Category: Uncategorized

A CEASEFIRE WITH RUSSIA?

That Donald Trump desperately wants to win the Nobel Prize for Peace shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.  I’m surprised he hasn’t awarded himself the presidential Medal of Freedom but there’s still time for that, right along with pardoning himself in perpetuity, you know, just in case there’s any discussion that he might have done anything illegal somewhere along the way.

This clown wants the peace prize so badly that he has no care for how many people will have to die for him to achieve it, or for him to be given it, upon his own personal demand, lest he threaten to invade Norway, the home of the award.

He will sell anyone out to get it.  If Melania were to be the last remaining obstacle, I wouldn’t like her chances for longevity in the White House.

After ambushing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office with the help of VP Vance and that odious boyfriend-reporter of Marjorie Taylor Greene, it appeared that Ukraine was in a bit of a rough spot.  Kicked out of the white House unceremoniously, and told that he was being “disrespectful,” Zelenskyy headed for the airport and found himself surrounded by supportive NATO members the very next day, with our own prime minister Justin Trudeau in attendance and among them.  In fact, Trudeau went to Ukraine himself in a demonstration of solidarity which was somewhat ironic, as Trudeau, and the country he led, have been significantly disrespected by Trump and Vance themselves recently. 

It seems that, for the Americans, disrespect is a relative thing.

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BUILDING HOMES TO BEAT TARIFFS

Ontario’s municipalities want to build houses.  Lots of them.

They also want to tackle the problem of housing by taking existing buildings and infrastructure and bringing them up to speed so as to enhance efforts to add to affordable and supportive housing in the province.

All of this is ambitious, and all of this costs money, plenty of it.  And in the face of an economic downturn brought about by reckless and negligent trade policies originating south of the border, it may seem to be a hill with a slope that’s too tough to climb.

But that’s the point.

The Association of Municipalities in Ontario, or AMO, believes that this is precisely the time to beef up investment in housing starts and housing completions, along with upgrades to existing stock and buildings that seem to be lacking purpose.

The municipalities feel that this proposed injection of stimulus money, over and above current levels of funding, is just what the province and its citizens need in the face of troubling economic times.

It’s not a new concept, and it has worked before.

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THOSE DAMNED CAMERAS

I was right, in that I knew I was wrong.

At least partially.  Maybe even more than partially.  But even with the tiniest sliver of potential accuracy, I still seemed to be way out in front of just about everyone other than staff when it came to those bloody cameras.  I have no idea about the car, as in how many, what type, where it/they might be, and what the plan, if any, might be moving forward.

To me, it was almost as if most of council had no idea about much to do with these cameras, certainly already purchased, and that car(s), almost as if they were hearing about it for the first time.

It’s disconcerting.  After watching in disbelief as they waded through a can of crushed armpits on the HR Liaison issue, another treat lay in front of me, as well as the edge-of-the-couch crowd watching live on YouTube, a number that may well have approached the teens.  Not the kids, but the numbers.

Along came the the cars and camera thing.  And while the discussion was much more lucid, it was a discussion where there was a dearth of information available for Council to make a responsible decision.  And I get that.  There’s plenty of detail not included, or not forthcoming, or just plain not there.  So on this point, I’ll grant them a political mulligan, just out of a sense of trying to be a good sport.

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HR LIASON: A PIÑATA THAT ISN’T THERE

Oh my God.

I can’t think of anything better to really say as the HR Liaison issue came up a third time, and for a third time it was like wading in a pool full of absolute muck.

I’ve never encountered brick-think on such a scale as I witnessed Tuesday night at the Renfrew Town Council meeting.

These people seemingly have a huge degree of difficulty when it comes to determining how Stage 3 grievances are to be heard.  It’s not the most complicated of things, but you’d never know it from sitting in this room for what seems like hours talking about the same thing over and over and over again, all the while cancelling out options with votes as the back-and-forth debate rages, and heads shake.

All of the very worst things that come to mind when criticizing Council come to the forefront on this particular issue.  Add to that the usual ambiguity and imperfection from certain staff by way of explanations that don’t address the question.

It’s like watching a blind-folded kid swinging wildly at a piñata, only there’s no piñata.  Or if you prefer, taking a bunch of cats for a walk without a leash. Walking through a cornfield?

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CARS AND CAMERAS: AGAIN

I’m going to get some of this wrong, I’m sure of it.  But I’m going to go ahead and report what I can, and if anyone out there wants to educate me, I’m easy enough to find.  I’d ask the official types for verification, but they don’t have a strong history of returning messages or email enquiries.

