Wild Bill

I see. If someone disagrees with you they must be a dim witted dullard. Didn't I run in to you on "rubble.ca"? I guess you never noticed that the big powerful burger of Chechoslovakia broke up a few years ago. Peacefully, I might add. I'm surprised you never noticed, obviously being of bright wit. First off, if you took the trouble to read you would have seen that I'm not an Albertan. I live in Ontario. Second, as has been pointed out the Liberals some years ago passed the Clarity Act, defining the mechanism for separation. Third, if a region truly wants out of confederation, do you really think that waving a piece of paper in front of them will stop them? I'm struck by how many here have misunderstood my point. Nowhere did I say that I WANTED Canada to break up! In my opening post I pointed out the inability of the two main political camps to accept a government of the other. I would have thought the very proposal let alone the attempt to take power by means of a coup instead of an election would have made that obvious. What sparked me to open this thread was Donail's point that we are more divided than perhaps ever before in our history. People have always faced the disappointment of not having their chosen party win government but it seems today that some folks are willing to bend the rules in any nitpicking fashion that will work to gain power, up to and including weaseling Canadians out of the chance to even vote on it! I'm saying that if that's how far we've truly gone then perhaps we've become ungovernable. The most that can be achieved is for one party to take power and have large numbers of people and perhaps entire regions or provinces absolutely miserable! This is not the way to foster unity and patriotism. Certainly, you can't combat such feelings by scolding folks and telling them to just shut up and lump it! As I said before, the only sure way to get people to WANT to belong to a group is to give them real, positive reasons. Many posters here are always trumpeting about how Harper never won a majority of the popular vote. Well, neither did any other party. Perhaps we've grown so different that it's just not possible anymore. Or maybe under decades of brokerage politics we've been trained to think of ourselves first and our country second. Whatever, it doesn't change anything. As a post script, it might be more productive if some posters would refrain from calling me names in order to make themselves come across as some kind of super patriot rather than come up with some positive reasons for Canadians to accept not having their personal party pick in power. Better yet, some evidence that they do! You don't have to convince me. You have to convince the rising number of separatists in various provinces. Look what happened to Harper's chances in Quebec and the polling numbers of the BQ last election. Consider the feeling in Alberta if this coup succeeds. Then tell me again how waving some Law will make it all go away.

What's the difference? All the waste of everything that lives ends up in lakes, oceans and aquifers. Nature recycles it into fresh water pure enough to drink. She's been doing it for millions of years. The machine on the space station does it in exactly the same fashion, just in a smaller package. So why should it bother us? Especially when for so many poor souls it could be their only source of safe drinking water! Most folks like sausage but can't bear to watch it being made, I guess.

A majority of Canadians? Perhaps you could explain to us how a coalition where NDP voters can also be considered Liberal supporters, along with ONLY those Quebecers who want to break up the country represent a majority of Canadians. It seems to me that if you want to know the wishes of Canadians the ONLY way to know for certain is to LET THEM VOTE! What's more, I'd be very surprised if a lot of Canadians didn't bitterly resent being denied the choice and expressed their feelings at the NEXT election! It might be very interesting to have this coup stand and see how it plays out. The Liberals would have the shakiest coalition one could imagine. With the number of Tory seats compared to those of the Liberals and NDP, everything would depend on the BQ. Duceppe would only have to say "Hop!" and Dion would have to ask "How high?". The very first time the Liberals balked at giving the BQ whatever they wanted would bring the whole house of cards crashing down. Surely the GG would know this and take it into consideration before she would accede to the Oppositions' proposal. If she still went along with it I'd be very surprised if the new government lasted 3 months.

Well, it's fine for Ontario. Its higher population lets it dominate the Commons and the non-elected, not equal and not effective Senate means it can have more clout than any other province, except of course Quebec. It's understandable for you to support the status quo, given your pseudonym on this board. However, to assume all the other provinces would agree is to assume that anyone living in any other province must have a hole in their head. Hardly a way to "win friends and influence people".

It has nothing to do with whether or not you like Liberals. Or Tories. Or Rhinos, for that matter. There has to be a sense of loyalty to the underlying political structure of our country. Something that goes beyond mere party partisanship. Citizens need positive reasons to have patriotic pride, positive reasons to prefer to belong to the group. This is something you can't instill by scolding or berating people for wanting to leave. Negative actions only make them more determined to cut out. Perhaps Harper provoked the situation. I'm saying the other side was hardly blameless.

There's that word 'progressive' again, implying that if you disagree you must be 'not progressive'. Doubleplusungood!

