Municipal Politics – Page 9

More construction at Centennial Pool

2013-01-26 2013-01-26 Collingwood / Municipal Politics / PhotographyLeave a comment

Here you can see the additional aluminum supports that have been erected to hold up the fabric covering. Only a small area at the north has had some of the fabric installed (visible at the lower left of the photo). Workers were doing some maintenance jobs, Saturday. You can see how tall the centre of the building is. It will feel spacious and airy, inside. Checking the struts and supports. Nice to see the company working on a weekend. This gives you an idea how big and roomy the final building will be. A view from the intersection at Spruce ……… click below for more ↓

Not the expected blog post, I’m afraid

2013-01-24 2013-01-24 Books & Reviews / Humour & Satire / Literary pretensions / Municipal Politics / Personal Reminiscences5 Comments

Sorry to disappoint those readers who expected this to be a blog post on ukuleles, tequila or our beautiful Mexican Sister City, Zihuatanejo (“Zee-hwa” for those in the know). I refer, of course, to comments in the recent parody video, in which my blog was commented upon (as if blogging was something conspiratorial, but it seems pretty much everything is, these days for some folks…). However, my energies have of late been taken up by several other pressing projects, meetings and local political issues, so those topics have become back-burner projects. Sorry. Speaking of conspiracies, my main research – online and ……… click below for more ↓

What’s this nonsense about mushrooms?

2013-01-19 2013-01-19 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Collingwood / Critical Thinking / Municipal Politics / Science & Technology13 Comments

In the middle of a video parody on YouTube that skewers council on our new rec facilities, there’s a comment about “the mushroom farm debacle.” It then goes on, rather erratically, to rail about “two yanks” and mushrooms growing in manure and “enobe” mushrooms. What debacle? Clearly the video’s creator never actually watched the public presentation made to council a year ago about a possible use for the terminals as an indoor mushroom farm. Or read the stories in both newspapers. Or heard the news reports on local radio. Or asked anyone on staff or council about the proposal. Or ……… click below for more ↓

Centennial Pool gets covered!

2013-01-17 2013-01-17 Collingwood / Municipal Politics2 Comments

Not sure how much will get done today – it’s a cold, windy winter day. But yesterday, in more clement weather, six frame struts for the Sprung building were erected at Centennial Pool, and I got these photographs: Here’s the frame going up, on January 16.Six frames have gone up – there are another eight to go. You can get an idea of how big and spacious the building will be inside by comparing the height to that of the workers and equipment. One panel of the Kevlar-coated, high-tech covering was installed before construction stopped, Wednesday, but not both components ……… click below for more ↓

The Art of Worldly Wisdom

2013-01-10 2013-01-12 Arts / Books & Reviews / Canadian Politics / Language & Grammar / Literary pretensions / Municipal Politics / Quotes & Mis-quotes2 Comments

Published in 1647, The Art of Worldly Wisdom is a collection of 300 aphorisms about life, behaviour, politics, morality, faith, philosophy and society. One comment, on Amazon.ca called it, somewhat unfairly to Machiavelli, “Machiavelli with a soul.” I have been reading it of late as part of my ongoing study of Machiavelli. It was written by Balthasar Gracian (1601-1658), a Spanish-born Jesuit priest, and titled in its original Spanish, “Oraculo manual y arte de prudencia” which translates to “The Oracle, a Manual of the Art of Discretion.” Today it is known as The Art of Worldly Wisdom. A popular English ……… click below for more ↓

The Hidden Costs of Gambling

2013-01-01 2013-01-01 Canadian Politics / Collingwood / Games & Gaming / Municipal Politics / Social Order & Disorder3 Comments

Let’s start 2013 with a sober consideration of the social and economic costs of gambling. Back n 2006, the Canadian Medical Association noted that, “Provincial governments may be glossing over the societal and health costs of problem gambling, including depression and suicide, because of the significant income they gain from gambling, claim several public advocacy and mental health organizations.” Glossing over is a polite way of saying “deceiving.” They’re hiding the facts from the public. The CMA called for a thorough and scientific study of the “relevance of depression and suicide among problem gamblers.” “The normal system that provides checks and ……… click below for more ↓

