Wild Bill

Nice rant against globalization and corporations but as usual, you ignored my main point! The main problem in Niagara is that government has effectively seized control of private farmland to please urban voters who don't understand the situation. When a factory closes they can sell the land to someone else, mitigating their losses. Farmers in Niagara CAN'T! So their equity is wiped out. They cannot adapt or use their land for capital to pursue another line of work. Actions like this are what have created the urban/rural voting split, which I thought was what we were actually talking about! The reasons WHY fruit farming has become unprofitable in the Niagara area is a different coloured horse entirely!

Chickens are not peaches, in case you haven't noticed! Every type of farming has had to adapt to changing times. These adaptions have NOT meant that we need as much orchard land for fruit as we used to! So what has happened to the excess? It lies fallow. Nobody will buy it. It's essentially worthless and the farmers that own it have no equity, since it can only be sold for continued profitless farming. Organic marketing can only do so much. The problem with Niagara fruit is that the last cannery closed! There is literally no where to sell the fruit except at fruit stands along the road. If you look in your supermarket at any can of peaches it will no longer ever say "Product of Canada". Far more cans of fruit and jars of jams are sold than baskets along the roadsides. I'm not saying that this is in itself unfair. The world changes and many other industries have had to change with it. There are far fewer manufacturing jobs. How big are the secretarial pools these days? However, what's happened to the fruit farmers is an artificial condition, intended to buy urban votes from citizens who have no idea of how things are in the REAL world! If a manufacturing company closes a plant, they can sell the land for some other use. Niagara fruit farmers are legally barred from doing the same! Today on the Bill Kelly CHML talk show I heard one of his guests make the same old WRONG point about protecting the "precious Niagara fruit belt, unique in Ontario". That fruit belt is long gone! We used to have a thing in the spring called "Blossom Sunday" where you could travel the QEW to Niagara and see acres and acres of fruit tree blossoms along the sides of the highway. The blossoms have been gone for some years. We only need a fraction of the fruit trees of old to supply the road side market, organic or not! The rest of the acreage lies fallow. Many farmers were caught by the Niagara Escarpment Commission laws and did not sell their land in time. Now they are stuck with it and still paying taxes on it. So the folks in the big cities are so smug and proud of themselves for "saving" a fruit belt that no longer exists by screwing the farmers they purport to revere! This is sheer politics at its most extreme! Perhaps the saddest facet of this situation is that traditionally farmers have had only one way of providing for their retirement and that was to sell part or all of the farm. They are essentially self-employed businessmen and have no company pension. All they have is the equity of their farm and when the land cannot be sold yet cannot be profitably farmed they are truly and absolutely screwed! So bully for your neighbouring farmers with their chickens! I'm happy for them! However, it is not a good parallel. Instead of comparing the proverbial apples and oranges you're putting peaches with chickens!

I dunno, Jack. Looks to me like the rural/urban split is simply there by itself! I think it exists because governments follow the numbers. They kowtow to urban voters 'cuz that's where the votes are! If there is a conflict from an urban issue hurting rural folks, politicians screw the rural vote without a second's thought! It's not just that politicians follow the votes. They also know that even if urban voters become aware that an issue would hurt country folks they just don't care! I would think that living in Beamsville as you do you would have been well aware that this is the way things work! Look at how the Niagara Escarpment Commission and whichever party is in Queens Park always pass laws to "protect the Greenland". They say they are preserving farmland by making it illegal to sell a farm for any purpose other than to continue farming. They have to know that nobody can make a living anymore farming in that area! The last cannery has closed up! Farmers let orchards die off and fields lie fallow because it costs more to keep them up than the money from any crop. Farmers essentially are screwed twice! First by not being able to make a living and second by not being able to sell off the equity in their land to go do something else! Still, it sure sells well in Toronto! Those urban voters can feel all warm and fuzzy thinking they're preserving greenspace and "saving the Planet"! With laws like these, no wonder there's a rural/urban divide!

Keep up the good work, Waldo! As long as folks like you keep insulting westerners the longer it will be before the Liberals have any chance at all of gaining any support. Are you sure you're not secretly working for Harper's boys, like the Florida drug lords who bribe politicians to keep drugs illegal, thus ensuring their skyhigh profit margins? Admit it! You're more than smart enough to know that a suave, urbane, highly educated city guy like you insulting a prairie person will guarantee Tory votes!

This is exactly why you can be a frustrating fellow to debate, Eyeball. When confronted with some facts or argument for which you don't have an answer, you don't even bother to try! Instead, you use hyperbole to veer off into some exaggerated or even silly area! You never seem to actually defend what you say! Why not give REASONS why you believe what you say you do?

