Scripturient

The report The Block don’t want you to see

Late last year, BMA Management Consulting produced a hefty 517-page report called Municipal Study 2017* that examines a wide variety of socio-economic indicators in more than 100 Ontario municipalities: taxes, user fees, population, average home value, water/sewer, economic development programs and more. As Owen Sound notes on its website: The study identifies both key quantifiable indicators and selective environmental factors that should be considered part of a comprehensive evaluation of a local municipality’s financial condition. Use of the study over a number of years provides trends to allow decision-makers to monitor selected indicators over time. Trend analysis helps to provide ……… click below for more ↓

A farewell to 2017

2017-12-31 2018-01-04 Blog & Blogging / Musings / My Writing / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

Twenty seventeen has a special significance for me, beyond merely another year in the ever-lengthening calendar of my life. I find it difficult, sometimes, to believe I am as old as I am – who, after all, lives this long? I used to think that. Back then, back in my salad days of my misspent youth, fifty was impossibly old. Sixty? Ancient. Beyond that? Methuselah old. Or perhaps I simply don’t act my age. I still listen to the Beatles and the music of my youth, and play computer games. I still watch Godzilla movies and play tag with my ……… click below for more ↓

Collingwood’s culture of secrecy

2017-12-27 2017-12-27 Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Publicity & Communications / Utilities: electricity and waterLeave a comment

For the past fifteen months, I have been trying to get a copy of the Request For Proposals (RFP) sent out to potential buyers for the purchase of our public utility. For the past fifteen months, the town has fought me, has refused to hand it over, has challenged my appeals to the Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC). The public is not allowed to see it, even though it affects us and our once-public utility. Even though it is in the public’s interest to know what has been going on. Why not? After all, the RFP was released in August, ……… click below for more ↓

What became of Better Together Collingwood?

2017-12-23 2017-12-23 Collingwood / Council / Deceit / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Publicity & Communications2 Comments

Rather amusingly, the Better Together Collingwood website is still online. The latest event noted on the site is a rally for Monday March 25, 2013. Its Facebook page also remains intact, although the most recent post there is dated Jan. 15, 2015. But what are stale-dated entries about non-existent activities of a fake association among friends, eh? Well, it seems the only friends left for BTC are at the council table. It’s amusing because as a group it ceased to be a functional entity the moment the last municipal election was held and Brian Saunderson won his seat as deputy ……… click below for more ↓

Brian suddenly realizes there’s a budget process.

2017-12-21 2017-12-21 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Publicity & Communications / TaxesLeave a comment

Over on BBFFWS (Brian’s BFF’s Web Site) is a sort-of-a story about Collingwood’s 2018 budget. It’s really just some comments about a document this council won’t even get a peek at until sometime in late January, and won’t get through the approval stage until late spring or even early summer. Even though all of our municipal neighbours, the county and indeed most of Ontario, have already approved their 2018 budgets, Collingwood continues to slog along, months behind the process curve. And nary a word of complaint from The Block. Well, to be fair, nary a word they even noticed was ……… click below for more ↓

The Block do it to themselves. Again.

2017-12-17 2017-12-17 Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour2 Comments

Some readers may be tired of me pointing out how dim-witted The Block on our council are, how little they understand, how little they know, how they dislike reading and learning, how they don’t understand even simple consequences of their actions and how they always blame others for their mistakes and their destructive acts. So this post, let’s let a couple of them do it themselves. In this piece it will be Deputy Mayor Brian Saunderson and his lickspittle Councillor Bob Madigan. The headline on the Collingwood Connection piece reads, “Collingwood council wants reason for Clearview’s exit from airport board.” Well like ……… click below for more ↓

Oumuamua: just a piece of rock

2017-12-14 2017-12-16 Astronomy & Cosmology / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery4 Comments

If you can watch the whole bit of this piece of New Age woo hoo without flinching or giving up, you will likely shake your head at the utter, mindless gullibility of humankind. And it’s not even political. But by now you know the Net is crammed full of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, food fads, creationism, homeopathy and other claptrap. And you already have seen how the wingnuts can easily bend and twist everything, taking stuff out of context or simply making it up to suit their wacky beliefs. The latest codswallop is that scientists claim a tumbling cigar- shaped (or ……… click below for more ↓

Shin Godzilla: the reboot

2017-12-13 2023-04-28 Culture / Fables / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / Legends & Myths / Personal Reminiscences / Philosophy3 Comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk7KaxjTz-0 I’m almost embarrassed to admit that, of all the Godzilla films I’ve watched, I can recall the exact details of few. I cannot remember, just by looking at the title, which monsters were battling which. I need to look at the slipcase cover to see a picture to remind me which foe Godzilla was battling this time. Or foes, because there’s often more than one. In many ways, I prefer the original premise: a single Godzilla versus the world rather than Godzilla versus other monsters. Easier to keep track of the players that way. But that hasn’t happened in ……… click below for more ↓

