a dissolving fish hook. And now we have law mandating this.

Well today I was reading about the Pothole problem that has afflicted Ottawa, most likely due to the January thaw we have had, and I got hit with deja vu. This has tricked our asphalt into thinking spring has sprung early. Let’s hope Wiarton Willy is tricked as easily.

The city is filling as many of the nasty road holes as possible.

“We have 20 crews out day and night,” said John Manconi, the city’s acting director of surface operations. They’re also contracting out the job to keep up with the number of potholes.

Manconi blames the early arrival of potholes on the extreme variation in temperatures.

The reason I bring this up is because I saw a show years ago with a young lady named Gina Gallant, who started a science project to use plastic we put in landfills in our asphalt, instead of burying it all. As it turns out, her roads are outlasting even the best road scientists approach.

Gina’s new paving material is called “PolyAggreRoad,” or “PAR.” After much experimentation, it was determined that an optimal mix consists of 6% plastic, 6% asphalt, and 88% aggregate (crushed rocks).

Engineers expect that PAR will be able to withstand more movement than regular road surfaces without cracking. Pavement should last longer and require less maintenance since there will be less opportunity for destructive freeze-thaw cycles that occur when water gets into cracks.

Gina approached Prince George Mayor Colin Kinsley with a plan to use her system to pave local roads. The Mayor was impressed. The project moved forward.

You can read all about Gina here.

Stories like Gina’s give me great hope for our future.

In a weird twist the research that had me talking to officials at one of the biggest construction companies in Eastern Ontario, and three or four people at the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, led me to the location of the MTO test road (500M stretches of various aggregate mixes) which is nearby in Petawawa. I think I may be taking a short drive in the near future to take a peek and some photos. (It’s near the military base so I hope I am not arrested or anything snapping shots of the salty highway.)

Stay tuned

$10,000 Study Calls For More Study – How Screwed Can You Get?

Mulder

Susan Sherring’s article in the Ottawa Sun today tells us about a consultant’s report on the delivery of French language recreational and leisure services. The report’s content?

Services are not meeting the needs of the francophone community. So what is the result?

Let’s start with setting up a task force, establishing a “work unit” responsible for planning recreational and leisure services in French, developing a five-year operational plan for the delivery of recreational and leisure programs responding to the needs of the francophone population, and for the city to “analyze all services offered by the parks and recreation branch.”

Bureaucratic blabber — and it cost taxpayers $10,000.

A task force made up of representatives from the city and interested parties in the community?

Isn’t that what the French Language Services Advisory Committee is for? This seems like nothing more than throwing good money after bad

What’s that? The French Language Services Advisory Committee? What’s this? Well the City Of Ottawa website says the following:

Mandate

The mandate of the French Language Services Advisory Committee is to provide advice to Ottawa City Council and its Departments, on issues that impact official languages in the City.

Responsibilities

The French Language Services Advisory Committee shall be responsible for:

* Providing a forum for citizens to raise issues and concerns;
* Providing advice and guidance to Ottawa City Council, through the Corporate Services and Economic Development Committee, on matters pertaining to policies, programs and practices involving the use of official languages and services in the City;
* Reviewing the policies and procedures governing the use of the French language in City of Ottawa material and dissemination of such information to residents;
* Advising on appropriate policies and procedures on services provided in French;
* Reviewing and commenting on policies such as language training, or translation.
* Evaluating the provision of services in English and in French in the City and report as necessary through the Corporate Services and Economic Development Committee to Council.

(emphasis added by me)

So we already have an advisory committee tasked to do exactly what we just paid $10,000 for. We also have an advisory committee that should be doing what this task force is going to do, which would cost us nothing.

At least one councillor is on board with me here.

Rideau-Vanier Coun. Georges Bedard dismissed the report, suggesting it doesn’t advance the issue at all and does nothing to deal with the heart of the issue.

“It’s very disappointing, it doesn’t give us any practical solutions to the problem. In actuality, they should be making some firm recommendations. It has basic motherhood statements, like we should be respecting bilingualism,” Bedard said.