Who cares? There's not enough energy on the entire Earth to make a black hole bigger than a grain of sand! You have to be a real techno-rube to think that the Collider can create something like a Black Hole big enough to be dangerous, which would require a mass a zillion times greater than that of the entire Earth! Most people stopped taking even basic science after their beans in that jar of tissue paper for their grade 5 science project sprouted up a few inches and died...

Quite right, Keeps! What no one has mentioned so far is that the Liberals historically have faced charges of such elitism! It's a common thing for some Liberal party member to make such a comment. Remember when Hedy Fry dissed an entire west coast town by claiming it was over-run with cross burnings? I read the Sun religiously from its first day of publication up until about 1990. That was when they lost some key columnists that I admired to the newly launched National Post. Also, they bowed to politically correct pressure and moved the SunShine Girl to a smaller position at the back of the paper, putting slimmer models in more modest attire. It wasn't so much the change in the paper's philosophy by caving to the Priscilla Goodbody demographic that then made me switch papers. It was just that the Sun by then had become boring to me!

I like to think that I never lost the light! I have been a Conservative supporter only because the present crop of Liberals seem so inept. I have voted Liberal before in my life and it's possible I will again some day. Juat not likely for Ignatieff. As for your link, I just can't take anything seriously from the Star! I swear, they would champion Charles Manson if he was a Liberal. What's more, if a Conservative discovered a cure for cancer the Star would report it as an attack on doctors' jobs! The Star makes the Toronto Sun look like Awake or WatchTower magazine!

I don't really follow things that closely in foreign countries like the USA. I admit that I'm not that familiar with the AMERICAN Right! Still, it's not clear to me if the bias is against science in toto or just most scientific institutions. This seems an important distinction. Naturally, the Global Warming folks would like to paint it as an aversion to ALL science! That would make it another ad hominem tactic. People who disagree with their "scientific" pronouncements must be ignoramuses, according to their arguments. The reality may be quite different. The American Right may have simply lost faith with many official scientific organizations. They may consider them corrupted by politics. Certainly the wealth redistribution dominance of the Kyoto Accord and things like ClimateGate have damaged the credibility of organizations like the IPCC. There was a time when the American public (I guess we Canadians too) accepted any utterance from a scientific organization as gospel. That is no longer true. However, this is NOT the same as being anti-science! It is being against scientific organizations that have damaged credibility! The sad thing is that most laymen can't tell the difference. This will indeed cause problems with public support and government funding. We could then argue about who is at fault. Did arrogant groups like the IPCC make this inevitable?

Sorry Sir B. but that just doesn't jive with today's reality. They wanted to stop the Qu'ran burning because they were afraid that fundamentalist Islamists would immediately start rioting and harming people. After all, that's EXACTLY what happened in Denmark! They even killed a few nuns! It's all part of the protest against people accusing Islam of being violent.

AW, there are two truisms in the world media. First, America is always wrong. The second is that Muslims can act in a primitive and barbaric manner yet never be accused as such. That's just the way it is today.

Ah, I see the logic! Two wrongs make a right! What's more, since one wrong is so much greater than the other the tiny wrong has the right to do anything! Do I understand your reasoning correctly? Or did you mean something different from what you said?

Maybe so, GH. Still, when someone says 'moderate Islam' they are also implying that violent Islamists are only a small percentage. This is very much a moot point when the sheer size of some riots and violent Islamic reactions across the entire world shows that 'small percentage' is actually millions of people! For every suicide bomber there seems to be a hundred willing to actively support him and hundreds of thousands who at least approve! Yes, not all Muslims are primitive fundamentalists, by any means. That being said, you can't solve a violence problem by pretending that only a tiny minority needs to be feared...

Ah GH, you might be pulling an "Emily Litella" here. Did you think that there never were any safety courses? From what I remember when hunting with friends years ago, long before the Liberal gun registry, in order to buy a rifle you had to first get a Fire Arms Certificate, or FAC. In order to get that certificate, a safety course was MANDATORY! Of course, as some posters have explicitly explained to us, folks back then were notoriously uneducated so I guess it doesn't matter anyway. Obviously, quality education didn't begin until they were born...