War for the Planet of the Apes considered

2017-12-11 2018-02-04 Culture / Faith / Film & ReviewsLeave a comment

Pierre Boulle never imagined War for the Planet of the Apes, the latest film in the remade franchise. In fact, it would be fair to say the author of the original book never imagined any of the series, from the first in 1968 to the latest, released in 2017. They were far, far from what he had envisioned in the early 1960s. Warning: spoilers ahead. Boulle’s 1963 novel, Monkey Planet, was basically a satire and a social commentary. And it wasn’t based in America: the astronauts came from France (and their last view on landing was of the Eiffel Tower ……… click below for more ↓

Gojira, the original kaiju

2017-12-06 2023-04-20 Culture / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / Legends & Myths / Personal Reminiscences4 Comments

At the end of most Godzilla films, the audience is led to believe the giant reptile has finally been killed off. Blown up, defeated by another monster, killed by technology, sunk to the bottom of the ocean or suffered some similar fate. And yet there he*** is, hale and hearty in the next film, rampaging through Japan once again, and facing yet another kaiju (giant monster) – or often several. After 32 films, Godzilla still comes back. And so do I.* I was thinking about Godzilla this week, today in particular. This is the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion. ……… click below for more ↓

The death of community newspapers

2017-11-29 2017-11-29 Collingwood / Local history / Media2 Comments

In 1857 – a year before Collingwood was incorporated as a town – John Hogg launched the Enterprise. The first local newspaper started its presses. In 1870, David Robson launched its first competitor: the Bulletin. In 1881, the Bulletin was sold to William Williams and J.G. Hand. William’s 17-year-old son, David (later a town mayor), joined the paper in 1886. After the Great Depression, citing financial reasons, the two papers merged: The Enterprise-Bulletin was born. It printed its own paper, as well as being a printer for community events, flyers, brochures and even personal publications. In the 1960s, owner Jack ……… click below for more ↓

EPCOR and The Block’s Big Lie

2017-11-27 2022-05-25 Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Publicity & Communications / Staff and administration / Utilities: electricity and waterLeave a comment

For all their evils and their wrongs, the Soviets did some things very well: propaganda and disinformation. As one writer commented in the Spectator, “Communist ideology dismissed the idea of truth as a bourgeois construct. What mattered was power; and you baptised as truth those doctrines which provided it.” Stalin defined truth as what he said it was. The Soviets were such masters at it from an early stage that George Orwell declared that history stopped in 1936; after that there was only propaganda. So good were they at it that their methods and techniques were copied by other states ……… click below for more ↓

Guillermo, monsters and me

2017-11-17 2023-04-28 Arts / Culture / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / Pop CultureOne Comment

Tucked away at the bottom of a tall display case in the ‘At Home With Monsters’ exhibit at the AGO is a small collection of seven old, well-thumbed books, all by the 19th century French naturalist and entomologist, Jean-Henri Fabre. At the very bottom of the pile, its title almost hidden in the shadows, is The Life of the Spider, first translated into English in 1913, but not translated again until 1971. The books subtly reflect the importance director and artist Guillermo del Toro places on insects in his works. He calls them “living metaphors” and adds, “They are so ……… click below for more ↓

Remembering those who served

2017-11-11 2017-11-11 Family history / History & Biography / Personal Reminiscences / War & MilitaryOne Comment

It’s at this time of the year, as we approach Remembrance Day, that I think most about my family, especially those who have died. I wish I had known when I was younger what I know today, so I could have asked them more about their lives, and about their service in the military, about their wars. I have read a lot about those wars, about the military and political history of the last century; it’s a topic I never tire of reading about. I wish I could have learned more from my own family about what it was like, then. ……… click below for more ↓

Alectra says no: The Block screwed us again

2017-11-10 2017-11-10 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Taxes / User fees and costsLeave a comment

The headline on the media release reads, “Alectra selling its shares in Collus PowerStream to Collingwood.” What it should add is that Collingwood residents and taxpayers were betrayed by members of their own council and administration. After a three-year campaign to screw us, The Block have won a major victory in abhorrent behaviour. They are privatizing our electrical utility and next year will do the same to our water/wastewater utility, to the same corporation. Our publicly-owned utility will be sold to EPCOR, an out-of-province, for-profit corporation that pays a dividend to the city of Edmonton only, and that will raise ……… click below for more ↓