The report suggests the rate of registration by Francophones in programs offered in French “is disappointing, leading even the city to wonder if Francophones are interested in these activities.

I have a big suggestion. Quit cutting services, and start cutting consulting fees. Take the savings, and as a council, investigate one service or item at a time, and fix it. Then move on to the next item. How’s that for some common sense.

Our city council starts up the hot water and soap for the dishes, then runs off to clean the bathroom (no reference intended) and by the time they come back to the dishes, the water is tepid and suds are gone.

When you leave people like these consultants unattended, you get what you pay for. In this case nothing. This is not the fault of the consultant. It is the fault of a city council not vigilant enough with our tax dollars.

Flight Attendant's Fight For Wage Parity With Pilots Gets Supreme Court's Attention

Mulder

This news article has to be the most ridiculous, OfficiallyScrewed thing that the Supreme Court of Canada has ever gotten involved in….. aside from Flipowich’s battle of the cow. The CBC is now reporting that the Supreme Court of Canada has opened the door for the Human Rights Commission to investigate if flight attendants, mechanics and pilots deserve the same pay.

Canada’s top court has given the country’s human rights commission the go-ahead to investigate whether flight attendants should be paid the same as pilots and airline mechanics.

The case involving Air Canada employees dates back 15 years.

Are we kidding here? This has been on the agenda for 15 years and no one told these people the three jobs have different criteria, different levels of education, and different supply curves creating for variance in the salaries?

The commission had never analyzed pay rates because the dispute got hung up on the legal question of whether flight attendants, who are mostly women, and pilots and mechanics, who are mostly men, worked in the same “establishment.”

And I suppose we should begin paying orderlies who clean up the bloody mess in operating rooms the same as the surgeon doing the cutting? Or how about paying the court recorders the same as the judges? Get stuffed.

Air Canada held that the three groups should be treated separately in legal terms because they worked in different establishments. The human rights commission agreed, but two court cases followed, which delivered split decisions.

Air Canada appealed to the top court and lost. Now, the Supreme Court has ruled that the three groups do work in the same establishment.

With that preliminary question resolved, Section 11 of the Canadian Human Rights Act comes into play.

The section says it is discriminatory for an employer to pay different wages to male and female employees in the same “establishment” who are performing work of equal value.

Aye, there’s the rub. You can’t equate the work. Any way you slice it, the duties of both have similar aspects, as all jobs do. But the precision required, and knowledge and training, are quite different.

Does a flight attendant not take the safety of passengers into their own hands? They MIGHT in an emergency situation. But a pilot takes passenger’s safety into his/her hands the whole flight. It’s like comparing apples to oranges.

H/T to Black Sheep Press for this one.

GiGi's $7,750 Stay At Chateau Laurier On Taxpayers Tab

Mulder

The Ottawa Citizen is reporting PM Paul Martin putting up the Governor General Michaëlle Jean, and some extended family, at the famous Chateau Laurier hotel for two nights. The total cost in room, food, wine, etc?

Over $7,750 for two nights.

Reprinted in it’s entirety:


Jean’s tab for two-day hotel stay hit $7,750
Governor General spent $1,500 on food, $380 on wine

Jack Aubry, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean’s secret two-night stay at the Chateau Laurier in August 2005, just before Prime Minister Paul Martin announced her surprise appointment, cost taxpayers $7,750, documents obtained through the Access to Information Act reveal.

Determined to keep Ms. Jean, her husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond and daughter, Marie-Eden, out of sight of regular patrons at the hotel, officials at the Privy Council Office put them up in one of the Chateau’s swanky presidential suites, at a cost of $1,800 a night, while staging day-long briefing sessions in nearby rooms on the eve of the Aug. 4 announcement by Mr. Martin.

The hotel bills indicate three rooms were booked for nine people, including the large suite for Ms. Jean, her husband and daughter, as well as rooms for Mr. Lafond’s two adult daughters, from his first marriage, along with their husbands and children.

