overthere

A risk the driver takes? Why should anybody be allowed to risk others by not having insurance on their taxi? Nobody else on the road is permitted to drive without insurance, why is Uber different?.

cover band, and a poor one IMO. Great marketing though I saw them in 1969, about halfway between the release of the first and second albums. It was just an awesome and powerful performance, they burned the house down. They were opening for Vanilla Fudge, one of the most ridiculous booking blunders imaginable. Nobody but nobody could follow Led Zeppelin on a stage. They played most of the first album and a couple of songs from the second.

Rubbish. There are three parties involved, not two. Harper cannot let Mulcair get a free pass, which involves the NDP picking up soft centre seats from Trudeau. That would be stupid, and Harper is not stupid. He doesn't mind the NDP fighting it out for the lefty vote that he'll never get, but all the rest of them are on the table, and he won't just roll over and play dead. The ads will involve mockery fo the cost of all the NDP promises.

Bautista will decline in value from here until he hits free agency. Trade him today. Tulo is a better player than Reyes today but has a long history of injury and a monster contract...... The Jays gave up three pitching prospects too, so the winner of the trade is not so clear.

Sort of.... Harper has to first get the soft centre away from the Libs, which he did last election to gain a majority. he is not going to gain anything anytime from the NDP believers, but he does not need any of their votes to gain another majority. We will see Con ads soon that will make it a stark choice between Cons and NDP. If Lib wafflers see that their cause is lost, they'll have to decide if they want to second fiddle to Mulcair in Opposition, second fiddle in a coalition, or disappear altogether. But meantime, people that vote want their vote to count- which is why soft Libs are the key to winning the elction outright. A scare for Mulcair is surely the Bloc. Will they be a resurgent threat under Duceppe? It is hard to imagine the Bloc not getting some seats back in PQ. Can Mulcair make that up, plus much more, elsewhere?

How many pitchers would it take to make the Jays a playoff team instead of a .500 team?

I have to say it: the trilogy of garbage rock for me is Guns n Roses, Aerosmith and Bon Jovi. I understand them as the soundtrack of 14 year olds getting wasted, but the music? Bleh.

Only briefly, a two day layover between India and Maqlaqysia once. It's definitely a place I'd like to explore more thoroughly. It is a manageable size to tour, and is much more stable politcally now.. Different Strokes for different folks. Goa is one of my least favorite places in India, mainly because it is thick with people from Europe on two week party junkets. Not my scene.

Trudeau has supposedly ruled out a coalition because 1) he has to pretend he is going to the PM in a majority, a pretense he must sustain for as long as possible 2) he knows that he will be the junior partner, which in the history of most parliamentary democracies is an express train to early retirement. Harper is currently chasing the Liberal vote because his chances of getting Lib voters to switch to him are better than than trying to woo NDP loyalists.

I'm about half as complicated since I've only been to Afghanistan. As a tourist. It is so easy to turn this into a dickwagging competition.... but I do love to travel and have been to all continents except South America and Antarctica. If I had to pick just one country to visit again(4th time) it would be India, specifically the South. Actually it will be India, for a few months, and in the next 3 years or so. Maybe it is just me, but it is an ancient /endlessly diverse place, very cheap, speak English(sort of) and the food is great. Avoid the cities, which are the worst of the country.

Good choice, but I do favour Led Zeppelin I . It may be the greatest debut album of all time. A rival to best first album would be Mr Hendrix and Are You Experienced. They are both astonishing. Another superb and much copied one is Hendrix with Electric Ladyland. A friend who is a wonderful, fluid, pro guitar player said to me once about Mr Hendrix: " When I was young I used to aspire to play like him. As I got better at guitar, then much better at guitar, I realized that was a completely pointless ambition. The best I'll ever do is try to play in his style". I can't pick five, really, but how about albums that have no weak tracks? Moondance, already mentioned. Bob Dylans Blood on the Tracks? Beatles- Abbey Road? Stones Sticky Fingers?

It's a stupid and pointless escalation of force that started with her refusal to put out a cigarette in her own car. But I don't know why she chose to kill herself in custody or how that is the fault of the cops.

todays paper had Cons at 38% among decided voters.

