Scripturient

The bucket list, kicked

Nowadays the “bucket list” concept has become a wildly popular cultural meme, thanks to the movie of the same name. Subsequent marketing of the idea to millennials has proven a successful means to derive them of their income, with which they seem eager to part. I don’t like the concept. The list, I mean, not necessarily the plucking of the millennial chickens who willingly hand over their financial feathers. They get what they deserve. Bucketlist.org has, at the time of this writing, more than 5.317 million “dreams” for you to pursue. Contributed by more than 450,000 people. And your individual ……… click below for more ↓

Hypergraphia

2016-10-12 2016-10-12 Behaviour & Psychology / Culture / Science & Technology / Writing & cursiveLeave a comment

An article in the September, 2016, issue of Doctor’s Review looks at the curious, compelling affliction called hypergraphia: the obsessive need to write. I never knew before this that there was an actual illness of this sort. As someone who is often driven by a deep compulsion to write, I am both curious and a little afraid to learn more. And of course, I turned to the internet. Curious because I always want to learn, especially when it’s something that might touch me in some way. Afraid because I’ve always thought of my writing as a mere personality trait, a passion I’ve ……… click below for more ↓

Collus report debunks Block conspiracies

2016-10-10 2016-10-10 Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies2 Comments

Every year, the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) publishes the scorecard of local distribution companies (LDCs). Across the province, more than 70 LDCs are ranked and rated according to performance, customer service, efficiency, progress and other measurable data for residents to see how their utility is doing. It’s a thing called openness and transparency. As the OEB notes: The scorecard includes traditional metrics for assessing a distributor’s services, such as frequency of power outages, financial performance and costs per customer. In addition, performance results for 2014 and onward will include a number of new metrics that directly reflect the customer experience, ……… click below for more ↓

Promises, promises, promises – all broken

2016-10-09 2016-10-09 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour10 Comments

Two years ago, in a series in the Collingwood Connection on the eve of the last election, 2014, all candidates were asked to make statements about certain issues. I thought it would be good to examine a few of their promises and see how well they have progressed. Whether they have actually kept those promises. Here is what they said about the topic of accountability and to measure their performance to date. First, just what is accountability? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “the quality or state of being accountable; especially : an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or ……… click below for more ↓

13 Ways to Kill Collingwood

2016-10-05 2016-10-06 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

I found it! I stumbled across the secret manifesto The Block is using to destroy Collingwood. It’s in a book called “13 Ways to Kill Your Community” (Frontenac House, 2010) by Doug Griffiths and Kelley Clemmer. And pretty much everything in it outlines The Block’s not-so-secret plan to turn this community into rubbish. I know, you’re going to object, “But Ian, you know The Block doesn’t read! How can something as big as a book be their secret manifesto when they won’t even read Municipal World or their own budget?” Because, dear reader, the book was written in 2010, before ……… click below for more ↓

Old habits, old junk

2016-10-02 2016-10-04 Critical Thinking / My Writing / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

The past couple of weeks I have been trying to turn my office (one of our spare bedrooms, once upon a time) back into my office. A working space I’ll need when Susan retires this winter. My man cave, so to speak. Over the past few years, since I sold the store and went back to home-based freelance work, I have spread my tools and toys around the house, an inexorable sprawl, rather like moss overtaking a pathway. Books litter the house, while my office became more of a walk-in storage closet. Until you could no longer walk into it ……… click below for more ↓

Enough with the astrology claptrap already

2016-10-01 2016-10-01 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery2 Comments

“No,” wrote Phil Plait on Slate, “NASA Didn’t Change Your Astrological Sign.” Which it didn’t. But that hasn’t stopped the wingnuts from wailing over the recent announcement from NASA allegedly changing your horoscope. Let’s start with the basics. Plait sums it up nicely: Astrology isn’t science; it’s nonsense. It’s been tested 10 ways to Sunday and every time it fails. Even astrologers have come up with tests for it, and it’s failed those. Astrology doesn’t work. Ah, but that doesn’t seem to dampen the belief of those hooked on superstition. Astrology is a business and the sheep must continue to be ……… click below for more ↓

You’re not invited. Again.