If I was to wait for them to help me along, I’d be left stranded without a guide.  So as best I can, the story moves forward.

In a previous article, I mentioned something about surveillance cameras and cars left in storage, the product of a provincial grant worked out between the former Police Services Board and the province to provide Renfrew with equipment to be used to combat car theft, both here in Renfrew and in the province at large.

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RUSSIA’S GAMBLE

In most ways, Russia is a difficult nation to understand, as Russians are a difficult people to understand.

At the same time, they can stand astride the apex of the world in the fields of arts, music, sports, even culture, yet be the most despicable collection of louts on the planet.

They know nothing but strength, yet have struggled to attain it and keep it.  They are a geo-political dichotomy, almost as if they can represent the very best, and the very worst of what man-kind can offer.

Plus, they’re just flat-out weird, in a neanderthal type of way.

They are the world’s most paranoid people, and that’s saying a lot.  But they are, and they feel that everyone hates them, one of the few things they can manage to be right about.

If they had a choice between authoritarian government and democracy and freedom, they’d take the authoritarian approach every time, since they don’t have any historical clue as to what the other two things even mean, much less what to do with them.

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THE RESURGENCE OF JUSTIN TRUDEAU?

It wasn’t that long ago where Justin Trudeau took his own version of his dad’s famous “long walk in the snow” and determined that he could no longer be Liberal leader, and by extension, prime minister.

Then Donald Trump came along.

The impact was immediate.  Suddenly the Liberals start to rocket up the polls, as Canadians coalesce around their political leadership in response to an unprovoked war with the United States.  And in a twist of cruel, ironic fate, it’s Justin Trudeau that seems to be the choice of Canadians in dealing with a dangerous mad man.

Are these the machinations of the political gods, keen to find opportunities for their own personal merriment?

That woke, feminist, communist traitor with his stupid socks and pretty eyebrows is now Winston Freaking Churchill?

Man, I thought that I had seen it all in my life, but apparently there’s more, much more.

Justin Trudeau is back.

Until later today.

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IN DEFENCE OF GRETZKY. SORT OF.

Sometimes I genuinely dislike my work, if that’s what this is.

Sometimes, in an effort to be as completely true to yourself and to your values, you have to say things, even do things that may come across as distasteful but, at the end of the day, are recognized as the proper thing to do.  To satisfy your conscience.

To witness the pillorying of Canadian hockey great Wayne Gretzky in his own country was, at first, something that didn’t bother me at all.  It was more with a sense of schadenfreude that I observed the pummelling The Great One was taking from his Canadian compatriots, that this was something he deserved, that he had brought it upon himself.  Serves him right kind of thing.

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EMPLOYEE MONITORING / RIGHT TO DISCONNECT

Technology plays a huge role in just about any endeavour, and that holds true with the administration of corporations and how they go about their day-to-day business.

It’s not just limited to correspondence, financial spreadsheets, word and number processing, and the creation of snappy graphs and other visuals for presentations.  Technology also has a significant role in the area of property and employee management and supervision.

It may sound a little Orwellian, a bit Big Brotherish, as in the novel 1984, and it kind of is, but it’s also kind of necessary given the number of employees and the number of tasks those employees are charged with carrying out.

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THE ROAD TO 2035

“Seventy-five percent of this job is half mental.”

I think it was that great American thinker Yogi Berra who came up with that line, in all seriousness, when asked a question by a reporter.  This from a man who said when you come to a fork in the road, you should take it.

It’s why, maybe, we shouldn’t hang our hats on philosophy laid down by tobacco-chewing baseball players, although Berra himself was more of a cigarette and cigar kind of guy.

Yogi is my inspiration today, although I’m not sure his utterance is a true fit for my commentary, but honestly, any time you have the opportunity to quote such a sage person as he, you go for it, whether it fits or not.

The Town of Renfrew, at least the administrative side of it, is in the middle of a journey, as all corporations are, along with other institutional entities, like schools, hospitals, prisons, etc.

Entities cannot remain static, that much is true.  They are living beasts that need to keep abreast of, or remain relevant to the ever-present requirement for change and nimbleness against a backdrop of near universal and enduring uncertainty.  In English, that means that things are constantly changing, and to remain relevant in the face of that fact, corporations like our town need to respond and adapt.  

So standing still is not an option.

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