overthere

I'm guessing Toronto. The oppressed and humiliated residents will rise in revolt over the evil empire of Clan Ford and demolish the city center. They'll wait until it warms up a bit though, and the carnage will likely coincide with the Leafs annual collapse.

Cops just make shit up to get around this precondition. "the car was weaving" ""a tail light was burned out" "i saw the accused light a joint" "the accused had something in his hand that looked like a weapon/burglary tool .... whatever".

Refined products are not shipped by supertanker. Refinery output- if it goes anywhere by sea- is usually shipped in smaller product tankers. Small ships going to Asia or anywhere far away would not make economic sense.

The Hobbit: the second installment, which adds nearly 3 hours of film in extending a short book for children into something close to nine hours of high tech story. Purists will oath the Hobbit trilogy as Peter Jackson has added characters and storylines not found in the original. Other than that, the franchise thrives, the movie has plenty of action and the cinemantography is somewhat surreal. If you've invested the time in Lord of The Rings and the first film of the Hobbit, no reason not to see this one. American Hustler: strong cast (with one exception) with Christian Bale, Amy McAdams, Bradley cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. It's a gritty tale based on Abscam, complete with leisure suits, big hair and disco soundtrack. Three of the four above are excellent in their roles as smalltime grifters, Cooper is again out of his depth. Good movie, won a bunch of awards already and will win some more come Oscars. Recommended. Saving Mr Banks: this is a gentel Disney movie about... partially... Walt Disney. Strong performances by Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks. It is centred on the making of the book Mary Poppins into a movie in the early 60s, with a recurring theme of the life of the author- a testy Brit that Disney has to cajole and charm into the process. There's no swearing, sex or violence so it will have brioad appeal to people who don't like movies much. It's the kind of film I don't usually like, but it is pretty well done in the end despite a heavy dose of sentimentality. Inside Llewyn Davis. This is a tough one...... I love the Coen Brothers, they have made several great movies and many good ones, only a couple of duds. I'd rate this as one of the good ones, but not great. It's a study of a player in the New York folk music scene in the early 60s. Every detail rings true and the music (T Bone Burnett) is good. But it is slow and lacks a strong plot. If you like the Coens, go see it. If not.........

Of course the risk of an accident and the consequences of a major spill wouldf be far worse in Vancouver: Fraser Estuary at serious risk. Far, far more shipping traffic vastly increases the risk of all those tankers leaving the Burnaby refinery. Doesn't that worry you?

That is not what it says in the collective agreement from January 2013. 6% of gross revenue is set aside for possible dispersal to the bottom feeders to enable them to have revenue equal to the midpoint between the bottom floor and top floor of that eyars salary cap. 50% of that 6% comes from the top ten grossing clubs, the other clubs provide the balance. There is no way teams like the Leafs would cough up all their profit to support Nashville and Florida and Tampa etc. The reason they are such a valuable franchise is not just gross revenue, it is retained revenue. http://www.nhl.com/nhl/en/v3/ext/CBA2012/NHL_NHLPA_Proposed_CBA_-_Summary_of_Terms_FINAL_-_Jan._12,_2013%20(1).pdf

The risks in Vancouver Harbour are much greater. Would you agree that all tanker traffic there and in the Straits of Juan de Fuca should be forcibly terminated immediately?

They are certainly trying, the fees for passports and Parks Canada services have gobne up steadily. Parks has also cut services/staff pretty dramatically recently, especially in their Historic Sites side. Public Works is a much larger undertaking than either, and revenue dependency has been around for at least two decades there. They do have legacy programs like GILT(grants in lieu of taxes) that pay out perhaps a billion or more per year in kickbacks to municiplaities for property taxes on federal porperty. Hard to recover that, it is just cash out. Not at all, I can certainly see a scenario where CPC will fail as a Crown agency. We are watching it happen now. They are 'arms length' but they are still owned by the Crown and report to the Crown, though given a lot of latitude to run their affairs. That does not mean that the govt will also allow the pension scheme to fail, or leave retirees with nothing. But the inlcudion of the unfunded pension liability in a sale means 'no sale', nobody wouyld even think fo taking that burden on because there is no way for the current CPC to eliminate it or any imaginable buyer to carry it. I noticed full page colour ads in our local paper yesterday by Canada Post, telling us they are looking to a bright future delvering our parcels. The problem they will have with that scenario is that they have no monopoly and a few large, well run competitors. Their subsidiary Purolator already has a lower profit margin than UPS or FedEx, unless they seriously whack labour costs and seriously upgrade their management, they'll get eaten alive. Even so, they'll never make enough to touch the pension issue.

Given the imminent horrific danger, when will they stop sending all those tankers up the St Lawrence River? Burrard Inlet?

Are you talking about revenue sharing between teams in the league, or revenue splits between teams and players? Because I don't think there is any sharing of ticket sale revenue between teams.

Public sector wage hikes have little to do with public perception. What drives civil service wage hikes is the willingness of management(politicians, ultimately) to restrict wage increases to what the government can afford. Since there is no effective brake on tax increases, there is no accompanying brake on civil service wage hikes. There are rarely votes to be gained from a politician telling staff they are paid enough and won't be getting a raise. Civil service unions see it as natural that their salaries and benefits continually increase, because that is the norm in Canada.

Prediction: approved with conditions and perhaps a different route to Kitimat.

The closest Target took over the Zellers store, completely renovated and expanded the space, which was in dire need. I'm no shopper, but it looks like Target shares somehting with the old Zellers: a lack of customers. I've been in it only a couple of times, but it looks really empty and the parking lot never seems to have many cars. Walmart took over a Zellers space at another mall, and it looks a lot busier now.