A Council Christmas Carol – Part 2

2012-12-28 2012-12-28 Arts / Books & Reviews / Collingwood / Humour & Satire / Literary pretensions / Municipal Politics / Personal Reminiscences5 Comments

STAVE TWO (continued from Part 1). THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS. I awoke in the dark, late Friday night. Winter days are so short that sometimes it seems a mere moment passes between sunrise and sunset. The day had whizzed by, a flurry of phone calls, reading, emails, walking the dog and shovelling the driveway as the snow continued to fall. By the time Susan came home and we had dinner, I was tired and aching from tossing snow. Sleep came quickly that evening, but didn’t last long. Now I was awake, mulling over last night’s events in my head. Looking from ……… click below for more ↓

The Municipal Machiavelli is online

2012-12-26 2012-12-26 Books & Reviews / Collingwood / Literary pretensions / Municipal Politics / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

I’ve spent much of the past few days putting online my book in which I assess and rewrite Niccolo Machiavelli’s famous (or infamous) work, The Prince, in a WordPress format. I wrote this book earlier this year, but was unable to find a publisher (I got distracted from my search). Maybe having it online will help. The new site is here: The Municipal Machiavelli The book slightly tops 69,000 words, has more than 400 quotations from The Prince and other works by Machiavelli, as well as from many other authors including Robert Greene, Nietzsche, Cicero, Sun Tzu, Han Fei Tzu, Napoleon and more. The majority of ……… click below for more ↓

Explaining Council Expenses

2012-12-24 2012-12-24 Collingwood / Municipal Politics2 Comments

Tip of the hat to Ian Adams for clearing up any misrepresentation of council’s expenses and clarifying some information, in his most recent blog post. The total council expense allotment is well under budget this year. It usually is; we are very cautious in how we use our rather limited allotment. However, Scoop doesn’t explain a couple of things about how the allotment affects us individually. We don’t generally have enough in our council expense accounts to attend more than one event a year – the amount ($4,000 each) alloted has remained the same since at least 2003, although hotel, transportation, ……… click below for more ↓

A Council Christmas Carol – part 1

2012-12-20 2012-12-20 Collingwood / Humour & Satire / Municipal Politics / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

STAVE ONE. It was one of those long winter days. I was back in town late, that Thursday, well after dark, driving down the main street watching the heavy snow cover the road and sidewalks. I’d been out of town almost the whole day, entombed in various meetings. Too much time spent driving to and fro, too much coffee, junk food, and not enough exercise. I was tired, hungry, cranky and not at all in the holiday season spirit. All I wanted to do was get home and get into bed. But first I had to pick up the agenda from town hall. The ……… click below for more ↓

Gambling and the local economy part 2

2012-12-18 2012-12-18 Canadian Politics / Collingwood / Games & Gaming / Municipal Politics / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

Seventy three dollars. It’s not a large amount if you’re middle class, certainly not if you’re Conrad Black. But for others it can be significant. If you’re on minimum wage, it’s a full day’s wage, before taxes. If you’re a senior on a fixed income, it’s a week’s groceries. It’s also the average amount a typical gambler spends at one time in a gaming facility in Ontario, according to the answers I got from my questions sent months ago to the OLG. The clerk gave me their answers last night, only after the discussion about extending the OLG deadline. Seventy three dollars. It will get ……… click below for more ↓

The Known Unknowns

2012-12-06 2012-12-06 Collingwood / Municipal PoliticsLeave a comment

“There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know,” said United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld in a now-famous statement. “There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don’t know.” Monday night, Council was treated to a “known unknown” when we were asked to approve a motion* that condemned a report that at least seven of us had never seen, let alone read. The report in question was written to justify erecting wind turbines near ……… click below for more ↓