On the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death

Culture / Literature / Shakespeare / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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“Is There Such a Thing as a ‘Bad’ Shakespeare Play?” asks a recent article on the Smithsonian website. It adds, “Shakespeare, despite the efforts of notable dissenting critics and writers to forcibly eject him, has occupied the position of world’s greatest playwright since his star was re-affixed to the firmament in the late 18th century. No other playwright is as universally revered. No other playwright has had countless theses and courses and books and articles speculative novels and so many buckets and buckets of ink devoted to him. And while to works of other playwrights of the era are still ……… click below for more ↓

Killing gnats with grenades

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies2 Comments

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Collingwood Council has taken the equivalent approach of a grenade attack to swat at a little gnat. It has launched a full-frontal assault on people feeding wildlife in order to get a couple of people in town to stop feeding feral cats. And of course it was done without any public input. The sensible, socially active and responsible approach would have been a campaign of education, public meetings, and information. But no, that’s too damned open and transparent for this council. What this council wants – and got – is punitive legislation. Let’s punish people who think they’re being humane ……… click below for more ↓

The Bard’s Best? Nope…

Books & Reviews / Culture / Literature / Pop Culture / ShakespeareLeave a comment

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To help celebrate the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death (April 23) and 452nd of his birth (also April 23), the website Mashable has put together a “battle” for the “Best Shakespeare Play Ever.” It’s done up as a sort of sports playoff grid (a tournament bracket), broken into four categories. Four? That’s right. Even though the First Folio was only divided into three categories, Mashable added their own: The plays are organized into four quadrants based on the four genres of plays Shakespeare commonly wrote: comedies, histories, tragedies and weird magic stuff. (Okay, we may have made up that last ……… click below for more ↓

Amateur layout and bad ads. Again.

Collingwood / Ethics and behaviour / Fonts & Layout / Media / Publicity & Communications / Social Order & Disorder / TypographyOne Comment

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I see the Town of Collingwood is still letting the EB layout its full page of ads in the paper.  Tragic. Embarrassing. Cringe-worthy. The latest back page mashup has as its first ad the worst of the worst sort of ad layout, the sort only amateurs would create. It’s too wide for any human being to comfortably and efficiently read. Then there’s the second page with its fat partner in layout crime. It’s embarrassing for a municipality to be thus represented. The only saving grace is that no one reads the EB any more, so not very many people see how bad it ……… click below for more ↓

Muddle-headed editorial palaver

Media Issues / Municipal Politics / PoliticsLeave a comment

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There’s a muddle-headed editorial in this weekend’s Collingwood Connection titled “Citizens, not rich developers should drive political ship” (sic*) that shows (again) how little the chain’s editorial writers understand municipal politics and the laws that govern it. It opens: Money talks and, in the case of municipal elections, one could argue that all of those cheques, banknotes and e-transfers going toward funding the war chests of various candidates have the potential to speak very loudly. The writer clearly has never read the Ontario Municipal Elections Act which says in Section 71: A contributor shall not make contributions exceeding a total of $750 to ……… click below for more ↓

Nibiru nuttiness

Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery2 Comments

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I’ve written about the wingnuts and their mysterious planet Nibiru – the so-called Planet X – in the past. It’s one of the furthest wacky conspiracies on the fringe of wackiness, and fairly recent. It mostly sprang whole cloth from the brain (if I can call it that…) of uber-wingnut Nancy Lieder, whose website, ZetaTalk, has been spewing diaphanous piffle of the most banal sort since 1995. Lieder claims to be in psychic contact with aliens called the Zetas (stop laughing), and has conned a whole bunch of exceptionally gullible folks into believing her (although there have been some bitch-slap moments with ……… click below for more ↓

Spotting incompetence

Critical Thinking / Management & leadership / Philosophy / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Further to my earlier post, I wanted to provide some tips on how to spot incompetence in an employee or, especially, in managers and executives. I understand that incompetence may be a subjective view. What some view as incompetence others may see as cautionary, conservative or even adequate. But here’s what others have identified as incompetent or dysfunctional behaviour or personality traits in managers and leaders. Incompetence is not black-and-white. It comes in many shades. And incompetence doesn’t (always) mean stupid: intelligent people may get promoted above their competence level, according to the Peter Principle, discussed in my previous post. They ……… click below for more ↓

Peter, Parkinson and Adams

Books & Reviews / Collingwood / Council / Critical Thinking / Ethics and behaviour / Philosophy / PoliticsOne Comment

