Bryan

Excellent point, should be applied across the board to all manner of transfers and benefits. Letters to this effect should be sent to every MP!

I was with you up to this point. Several of the actual weapons inspectors have written books on the subject. Iraq was thoroughly inspected and fully cleared. Both the UN and in turn the US knew for an absolute fact that Saddam did not have those weapons prior to the invasion.

Part of the issue too, is that there is probably isn't a useful reason to be screened for prostate cancer anyway. Knowing doesn't change the outcome all that much in most cases. The difference in the survival rates for those who get treatment and those who don't is quite often negligible. "Watchful waiting" is increasingly being preferred. http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/expertvoices/post/2012/01/18/to-treat-or-not-to-treat-prostate-cancer-that-is-the-question.aspx

Facebook is a gold mine for police and investigators. It really is amazing how much incriminating evidence people willingly put up for all to see.

Big Guy's hit and run topic creation style is lazy and not acceptable if he actually wants people to discuss his position on a given topic.

Covering for Big Guys' laziness is not helping. He has a history of presenting opinion posts with no background of any kind. We should not have to do his work for him. If he wants a discussion on his topic, he should do the bare minimum and provide the context behind HIS perspective on the issue. People may have a dissenting view, and may well Google additional sources to further that discussion, but until he properly presents what his opening position actually is, there's no reason to engage the topic.

Many non-teachers I know spend 100s of hours volunteering to coach sports and run clubs. They don't get extra pay. Of all of the extra-curricular activities and sports my children have been involved in, a very small minority of the adult volunteers were actually teachers. It's almost always parents. The only time we ever got a teacher as a coach was when one of the parents was also a teacher.

I see that the opposite way. Consistent negatives often indicate a common writer. My experience with Caribbean resorts especially is that the most consistently reported negatives are things that you never saw even once during the entire stay. Over-the-top things like "no running water on the entire resort" -- something you'd obviously notice if it were true.

That's the problem. If the individual is just trolling, the debate is a waste of time. If the individual is not legitimate, neither are the ideas.

The same principles still apply. If you spend more than you have, you have to get the difference from somewhere. If you don't borrow, it means reducing spending on other things. If you do borrow, the cost of servicing that debt eventually means reducing spending on other things. Where there sometimes appears to be a difference between govt and individual finances is the third option of raising additional revenue. Governments can just say "give me this much more" and it's done, individuals can't do that. The problem is, when governments make more room in their budgets by taxing the individuals, they are forcing individuals to cut their budgets in response, or to borrow to continue living the same way. No matter how you present it, government finances are directly connected to individual finances. They make bad choices, it hurts you. They make good choices, you benefit.

I've been thinking the same thing lately. If he's deliberately trolling, it would make a lot of his posts make more sense.

The worst by far (IMO) is Trip Advisor. Many consider their reviews to be the "Gold Standard" for travel advice, but a large number of the reviews on there are paid for. There is a small industry related to hiring writers to post fake reviews, especially negative ones. TA never verifies anything either.

You come up with some of the craziest theories. How does one go about quantifying that?

Do you even read the articles you link to? That article has nothing whatsoever to do with public support for BCTF. It ONLY says they think the BC Liberals are not doing a good job. How many think that bad job is because they are not playing hard ball enough? It doesn't say. It also doesn't really have much meaning specifically related to education, because those polled think the BC Liberals are doing a bad job at everything. It's funny, because the polls also said that the Liberals were going to lose the last election.

The number of supporters is a small fraction of the teachers, never mind the public!!!

TimG already addressed this. It's got nothing to do with provincial employment statutes. It's your constitutional right not to be exploited. A private company cannot compel a private citizen to pay for something they did not receive. Besides that, in your example of a worker paying a set amount regardless of tips taken in raises another issue. Even where that does happen, it's still not the customers' fault or problem. A tip is an optional gift for good service. It can be withheld if the service doesn't warrant it, it can also be much higher than usual if the service is exemplary. It's not a top-up of the servers' fixed expenses.

What is the contradiction you think you are seeing?

I'm well aware that It happens. It's still illegal. The article is pretty goofy with respect to saying that servers are not well paid though. I know a couple of people who quit well-paying professional jobs because the tips they got at Olive Garden were far more than they made in the office.

Too bad for you. Find another line of work.

They can only require pooling of actual tips received, and even then only with other wait staff, not the kitchen (or the bar, or anyone else).

As usual, you're making arguments I never said. The section you pointed to is irrelevant with regards to my post that you quoted, because it covers what those with access to the data are and are not allowed to share publicly, it doesn't stop them from seeing it without my permission.

You can absolutely go ahead and do it, you're only going to hurt your own business. What that restaurant is offering would be a wage cut from what good servers are making under the normal system. That is why the restaurant will only attract bad servers -- they are the ones for whom the guarantee is attractive.

A slightly smaller percentage of a much larger bill is still more money. Any server who considers that "getting stiffed" doesn't deserve anything. Servers WISH tipping etiquette in Canada was 15%. Most consumers are not that dumb. They know 10-12% is VERY generous. If anything, there is a growing trend towards not tipping anymore. A lot of people are realizing that they don't get tips at their work, and the server is often taking home more than they are. That is illegal.

There's nothing in the census that gives any information related to those topics that the government does not already have.

Completely irrelevant.