While it is wrong to deliberately antagonize someone or an entire religion we should also condemn over-reactions! Has anyone yet pointed out the sad irony in how so many Muslims will commit violence as a reaction to those who accuse them of practicing a violent faith? It is not some gospel book that deserves respect. It is the words inside! A book is merely paper and ink. Likewise, a flag is just a symbol. Burning it may be a sign of disrespect but the symbol is NOT the thing! It is greater than mere cloth and big enough to turn the other cheek at an attempted slur or insult. Myself, I would never burn a Qu'ran or spit on a Bible, even though I am a 'devout agnostic'. That being said, I can't help but judge those Muslims who over-react with violence to be...primitive! This pastor may be guilty of provoking a Muslim 'kickback' but it sure seems that for many members of the Islamic faith they will find an excuse to react excessively anyway, if not over this action then over something else. We can't ignore that there are entire countries that will officially stone a woman to death on trumped up charges. If the more violent members of the Islamic faith were to change their tactics and simply say to such provocations "Who CARES what an infidel thinks? Allah is too great to care about petty attempts at insult!" then pastors like this idiot in America would find very quickly that no one would pay them any media attention at all. This is not being critical at all of their religion. A faith is of a much higher level than the actions of a few members. I am being critical of THESE SPECIFIC HUMAN BEINGS for their violent over-reactions, just as I would for members of any other faith who acted in a similar manner!

And I find it funny that you could support a party that has stolen money from us and keeps putting ridiculously expensive programs in place that never actually seem to work but rather are just a vote grab! I watched the Liberal party do such things for several decades. If they ever show signs of changing their ways and becoming a bit more classic Liberal "laissez-faire" I might vote for them again. However, Ignatieff and his present crew just don't impress me as a good choice for the next election. I miss the Rhinos!

I would expect you to think that conservatism is "mostly a rural philosophy". The superiority of the urban thinker is implied. As for brokerage politics, the fact that Harper is just as bad as the Liberals doesn't excuse anything. It simply means they BOTH commit the sin! You cannot excuse a bad action by pointing out that someone else does it to! I guess I'm referring to the difference between politics and statesmanship. One is for the good of the party. The other is for the good of the country.

As I said, today's idea of conservatism is NOT the classic one! It is an Americanized version confused with fundamentalist Christianity and deliberately portrayed as a philosophy of rural hicks as an ad hominem tactic of the liberal media. It is a caricature limned by an adolescent juvenile and bears no relation to reality. For that matter, modern Liberalism has the same lack of connection to its classical roots. It is simply a mechanism of brokerage politics, buying votes in order to acquire or stay in power. It seems to have little or no underlying philosophy or values in practice, although it always proclaims such to the heavens when challenged! If it walks like a duck... Actions speak louder...

Then you have a bit of something just as valuable as education, Mr. P! You have some perspective! Even perhaps, wisdom! This will stand you in good stead all your life. You are one of the few Canadians who doesn't automatically believe someone with extra degree initials on his name tag or who wears a white lab coat.

It is deceptive, Mr. P! Not all Liberals are that arrogant but it does seem like that view is more popular in that circle. What they're really saying is FORMAL education! The premise is that education only comes from schools and is only true and useful if there is an accredited diploma involved. This is a relatively recent idea. Older generations took it for granted that you never stopped learning! Most labour jobs required only a grade school education and office jobs perhaps a few years of high school. Universities were for teachers, scientists, engineers and the like. Over the decades I saw three factors that perhaps contributed greatly to today's situation. First off, we had some high unemployment periods during the 80's. I still recall my boss putting an ad in the paper for a new hire to the order desk. He got a stack of resumes 3 feet high. He told his secretary to change the ad to require at least two years of post secondary education. The next pile of resumes was much smaller and it was an easier job to peruse them. It didn't make any difference to what really was needed for the job. It just made HIS job easier for a new hire! Second, schools started really selling the idea that industry and business should support post secondary schooling because the schools would be providing them with a "pre-trained" employee, reducing a firm's training costs. Also, if you needed an electronics technician to keep your factory motors running you could assume that the higher marks he had received the better a technician he would likely be. Third, hiring became almost exclusively the province of the Human Resources Dept. Formerly, HR (or Personnel as it used to be called), filed the paperwork. Now they did the interviews. The Department Manager rarely did interviews anymore. An HR person (who had no experience at all with the job in question!) would conduct interviews and fill out forms. Instead of a personal conversation with someone knowledgeable to assess an applicants skills and aptitudes we now have take the academic credentials as gospel instead. Not surprisingly, now we often hear grumbles and complaints from Department managers asking "What kind of idiots do they keep sending me??" To get back to your original query, many Liberals have thrived under this new scenario. They've gotten good jobs due to academic qualifications. Many are teachers themselves. Since their perspective is so narrow, they tend to get arrogant sometimes and believe that ONLY those who followed their path can be educated! Me, I tend to judge a person's education not merely by his schooling but also by the size and type of library he keeps at home! A truly educated person would have achieved such by having a passion for his field. He would have kept buying and reading relevant books long after his school days were over. Even more impressive is when the titles show he's kept up some breadth to his education, with books from different subject areas on his shelf. Anyhow, you get the idea. Perhaps this would warrant its own thread.