I have no idea what has happened in other countries, nor do I understand insurance regulations or the legal systems in other countries. But I understand how they work here, having been sued(as a representative of a corporation) many times for liability claims. The lack of insurance is not a trivial issue. I would have no problem at all about UberX if they had insurance that protected their customers in an accident. I see you don't care about that. Do you feel that auto insurance should be optional for everybody, or just for Uber?

The lack of insurance is 'a front'? What does that mean?. I was once in a business that got sued regularly and often. Personal injury lawyers would-with absolute certainty-include municipalities in the list of defendants in a Uber inspired liability suit. Aside from the liability likely for the negligence of the city in enforcing safety standards(including insurance), I am not so foolish as to knowingly get into a vehicle I know has no insurance. I used to think like you, that enabling a cash economy was just fine. But then I left childhood and started paying taxes. With that came the realization that tax free earnings by others did not benefit me. The opposite was true- I had to pay my share, and the tax dodgers share too.

If I was the legal counsel for any city in Canada, I'd be worried very much about the liability of the municiplaity in permitting unlicensed public carriers to operate with impunity. UberX cars effectively have no insurance. Sooner or later there will be a serious accident, and if I was the plaintiff I'd certainly have the driver, Uber and the city named as defendants. Uber claims they have common insurance, but refuse to prove it. It looks like it will take death to force them. They are unlikely to have to pay anything since they have structured their operations with offshore corporate structures for this very reason, to insulate themselves from liability, but it will be interesting to have the truth in court.

Parks Canada used to fight every fire in the mountain Parks as a matter of policy. A couple of decades ago they recognized that they had helped to created an eco- monster, both flora and fauna were not naturally distributed in part because of that intervention. They had a program of the somewhat oxymoronic 'controlled burns', and changed strategies to fight only those fires that threatened towns or major infrastructure. Oh, and 'superfires' are not a new phenomenen. Naturally caused wildfires are more or less random, the intensity of the fire is dependent on both an increase in thatch/undergrowth and getting a trigger from lightning. Over time, it is a statistical certainty that every square inch burns. The source of every fire is known, and there are only two major causes of ignition: people and lightning. All lightning strikes are noted by satellite, so if a fire starts in the abscence of lightning it must have human origin.

Real men don't take public transit. 'Manspreading' is a feminist/ metrosexual term anyway. The correct phrase for a bro needing some spatial relief for Big Jim and The Twins is 'The Bull Triangle'.

That would include nearly every country in Africa. They have minimal taxation and spend very little on pesky social contracts. 'Successful' is an adjective rarely heard on the continent. Does your truth apply to them?

I think $500m is very steep for a new NHL franchise. The NHL does not want any relocations becuase the relocate fee is going to have to be a fraction of the new franchise fee- but most of all, players get a cut of the relocation money. The owners keep all the loot from a new franchise.

Gibbons must have been crapping his pants with Cecil in the 11th..... Good for the Jays, they won a game in a way that is rare for them.

What this country needs is a return to wage and price controls. First, let's seriously restrict the borders to the movement of goods and services and foreign capital and get this country working again!

Currency controls were not restricted to Communist countries. The UK had strict currency controls as recently as the 60s, and they were not nominally a Communist country..... After WWII many countries had capital controls until the 70s.

Conference calls are infamous. I was on one once when the big boss in Toronto went off on one of his tedious rants about whatever, on speakerphone across Canada at four locations. During a pause came loud and clear a comment "does this f***ing windbag ever take a break so I can get some sleep?". I knew exactly who it was, a colleague in Halifax that I had talked to just before the conference call. The boss carried on like it hadn't happened, but I heard later that Toronto heard it too.... Nobody got fired, but in a miraculous turn the CEO stopped attending the calls, and we actually got some work done on subsequnet calls.

Is it a full moon or just silly season? Investors would not come in the first place if their capital was at such severe risk of government caprice. They'd take it somewhere safer like Venzuela or into Nigerian Internet proposals. You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.....