I personally would believe you, but so what? You don't keep people from leaving a group by scolding them and telling them what they SHOULD think! People want to stay in a group because they feel it's a better place to be than somewhere else. Legal tricks don't cut it, even if they are constitutional. We have many people in many regions of the country that have been questioning the advantages of being part of Canada for some time. Quebec separatism refuses to die. Western separatism was headed off only by the rise of the Reform Party, crying "The West wants in!" Now they got in but the other parties want to remove them by a lawyer's trick in a coup, with the Liberals and the NDP allying with those who want to break up the country, for Pete's sake! If I were an Albertan my patience would have been exhausted long ago. It seems obvious that the parties of the left will NEVER accept any election result that puts conservatives in power, unless those conservatives govern from a leftist viewpoint and not like conservatives. I suspect that conservatives are equally sick of being out of office for decades at a time. They enjoy overwhelming support in just a few regions of the country. What hope or encouragement is there for people living in those regions when they see Liberals in Ottawa? Why should they feel like they belong? What benefit is there for them to stay? To a Liberal a Westerner is basically just a tax wallet anyway. Hedy Fry calls them all KKK types. With apparent impunity, one might add. We political junkies can argue among ourselves on this board but our views are irrelevant. The challenge is for any one party to command enough support across the spectrum to not only achieve government but to leave a majority in ALL regions reasonably content with the result, even if their favoured choice did not win. Liberals and NDP might say that Harper has been a failure in this regard but they seem blissfully unaware of how totally unwanted, if not outright despised they are themselves in some regions of this country! They take it for granted that if they achieve power BY ANY MEANS that people everywhere will accept it! Many of us here in Ontario live in suburbs that were forcefully amalgamated with big cities under Mike Harris' reign. It's been years but if you talk to the average suburban citizen he still doesn't feel any connection to that big city. He simply feels like he was conquered, or at least drafted against his will. The reason for the disconnect is simple: He hasn't seen any positives to the new situation. Only a LOT of negatives! His taxes went up and his services went down. If he questions a politician he gets convoluted arguments dealing in "what-ifs", like "If you hadn't been amalgamated the tax hikes would have been worse!" Again, the questions boil down to the benefits of being in or out of a group. Perhaps those who see only the chance to rule the group should sometimes think about how the group might become smaller, or even no longer be a group at all.

Well, what if that vote were held in Alberta, the day after this Opposition coup succeeds in establishing a coalition government by toppling the Tories? My point is that people want to leave when they see no benefit to staying. Each side sees living under the rule of the other as intolerable. How does it benefit Alberta to stay if the Liberals are back in power?

In another thread a poster named Donaill commented on how Canada has become more divided than perhaps at any other time in its history. The various regions have evolved into dramatically different cultures. Alberta is quite conservative, B.C. is very socialist, the Maritimes are a mix of Liberal and the old PC, which is essentially the same thing. (That's what caused the great Reform schism, after all) It struck me that if the point is correct then maybe we've advanced to the point where it would be impossible to ever make all regions happy! The most that can be achieved is a tyranny of whatever major province is in power in Ottawa. Look at many of the partisan posts here on this board. To hear them tell it, Harper's style of government is evil! He's Mr. Burns from the Simpsons, hurting the country for the sheer joy of it. Meanwhile, to a Tory supporter the thought of more Liberal government just means more inefficiency if not corruption. Adscams forever, endless gun registry programs, pandering to Quebec...all paid for by taxing Alberta. The NDP supporters seem to feel that they are being perpetually stymied by the other parties in achieving Heaven on Earth. This has all given rise to a feeling that any government other than their own choice is intolerable. No matter who wins all the other areas of the country are angry. This just can't work! All these different mind sets are totally incompatible. There is no way that any one party could ever gather high levels of popular support across the country if these attitudes prevail. Consider what would happen if this proposed 'coalition' coup is successful. Technically it would be legal under the Constitution. So what? Would one expect all the citizens in Alberta to smile and sing "We are the World"? It's guaranteed that the Western separatist movement would get a HUGE boost! Perhaps enough to win. Personally, I wouldn't blame them. There are a lot of us in the East who wouldn't want Canada to go the way of Italy or Israel either. Obviously, the Opposition parties represent citizens who find the present Tory brand of conservatism to be hell on earth, or they wouldn't be considering such a drastic move. So what choices do we have? A situation where 2/3 of the populace is perpetually in high anxiety or even despair? Or all go our separate ways? I thought I'd start a thread for some discussion.