The revenue sharing in hockey is limited to those chunks of cash that come to the league, which is primarily league wide TV contracts in Canada and US, and some merchadising bucks. There is no profit sharing between teams, each team has several local sources of money that they get to keep: local or regional TV and Radio and very importantly ticket sales. Floridas days are limited, they will have trouble meeting the cap floor, and won't have to worry about the cap limit. Without much greater ticket sales, Florida will lose more and more every year.

Where did I do that? I commented on the quality of CPC management, which is generally poor. I have spent way too much time at CPC HQ and in their Operations groups in the regions and major plants to have any other opinion.

Not a bit confused. CPC is winding up, but first we have to have a few years of grandstanding and handwringing, its the Canadian way.. They cannot make money or even come close to breaking even doing what they do, their core business is folding despite a delivery monopoly. Even if they slash costs they will also increase prices dramtically a, which will drive away their business further. Their core 1st class business is not Granny sending Billy a birthday card, it is businesses sending out millions of bills and statements monthly- and they are all finding other ways to do that. They're pooched. No govt including the current one will tolerate indefintie operating deficits. Their UNFUNDED pension liability of $6 billion can't be addresses by CPC while they have operating deficits. It doesn't mean shit if they have pension assets of $16 billion or $$16 trillion if they have a whopping liability to go with it, and a number large enough they can never catch up. That UNFUNDED laibility can only grow as they reduce their workforce, all of it is defined benefit stuff andf there is no escape except sale of the corporation. And of course, nobody sane would buy a supposedly $7 billion company with a whacking great pension liability that cannot ever be covered out of profits. Harper gave them four more years because.... they don't know what to do. They gave Air Canada a similar extension last year for similar reasons, but AC has far better prospects of survival than CPC. The govt overall has a huge pension shortfall, but they have more numerous and many more revenue sources than CPC. Taxpayers will end up eating the CPC pensions shortfall, there is no other way.

All three of those you mention are revenue dependent undertakings, all are expected to sustain themselves in whole or part through fees charged. In the case of Public Works, the fees are most often charged for services provided to other govt departments for services provided by PWGSC. It's been that way for about 20 years there, longer at Parks and passport office which get most of their cash from the public. .

They are actually less top heavy than they used to be, and their executive people are more competent, less old boys and political hacks than previously. It won't matter though, nothing can fix their business now. I agree they are a nasty bunch.

"no - by definition, market value... more correctly, "fair market value" (FMV). " what is the market value of Canada Post today? No, not using Canada Post assumptions, but in the real world? I don't think there are any buyers, period, not with their a) cureent balance sheet and prospects for the future, where they are intent on driving away their remaining business. Would you buy it? Would anybody sane buy it? Maybe they could bundle the sale of Canada Post with a typewriter manufacturer for added value.

Just saw another movie I really liked: Nebraska. It is set in the Great Plains/small town America and beautifully shot in black and white, a vast Prairie landscape. If you are still reading this, it's a gentle sort of movie with a central theme about family and aging. If it matters to you, there is no sex, a little swearing, very mild violence. Bruce Dern is terrific, so is Will Forte. There's a good supporting cast of small town winners and losers doing what smalltown people do. Directed by Alexander Payne, who also did Sideways and About Schmidt, a pair of fine movies about ordinary people. Recommended.

Alberta should pay for everything.

"a couple of cents difference in the case of Whitehorse versus Vancouver" But you don't fill up in Whitehorse, then in Vancouver (a market of 30,000 vs a market of 2 million). You fill up in Watson Lake, then 500 km later in Fort Nelson where it is more expensive. The gas in Watson Lake casme from Ft Nelson by expensive tanker truck. I guess its a cheap price to pay to live in The Best Place On Earth.

Your enthusiasm for creating greater supply of consumer products is not always shared by oil companies. They like to control refinery capacity very carefully. When supply gets tight, margins go up. Oh and regarding refinery maintenance, I guess they do a lot of that just before long weekends....... Sure, they pay their bills. Europe too.

"Of which one is a horrible example of 74% literacy. Now what? " Where was that? I used US UK and India as places that are functioning democracies with significant private education components, which cointradicts his assertion that democracy and private education are not compatible. They are, or can be. Those countries also have public systems in place, but not exclusively I used Cuba and Kerala(the only communist state in India) as examples of communist governments that have wonderful rates of literacy within a public education system: 99% in Cuba and 93% in Kerala. China is around 95% adult literacy in a decidely non democratic environment.

"as it stands, Canada Post has $16 billion in market assets... " that is strictly, strictly book value....... In reality, the market price would be far lower. Purolator is worth maybe $1 billion on the market and while profitable their profit ratios are well below industry standards and well below competitors like UPS and FedEx so a sale would not get any kind of premium. Much of the supposed CPC 'value' is in the business itself, but unprofitable businesses have no goodwill value, partiuclarly ones where their customers are fleeing en masse. They do own real estate but in some cities- Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary for instance they no longer have big chunks of downtown. They own a billion or so in sortation equipment, much of it newer. But.... it is worth pennies on the dollar as it is specific to their industry- who would buy it at anything close to what they paid? Harper is just delaying a decision regarding the pension liability, in the end no buyer will assume that liability because there is simply not 6 billion worth of gravy in the business- not for CPC, and not for anybody else either. Stick a fork in them they're done like dinner. All they'll do in the next few years is seriously piss off their remaining customers as they charge them exorbitant postage in an effort to stay afloat. CPC always counted on the legislated monopoly to save their bacon, but the Internet was an end run they did not see in 1981 and cannot counter now. Harper and subsequent govts will wank about pretending that the inevitable isn't inevitable. Once the community mailboxes are implemented everywhere it will be easier to get rid of the rest and farm it out to contractors. Oh, and pay pensions for the next half century.