There are immigrants and there are immigrants. Also, times change. You can't just fling out such a statement without qualifying it. Someone might think it was...anecdotal! Immigrants in "olden days" often took jobs as labourers and tradesman. Yes, indeed they DID build much of this country! Is it the same today? Apparently up to 3/4 of our immigrants are here under family reunification. How many grandmothers does it take to build a house? Have you stopped to watch a construction site lately? How many workers look like they came from East Asian countries like India or Pakistan? Perhaps you can explain to us how your comparison is still valid today.

Ever watch Coronation Street, Molly? The British soap opera? They used to have a character years ago named Percy Sugden. Percy was a "lollypop man", that is he was a school crossing guard with a big red "lollypop style" stop sign. He was also the one who stuck his nose into everyone else's business in the neighbourhood, convinced he and he alone knew "the way things OUGHT to be!". He would continually be writing Letters to the Editor and driving the local ward councilors crazy with nitpicking complaints. Percy-type people really only care about being recognized. They like to think of themselves as influential and become furious if ignored. They like to tout themselves as champions for all but somehow it always seems to be about them and their needs. Percy would write a letter if he thought his own pension was in danger but would not likely get excited about someone else having the same problem. He would more likely tend to think that person actually had done something wrong and didn't deserve his pension, unlike Percy, of course! Percy-types also lOVE laws! Also rules, guidelines, bylaws and anything else they can use to tell their neighbour what to do. If they belong to an organization, they will be the ones insisting on a procedure for everything, until things become so rule-bound you can't get anything done! So we can define special interest groups as people like Percy. They only really care about what specifically affects themselves but they also want to be the ones to tell everyone else what to do! They tend to be anal-retentive and often exhibit Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. They rarely have any sense of perspective about their goals, being unable to see if sometimes giving them what they want will cause problems in other areas for other people. Gee, I guess it might appear as if I don't approve of them!

Their numbers are as bad because both parties have problems with the public perception of their leadership! The average voter doesn't base his vote on the basis of a political philosophical analysis of party platforms. It's a little bit of the party planks and a LOT of personal estimation of the character and ability of a party leader and his team! Harper always polls much higher numbers on his competency but low on personal attractiveness. Ignatieff doesn't seem to have a negative personal image but not much of a positive one either. Neither leader has fostered much of an image for his team. As I posted elsewhere and earlier - they're boring! Why SHOULD either party be enjoying high numbers in the polls? Right now people aren't impressed with either choice, so support is lukewarm. When the writ is dropped, they will have to make a decision but it won't be an inspired one. It will be more along the lines of "I have to vote for one of these nimrods so I guess I'll go with THIS one!". I'm betting Harper will get more of a bounce at that time than Ignatieff. As I said, neither leader is charismatic or inspiring. So people will likely go for competent, which means Harper. They will be as thrilled about voting for him as they would be about choosing an accountant to do their taxes but for lack of any other reason they will choose him! I'm already prepared to sleep through this next election. Unless something exciting comes out of left field it's gonna be a snorer!

Edmund Burke? Disraeli? William F Buckley? A google will give you quite a list but you have to specify 'classical conservatives'. Today, popular usage has Americanized the term conservative and it means something very different. You'll get Sarah Palin, hardly an intellectual! There will also be confusion with religious groups. Some of this re-definition is journalistic confusion. Some of it is a deliberate propaganda technique, in order to make conservatism appear less of an intellectual philosophy and more of a "hick" lifestyle. Actually, true intellectualism seems on the decline with both Liberals AND Conservatives! Too much ad hominem name calling and not as much logic and reason. But the reasons for that would be another thread entirely!

Logical fallacy, Sir B! Nobody's talking about when a system works. They're talking about when it fails. The question becomes is the number of failures significant and is it an indication that the system needs positive changes or maintenance. The equivalent of the "my brother got fast care" argument is the "my Toyota never locked its gas pedal"! After all, most Toyotas have always worked fine! The sticking accelerator problem was only for a small percentage of cars. However, considering how many Toyotas have been sold that small percentage represents a large real number. How many visits to a Canadian hospital ER are there every day? If YOU happened to experience one of the "bad ones" how would you feel if someone told you "I was alright, Jack! Your experience must have been a fluke! Maybe you imagined it! Your pain must have been anecdotal!"? Meanwhile, politicians and hospital managers everywhere breathe a sigh of relief and say "Dodged another one! No need to fix anything!".