With respect Jdobbin, you're arguing like a lawyer. Technically, yes it would be legal. Would the average man on the street find it ethical? It would be interesting to see! The only time we ever had a coalition government was war time. The Liberals not being in power is simply not as important to the nation to justify a coalition government today. To me this seems like partisanship run amok. You disagree. Well, we don't have to convince each other. The final judge is the Canadian people. I think the Opposition may have forgotten them in their zeal to find a way to negate the last electoral choice. What's supposed to be the big issue to get Canadians to repent and change their vote away from the Tories? That the Opposition can't get ordinary people to donate even small amounts of money to them? That without donations from the rich and the powerful corporate barons they are bankrupt? That they can only survive on tax money rebates for getting votes? That Harper wanted to change the rules to force all parties to rely on individual, reasonable voluntary donations? I keep harping on this I know but it bears repeating. The Average Joe is NOT a political junkie! And contrary to the belief in some quarters, he is not born with a strong instinct to vote Liberal. I think that Canadians in the main will fiercely resent what is an obvious political coup, depriving them of the chance to vote. I don't think the Opposition parties have thought about what voters will think when they DO next get a chance to vote! Just because Canadians usually seem politically apathetic is a poor reason to believe that you can pull any political game you want. There is always the danger that you might wake the sheep up. Historically, we sheep get angry when woken! There are certain buttons you should never push in politics. It's one thing to note apathy towards voting. It's quite another towards removing the opportunity to vote, rationalizing it by saying "It's technically legal! It's technically legal!" I almost wish the scenario would play out. I have faith that my fellow citizens would give the Opposition parties the spanking they deserve, eventually giving them all fewer seats than they have now! If they didn't, then maybe we don't deserve to be a free democracy. We should just let whichever party can come up with the best nitpicking constitutional argument govern unopposed.

Brinksmanship? Jdobbin, didn't you notice that the Opposition is NOT intending to bring down the Tories in order for the people do have another choice by means of an election? No! Their intention is to put the Liberals in power by means of a coalition technicality! If the Governor General allows this then in my eyes in Canada democracy will be well and truly dead! If the people don't want another election so quickly after the last one then at least they would have the opportunity to punish the Tories for causing it to happen. If they lose respect for the Opposition parties for seizing power with no election then perhaps there would be a similar price to be paid next election. I'm betting that when the average Canadian realizes that the Opposition parties rely so heavily on public moneys because they can't get enough support from the average Canadian they will become totally disgusted with them! Many here might not believe this but I could at times see the day when once again I would vote Liberal, depending on who was running their show. If they try to seize power with a coalition coup I would be so disgusted and enraged that I could never see voting for them again! When you take away the people's right to choose then you take away democracy, IMHO. And let no one make the claim that the majority of voters did not vote for Harper so therefore the Liberals can assume that the majority of Canadians support THEM! That's totally illogical. You could use the same argument to put Duceppe in as PM! I have to say that this proposed ploy is the most disgusting political move I have ever seen in my entire life! It doesn't just take the cake, it takes the entire bakery! Bringing down Harper is one thing. Denying the people an election to grab power is quite another.

You'll have to excuse him, jdobbin. After all, those are GOVERNMENT links! Of course they don't work! It's the same with lottery tickets. In Canada, they're all made by the government.