2016-09-29 2021-05-15 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesLeave a comment

You, the public, get shut out again. Less openness, less accountability, more secrecy, more Block. The annual general meeting (AGM) of Collus-PowerStream on October 6 – the local electrical utility that you ostensibly own 50% of – is not open to the public. It’s another closed door, secret meeting. Why? Council will send its representative and its (illegally-appointed) pet staff (as board members, one of whom doesn’t even live in town, let alone within the Collus service area). But the public isn’t allowed to attend to hear what the utility plans, what is said by its representatives and what the future ……… click below for more ↓

Another scathing email to council

2016-09-27 2016-09-28 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour4 Comments

Here is the next scathing email from local businessman and developer Tom Vincent, sent to council following the debacle of Monday night’s ongoing effort by The Block to sabotage the hospital’s redevelopment. This is not the first time The Block have been severely chastised by the community over this issue. To properly understand the context, you may want to read my previous posts about the Collingwood General & Marine Hospital’s redevelopment plans. But here’s a synopsis: As I’ve written in the past, The Block opposes the planned redevelopment on Poplar Sideroad. The Block look for every opportunity to sabotage the ……… click below for more ↓

Sabotaging the hospital (again)

2016-09-27 2016-09-28 Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies6 Comments

Last night at council, The Borg Block again took another step towards sabotaging the Collingwood General & Marine Hospital’s redevelopment plans. Not unexpected: destroying the community is a key plank in their platform, as we’ve seen by their actions against the airport, water utility and Collus PowerStream. Plus, they need to pander to their ever-dwindling group of supporters who want to stop the redevelopment on a site they don’t like (but which 84% of medical staff do). That handful of venomous folk – which includes some former politicians and former VOTE members – hold sway over The Block and thus town ……… click below for more ↓

Your $350,000 wasted

2016-09-26 2016-09-26 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / TaxesOne Comment

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request I filed recently shows a disturbing abuse of your tax dollars. Money was wasted that could have been spent on doing something good, something positive, something useful for Collingwood. Download the report here. In the two-year period between mid-2014 and mid-2016, the town’s administration spent $340,000 of your tax dollars on its efforts to destroy the relationship with our utility partner, Collus-PowerStream. And given the billing trends shown in the document, that amount now tops $350,000 and probably much higher. What’s equally troubling is that this effort appears to have started under the radar in July, 2014. ……… click below for more ↓

Dilbert, Dogbert and Collingwood

2016-09-26 2016-09-26 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Humour & SatireLeave a comment

I’ve often commented that the cartoon strip Dilbert, by Scott Adams, is closer to a documentary than it is to a cartoon. Not just about the quagmire of corporate life: Dilbert applies equally to the sodden bureaucracy of government. And here are some strips to prove my hypothesis, at least on the local level. I culled these strips from around the web, from many, many sites, but the copyright and credit all belongs to Scott Adams. I hope he won’t mind me using his work as an example of how things work in Collingwood. It’s very, very instructive, after all. And ……… click below for more ↓

Dinner at the Bent Taco

2016-09-24 2021-05-15 Alcohol / Collingwood / Food & Drink / Hot Sauces & Spices / MexicoLeave a comment

We had dinner at the Bent Taco on Pine Street last night. Collingwood’s nuevo-Mexican restaurant is not exactly Mexican but influenced by it, and in a good way. Food was excellent. If you haven’t been there, you should go. Very popular place and I wondered why it took so long for us to get there. Don’t go expecting traditional Mexican fare (hint: go to Mexico and get outside your resort for that!) You won’t get huachinango a la Veracruzana or Oaxacan tamales here, but you will get recognizable choices like tacos, burritos and tortas (the latter sadly red meats only, no fish or ……… click below for more ↓

The unstrategic anti-plan returns

2016-09-22 2016-09-22 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Publicity & Communications2 Comments

Wednesday’s standing committee heard that the so-called “community-based strategic plan” has risen from the dead – a document that was committee-driven (not community; and a committee of carefully selected buddies, at that…), and was neither strategic nor a plan. See it in the agenda package. A real strategic plan would have been council-driven, based on the vision of our elected representatives. But having none, The Block turned it over to an outsider and their friends to come up with something.* Once The Block approved its creation in 2015, the resulting document, the ‘CBSP,’** became a bureaucratic zombie that never seems to die, ……… click below for more ↓