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C. Northcote Parkinson, Lawrence J. Peter, and Scott Adams are for me the ‘holy trinity’ of philosophers of modern bureaucracy, within both the public service and the corporate structure. As philosophers, they are all keen observers and witty commentators on the human condition, with emphasis on the nature of organizations, leadership and management. Not always in the lofty or strategically-focused terms of, say, Sun Tzu or Machiavelli; all three are more prosaic and more cynical. And funnier – an adjective seldom used with either classical writer. These three pundits are, of course, well-known today: every CEO, corporate leader and ambitious manager worth their ……… click below for more ↓

Demagogues and democracy

Books & Reviews / Collingwood / Council / Municipal Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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“I just wish, at some point in time, councillors would show a little more integrity or credibility on the floor of council… It’s like every time we try to do something, there’s criticism, no matter what we do. I’d like to see councillors do the right thing. And in my opinion, these people are not doing the right thing. They’re hypocrites. They’re not telling the truth.” No, that’s not Mayor Cooper speaking about our current council that continues to blindly clear cut its way through the town’s institutions and services, masticate our already battered reputation into spittle-and-chips, and bludgeon staff morale into pulpy submission. ……… click below for more ↓

Why? A few questions for councillors

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesOne Comment

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Why? Councillor Madigan said he had written that on every page of the report about Collus, presented to council last week by lawyer Mark Rodger. After reading the report, I also have many questions why. It’s a good question. I too, wrote ‘why?” on many pages, albeit likely for rather different reasons. Why, I asked myself as I watched the meeting and listened to the comments from councillors last week, is our current council so intent on destroying its successful, accomplished utility – a superb, efficient business – while demoralizing and alienating the staff who have served this community so well for decades? Why is ……… click below for more ↓

The latest FOI emails examined

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesOne Comment

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One hundred and seventy pages of email correspondence between the town’s interim CAO, John Brown, and the Collus/Powerstream CEO, Ed Houghton, from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, , 2015, were recently released to the public as the result of a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request filed locally. I have printed and read through all 170 pages, and marked up many of them. It’s dull reading, aside, that is, from the included “Third Party Review of the Collus PowerStream Strategic Partnership,” which should be required reading for all members of council. Let’s get something straight: No one at Collus works for the town, ……… click below for more ↓

Collingwood’s broken committee system, part 2

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesOne Comment

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Back in early 2015, I wrote that the experimental standing committee structure adopted by council was broken. Well, wouldn’t you know it, a year later, council finally agreed. And they replaced it with… you guessed it: another standing committee system. But it’s potentially a much more dangerous threat to our community. The former system had committees of three council members, which met away from the prying cameras that broadcast full council meetings, some of the committees skulking on the top floor of the library to further avoid public scrutiny. Because a group of three councillors was not a quorum, committees could only recommend a course of ……… click below for more ↓

Fixing the shared services agreement

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / User fees and costs3 Comments

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First, some history: for 15 years, Collus – now Collus/Powerstream – had a beneficial, mutually-agreed-on and successful agreement with the town to provide services back to the town at reasonable rates. These were things the town did not or could not provide itself for reasons of cost, staffing, expertise, equipment or interest. It was mutually beneficial to have Collus provide them. The list of potential services included: Reconnect & Collection, Meter Reading, Billing & Collecting, Customer Service, Information Technology Management, Data Tracking, Accounting, Engineering, Planning & Necessary Maintenance, Contracting with Developers, Customers & Others, Subcontracting Services, After Hours Response, Normal Hours Response, Emergency Preparedness, Provision of Supervisory Services, HR, Policy Development, Regulatory Assistance, Reporting and Capital Construction Activities. ……… click below for more ↓

Master Han Fei’s Wisdom

Collingwood / Council / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Long before Niccolo Machiavelli wrote his now-famous work of political philosophy, The Prince, there was another man writing in a similar vein in China. And, like many other sages, his words have important lessons that can prove useful, even today, for our own municipal council. Han Fei Tzu (aka Han Feizi) was a prince in the Han Kingdom in the third century BCE. He was a member of and spokesperson for the “legalistic” school that challenged many of the Confucian notions of government. In his short life he wrote 55 books – really short essays we would call chapters today. ……… click below for more ↓

Betraying the Public Interest

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Taxes3 Comments

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At last Monday’s council meeting, Deputy Mayor Brian Saunderson maneuvered so that interim CAO John Brown was allowed to publicly speak to the question of his contract being extended before any vote was taken. Even before anyone on council had a chance to comment on whether he should be allowed to speak. This motion was the topic of my previous post. I believe this is an egregious betrayal of the public interest, but it’s worth looking at the process in more detail, especially to watch the video of the meeting. In the video, it seems clear to me that Saunderson has little or no interest in an ……… click below for more ↓

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