Exactly! I have friends in that industry who give me a bit of the inside scoop. The great secret that no one wants to mention is that broadcast radio as we know it may be about to die! Not quickly, of course. Not by next weekend, either. Still, Radio has been chasing the 24-44 yrs. demographic for so long that they weren't paying attention to the other age sectors. Older listeners have mostly gravitated towards talk radio, for a number of reasons. One is the natural interest in news and issues that comes with maturity. The other is that boomers often can't find the music that they actually listened to during their formative years! So called 'classic rock' stations are really 'classic AM rock'! I suspect the reason is that radio music today is totally a numbers game. DJs haven't picked their own records in probably 20 years! They buy playlists from 3rd party vendors, where every song has numbers for its appeal, in any particular time slot. The problem for boomer music is that no numbers were kept during the late 60's and early 70's. Those were the freewheeling hippy-dippy days of Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and others. The DJs were usually too stoned to keep numbers! So the playlist vendors seem to use AM radio data. Boomers get to hear the AM hits and never the album cuts. There is a HUGE demographic of boomers who have given up on radio for their music. They have their own libraries of CDs or even vinyl. Satellite radio picked up many in this crowd as well. When's the last time you heard any Straubs on your local classic rock station? Any early Genesis? Foghat, except for 'Free Ride'? Crowbar, outside of their AM hit 'Oh, What a Feeling"? Any of you who are old enough to have worn sandals and beads, take a moment and remember what you used to listen to on FM radio. Now ask yourself when's the last time you heard any of those songs. SteelEye Spam? Fairport Convention? Perth County Conspiracy? If they never had an AM Top 40 hit, you likely never hear them at all on today's radio. Being Boomers, if we don't get offered what we like we won't give any money or attention to it at all. The real worry for radio however is the kids. There is a generation growing up who have never even TRIED to get their music from radio! They've never even touched a music CD, for that matter, let alone bought one. They download from the Internet directly into their players. They don't watch music videos on TV either. The Internet is their first and main choice. Gone are the days of teeny-boppers buying boatloads of 45 rpm singles. The record labels did that to themselves. The CD rendered singles obsolete. You could no longer buy singles. You had to buy the entire album. Worse yet, since they had a captive audience you were lucky to get even a couple of good cuts on a particular album. The rest was all mediocre filler. The 'Net has meant that young folks can download their own choices, as singles. They can listen to them whenever they want, making their own playlists and not at the mercy of whatever a radio station chooses to play, at whatever time of day they care to do it. The number of kids growing up into the 24-44 demographic of the radio audience has dropped to a fraction of its former self. There is virtually little or no new blood coming on stream. Ask your own kids! I have two daughters, 18 and 12. Neither has any interest in broadcast radio, nor do any of their peer group. Yet they constantly are listening to music. So BBM can come up with all the new and modern data gathering techniques they want. Who cares? They already have had the important data for some years now. They appear to be focusing on making their service seem more sexy, in order to sell themselves to their customers. Meanwhile, their radio industry customers are fading away. This trend has been growing for some years now and is just about ready to pop! If things are they way they appear then we are going to see some major changes in that industry over the next 4-5 years.

Forcing a bank to loan to trash is also a Canadian thing. Has everyone forgotten how Jean Chretien forced a bank to give a loan to a buyer for his own property, even going to the extent to get the manager who had refused to do it fired? This was the essence of the Shawinigate scandal. The Americans have nothing on us.

My actions? How do you know what I do? Have you been following me? :angry: Well, if that's the sort of technical documentary you're comfortable with I won't even try to compete. Ad hominem, ad hominem. Shades of Rabble. Still, it adds to my point about how the environmentalists hate the idea of space development. Since technically it very well WOULD save the planet there must be a deeper reason! I'm going to ponder that one for a bit and then start a new thread. I've learned that apparent contradictions are often explained by premises and goals that actually are different than those officially stated.

No, I wasn't kidding. I just gave a link to a simple site 'cuz I thought it would be appropriate for you. If you do your own google you'll find many sites that have a lot more depth. You could check out some of Mr. Branson's plans, the guy with Virgin Spaceways. You could check out the work being done on the space elevator idea. As for it being done in our lifetimes, I can't say. How old are you? Certainly I would expect it in my daughters' lifetimes. The world doesn't end when we do, you know! You could also dig up a copy of G Harry Stine's book "The Space Enterprise". It's been around since the early 80's. You're entitled to your opinions. I simply don't share them. As I said, there was a time when people insisted that I should buy stock in Timex and Royal Typewriter too! I worked with people who scoffed at me when I said that the Westinghouse branch we worked at was about to go out of business. It's now a parking lot. When the axe fell those people were blindsided. To me given the existing conditions and the trends it was patently obvious. Somebody once said that "640k of RAM will be enough for anybody!" (Bill Gates) If we wait long enough, we will see who's right. I was going to make a crack about you still having an 8 track collection but then I realized, I'm a guy still running a huge collection of vinyl!

A google on 'asteroid mining' gives many, many links. Here's one that's easy for the layman; http://www.howstuffworks.com/asteroid-mining.htm It doesn't matter if you or I are up on this. It only matters to those prepared to make the money. I've always wondered why the environmental movement not only refuses to embrace space development but actually seems quite negative towards it. After all, it would solve virtually all the problems environmentalists seem so worried about. Maybe they just want us to suffer. Or perhaps they don't like the idea of progressive folks being able to just completely and absolutely leave them behind! Some folks can only get an audience when the audience has no escape, after all.