Ms. Jean and her immediate family also rang up $1,533 in meals while eating in the dining room of the presidential suite, along with about $388 worth of wine. The hotel bill indicates that the dinner on the eve of the announcement totalled $841, including a single charge of $172 for wine, along with a second one for $84.

The hospitality claim filled out later on Aug. 22 for six adults, calculated that the cost per adult was approximately $1,300, with a final tally of $7,757.65 for meals, accommodation and flowers.

The documents were obtained by researcher Ken Rubin.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2006

Unbelievable….. simply unbelievable

New Zealand Doc Turns Pimp: And You Thought We Had Problems!

Mulder

I just heard Michael Harris of CFRA mention this, and quickly found an article in the New Zealand Herald about the story.

A doctor, who was getting flack from an organization about leaving his medical clinics open after hours, has decided to turn them all into brothels.

A disgruntled doctor plans to open the first licensed brothel in the Far North.

Neil Benson aims to base his new venture in his former medical centre at Coopers Beach.

In the switch from medical practice to the world’s oldest profession, it will be called Whalers.

All this because he wasn’t allowed to stay open later to be profitable. Not that I condone the prostitution, but I do think the guy has a right to earn a living and not lose money. Read on…

A person in the sex industry had looked at renting the unused medical centre and said it would be a perfect brothel.

‘I thought, why don’t we run it ourselves? It would be a viable business and I was unemployed.”

While he had never considered working in the sex industry, Dr Benson sees similarities between the world’s oldest profession and medicine.

“It’s about providing a private service and maintaining confidentiality, which is what my medical practice was about – so it’s not a big leap, really.

“Everything I have ever done is high quality. The standards of my medical practice were high and that will cross over to the brothel environment.”

Dr Benson said the service would cater for the “top end” of the market.

“It will be officially registered as a brothel and it will meet public health criteria,” he said.

“It will employ beautiful women who are highly paid in their profession and who know what is expected from them in their line of work.”

Is this what we have to look forward to from our doctors? In some US States, you can go get a private massage from a registered therapist (not the illegal kind), and they provide you with service in private, paid for in cash by the customer. I am not coming straight out and saying we need private clinics, but providing services from a private clinic at the public expense, when monitored will ease our overloaded system.

Not that I think the local “Med-Team” or “Appletree” Clinics will become “Sex-Team” Clinics, but you can’t help but wonder about your own society when people who legitimately want to help the system, and are qualified to do so, are kept from their practice by red tape. It just means more red tape for you and I to get the treatment we want, and according to Quebec Superior Courts, deserve as part of our Charter rights

Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling's Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay Jurors To Be Selected Today

Mulder

Well the big boys are finally starting to get into the swing of a trial. Former CEOs of Enron Jeff Skilling and Kenneth Lay will have the jury selection process begin today for their upcoming fraud trials. Lay is being charged with 7 counts of fraud, and Skilling is being charged with over 30 counts. This is primarily related to the inflation of numbers by the Enron to the investment community.

If you want a good read, Kurt Eichenwald’s Conspiracy Of Fools, is an in depth look at what happened to Enron. It starts a few years before the debaucle, and via interviews with numerous employees and outside workers who dealt with Enron, Eichenwald creates an easy to read, enjoyable book. Considering the content is a business going bankrupt, it is written like a novel.
(Note: if you pick it up via the link above, you will, in a very minute way, help keep this site operational.)

For those who are new to this story, Enron was a large US based conglomerate that started building a mountain out of a deck of cards. They borrowed money on a financial base that was built on assuming profits from 20 years down the road. The year they made this reporting change their profits spiked. With a precedent set on the growth, they had to keep building the cards to meet or beat the earnings expectations.

I paid a little bit of attention through the whole commission which investigated this, and many know that the CFO Andy Fastow, a fast living, smooth talking, salesman with little or no financial experience, is sitting in a jail cell. That raises the stakes for Lay and Skilling. This trial will, definitely, be one I watch the details on.