It's always dangerous to make predictions without factoring the possibility of new technologies or discoveries. It's like someone in the horse and buggy age making predictions on the travel industry, 2 years before Henry Ford's new factory comes on line. There are new oil and gas reserves being found every day. The methane hydrates found around the Bermuda/Florida/Texas basin apparently make the world's oil reserves look like a backyard propane tank! Meanwhile, who says the demand for oil might not decline naturally? The last huge spike in prices seems to have finally woken folks up to the fact that they can never depend on constant reasonable energy prices. Even if supplies hold up prices still seem to rise, often due to political factors. It's like Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football. The market would appear to have finally lost confidence in the situation. Gas is cheaper than it's been in many years and yet buyers don't seem to care. They want hybrids, diesels, electrics or whatever will not only save them money but also protect them from another insane price hike. There has been some media attention lately to guys in Silicon Valley taking an interest in developing electric cars. This is old news to someone like me who spent his career in the high tech electronics field. I was there at the dawn of the microcomputer chip. It wasn't Timex who brought the first digital watch to market. They had all the money and resources you could imagine necessary and yet they never saw it coming. It was an Light Emitting Diode company called Litronix that was looking for new market areas. It wasn't Underwood Typewriters who developed word processors either. Virtually NONE of the old companies, some of whom had held the lion's share of a market for over a hundred years, who rode the high tech revolution and delivered all those new products we take for granted today. Was it Royal Typewriter who brought out the first fax machine? Not a chance! For the most part, the incumbent companies simply dwindled down to either a shadow or a memory of what they had been before. Among the next wave of shadows could easily be Exxon or Shell. It wouldn't be at all surprising if the Big 3 car companies died out while we all bought new electrics made by companies based in California, either. That's just oil. You're assuming we will just eventually run out of materials mined here on earth. This strikes me as an incredibly provincial attitude! We've had the technology from the 80's to go out and capture asteriods. Most are made of a high grade nickel-iron ore. It would cost a few billion to lasso one such asteroid a mile or so in diameter and bring it back to a Low Earth Orbit. However, it would then supply the entire world's needs for steel for at least a year! It could be smelted cheaply with solar power in space, with ZERO pollution to our terrestrial environment and delivered as large boxcar sized ingots splashed down into shallow waters off our east or west coasts, for FREE! It's just simple ballistics. Asteroids contain a virtually inexhaustible supply of raw materials for our needs. We can also mine the moon. Iron ore would likely be prohibitively expensive to ship home, considering the Moon has a gravity well of its own. Still, more expensive metals could be profitably launched homeward by a mass driver, or electric catapult. The Universe is infinite and we live on a tiny grain of sand. Yet you talk about running out of 'stuff'? It's NOT Buck Rogers ideas! Businesses have been polled about these ideas for nearly 30 years. Nobody wants to be first, taking the highest initial expense and risk. More interestingly, nobody wants to be THIRD either! As existing costs gradually escalate sooner or later business will consider these other sources. The Japanese have made a national project out of making cheaper ways to get payloads to orbit. In a few decades we could see payload costs drop from hundreds of thousands of dollars per kilo down to a few hundred dollars! The first company to start asteroid mining will become rich as Midas! This whole idea of limited resources is holding us back. Maybe if as a race humankind is that lacking in imagination it deserves to fall victim to "peak oil"! Myself, I don't believe it. That would deny the accomplishments of our entire history as a species. Still, I've come to believe it won't be an American company mining those asteroids. More likely it will be China, India or maybe both. Humans will get there. It's not that important that it be American ones. The West seems to be more concerned with increased social spending and less inclined to lead us into new and better lands. One thing for absolutely sure, when it happens Canada will still be forming a federal commission to decide if it's all a federal or a provincial matter.

Please don't cheat! You posited 'peak oil'. It's up to you to prove it to render the rest of your argument valid. If you want to keep sliding off onto a different point then it rapidly becomes 'point-less'. If that IS going to be your approach then I've got some things to do...

This all sounds a bit glib, to me. First off, sure profits are need for innovation. That's an obvious answer to an obvious question. How about asking how much of those profits are actually spent on innovation? Do we know if the oil companies have been making over $100/bbl profit and investing only $1/bbl on innovation? Maybe I've given an exaggerated figure but wouldn't the real figure be pertinent? And as for speculation about having blown our last chance before peak oil arrives, shouldn't one first be expected to prove the idea of peak oil first? Otherwise everything is moot. I think you've simply chosen to believe that "greedy, evil mankind" has hurt the planet and now Gaia is going to hurt him back. You're entitled to your belief but some of us need something more scientific to be persuaded to your viewpoint.

Why do some folks keep asking this question? The answer is so flippin' obvious! Money! Things have slowly changed from the Ozzie and Harriet family days. The norm today is that it takes 2 incomes to have the typical family lifestyle. Of course Mom can stay home if they lower their expectations and live in Shantytown but the double income lifestyle has become the norm. There just isn't enough disposable income to provide for as many children as families used to have. Double incomes also means more stresses on available family time in raising children. So people limit the number of children in order to provide sufficient attention. Even at that, there's a good argument that things have been pushed too far and the kids are suffering. Day care costs take a large chunk out of that extra income, further limiting numbers. I know there are some that will pick apart my model and not my point, coming up with theoretical methods that we can use to allow Moms to stay home. Methods that never seem to actually work in the real world. To these folks I simply say, you're wasting your time arguing with me! You have to convince virtually all Canadians who wish to have children! Even if you totally slay my argument you'll have changed nothing in the real world. Having fewer children is simply a logical choice in today's world. Only those parents who lack the foresight to see the factors or are in privileged positions, either through their own incomes or government assistance, tend to have larger families.

Well, I too always tend to take an 'objectivist' view. A is A, after all. Still, I think it would be wrong to deny that some individuals and groups in high places do have a lot of power. They may have their own agenda or they could simply be inept, as with George Bush once he had occupied Iraq or Pierre Trudeau with our economy. Or Bill Clinton's use of cigars! Still, discussion is always worthwhile. It may not prove the original premise but often it will reveal other interesting ideas. Like with your Lincoln quote. It reminded me of a 'quote' from the 70's we hippies were particularly fond of - "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and that's enough!" - Richard M. Nixon

I don't understand your reasoning. What if we end up with only ONE enemy but he ignores our diplomats and he militarily outguns us? Perhaps you could explain in more detail.

We're all getting diverted from the real problem again! Passing more and more laws just gets ridiculous. The real issue is that passing laws is easy and cheap. Enforcement costs money. Yet the only thing that will work is more enforcement. Yeah, like that's gonna happen! The amount of police presence on the roads of Ontario is almost nil, outside of radar traps. I wouldn't be surprised if in the last 20 years they've actually CUT the number of cops patrolling the highways. I rarely see one except when obviously responding to an accident. Reactive instead of proactive. The reason is also obvious. Radar traps make a lot of money for the number of officers needed. Patrolling COSTS money! While the official goal is public safety in reality it's all about the budgets. When us old farts were young it was a common thing to get pulled over for a minor infraction. EVERYBODY makes mistakes, especially when we are new at a task! Driving is no different. One needs observation and correction while being trained. I can't begin to count the number of times a cop let me off with a warning. A warning was all that was needed. I appreciated not getting a ticket and I LEARNED! Now kids make their mistakes in an unsupervised vacuum and if their driving gets so bad that they make a horrible mistake then we throw the book at them! To paraphrase Robert Heinlein, it's like raising a puppy and letting him pee wherever he wants and then when he's full grown if he makes a mess you THEN beat the hell out of him! We also had cops on neighbourhood patrol beats. We had far less B&E's then as well. Today we expect young folks to take enough training to get their licence and then we just turn them lose on the roads, essentially unsupervised! If you had a breakdown and were parked on the shoulder of the QEW do you seriously expect that a cop would pass by and stop to help in any reasonable amount of time? You'd be waiting until the Crack of Doom! Any cop will tell you to make sure you have a cell phone. So young folks just keep driving and hopefully never get so bad at it that they cause an accident. The only corrections they ever get are if they DO have an accident! It's not just young folks. Lots of older drivers have learned dangerous aggressive habits, particularly in rush hour. Why not? The chances of getting caught by a cop are nearly zero. We have more accidents, more injuries and sadly, more deaths. As a response we get more laws. Meanwhile, we never enforce the ones we have! It's cheaper to just send a few cops out to write up the reports after the deaths, I guess. Can't spare too many though. Gotta have enough to work those radar guns...

Reading your arguments has made me think that perhaps you're not really seeing why your arguments aren't convincing. No matter what point is made that is contrary to your premise you blow it off and continue to believe in what you originally had faith in. This is simply not scientific! You're arguing from faith, where you already have decided what's true and will only accept evidence or argument that agrees with what you already believe. By any chance, are you a Creationist? I don't mean this as a personal attack. You do sound like you make at least some attempt to be scientific in your arguments. Perhaps if you re-read your posts you might see what I see and may become a bit more open in your thinking. It's very hard sometimes to get a good self-perpective. One just can't turn around fast enough!