During the final session reserved for comments, discussions became somewhat heated when a man stood and said through the “human mic,” “We are all God’s children. We should not label each other.” Another man responded, “Issues of inequality should be at the center of discussions." A woman added, “Don’t mention God. It makes me feel like I have to hide my agnostic beliefs.”One's head spins.
The Occupiers Speak (You Can't Make This Stuff Up)
You can't make this kind of stuff up.
Local Energy Efficiency and Affordable Housing Woes
Two big stories in town this week... first off was a rather scathing opinion piece detailing our local version of the Energy Efficient Appliances programs - similar to the federal one. The point of the article was that since the program started, our electricity has gone up from 7.7 cents to 12.5 cents - nearing 'doubled' status, and therefore hasnt really saved anyone anything. There is much more to the article, but I was interested in a comment I read this morning by a reader.
She went rabid, talking about how much more those people would be paying now if they had NOT bought energy efficient furnaces, washer/dryers, etc. Well let's think of some math first... hmmm... the furnaces I saw that were approved for the program were $4000 to $6000 a piece. The washer dryer sets are around $1500 on the cheaper end, $2200 for the approved brands... and windows are extortionately high. It's 2 grand for one big living room window if you are lucky. So let's say someone decided to go all out and purchase 10 grand in energy efficient appliances and additions - and now they are 'saving' 20 bucks a month on electricity because of it. Okay - so how long will it take until they break even for what they paid in the first place (including the few hundred dollars refund from the municipal and fed govt)....By my calculations it would take 500 months, or 41+ years, to break even at saving $20/month and adding up to 10 grand. So in 41 years they will start their real savings (if electricity stays at 12.5 cents but it's actually supposed to go up even more). Wooo that's quite a deal! OR if they had chosen NOT to join this program and did NOT spend 10 grand on appliances, they would only be paying $20 a month extra so it would take 41+ years for them to finally be able to say they were wasting money by not joining that program 'way back when'. But wait - a furnace lifetime is 20-30 years by recommendation so all the people that bought a new one in order to save 20 bucks a month on their bill will have to buy another new one before they truly reap the benefits...wow that's awesome!
Did the woman writing the comment stop to think of that for even one minute? Those people are not saving a dime - and what if they bought their items on credit card or finance plan? they are paying the bill for that every month still and I guarantee you it's more than $20. So what are people thinking?
If you want to buy energy efficient stuff - go right ahead. But if you dropped a few grand (or several) in order to do it, don't dupe yourself into thinking that you are saving any money at all. I know that my house sucks and I would love to fix the windows and put in new insulation in one wall that is realllly crappy - but after I added up $8000 for windows and $1200 for the wall re-do, I realized I would not be saving any real money for a very very long time and we are not going to live in this house long enough to reap the benefits at all. So what's the point? I am smart enough to figure that out in mere minutes, so why can't anyone else?
The other story surrounds the lower income houses that I have talked about in the past. To backtrack, a housing company came here around 2005 and started building 2 and 3 bedroom attached/terraced homes that were selling for only $95,000 to $100,000 each. It was all over the papers that year - Own Your Own Home for Less Than Rent! weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. However - with the housing market spiking around that same time, within a couple of years, those same homes were selling for over $200,000. Wow - is that affordable or what? Anyway so yeah a whole bunch of people still bought them though they had literally doubled+ in price.
And whoops - it is now coming out that the workmanship on them is so bad, real estate agents are starting to not even want to list them! One building even has it's entire foundation slab separating and 'floating', which is causing structural damage to the entire row of homes. And the people are stuck. They have only been paying the mortgage for a few years and cannot sell them for the 'new' value of $150,000 because they cannot afford to do that when they purchased for $220,000... and also because no one is going to want to buy a house that is going to fall down on top of the other ones or has mould problems, etc etc. Whoops.
But I might sound really harsh here in saying that I do not feel sorry for the people that are stuck. well okay, I do, because I am human and I care. However in the grand scheme of things, they bought homes that were supposed to be affordable housing units for almost a quarter of a million dollars and jumped on the bandwagon of owning these cutesy little homes just because all the hype said it was 'stupid to rent when you can own'. Own what? A piece of crap set on a wasteland that 20 years ago was deemed SWAMP and UNINHABITABLE???? Hello? homes that only 2 years before they bought were selling for less than a hundred grand brand spanking new? I don't get it. They did not do their homework on the most important and biggest priced item they would ever buy in their entire lives - and now they are upset and complaining about it.
My friend and I looked at those homes and my friend even went to a meeting to learn about them when they first went up, and she came back saying 'holy crap, I wouldnt buy one of those EVER'. She is just a normal person doing a normal job with no college education and she figured out that it was a bad idea all by herself. Why did so many others fall for this? We said right from the start that they are going to be pieces of crap that will fall apart in 10 years. They started to fall apart in only 6 so wow - but whatever. I dont want people to be homeless but I also do not want to bail out those who fell for the sales pitch and signed on the dotted lines willingly.
She went rabid, talking about how much more those people would be paying now if they had NOT bought energy efficient furnaces, washer/dryers, etc. Well let's think of some math first... hmmm... the furnaces I saw that were approved for the program were $4000 to $6000 a piece. The washer dryer sets are around $1500 on the cheaper end, $2200 for the approved brands... and windows are extortionately high. It's 2 grand for one big living room window if you are lucky. So let's say someone decided to go all out and purchase 10 grand in energy efficient appliances and additions - and now they are 'saving' 20 bucks a month on electricity because of it. Okay - so how long will it take until they break even for what they paid in the first place (including the few hundred dollars refund from the municipal and fed govt)....By my calculations it would take 500 months, or 41+ years, to break even at saving $20/month and adding up to 10 grand. So in 41 years they will start their real savings (if electricity stays at 12.5 cents but it's actually supposed to go up even more). Wooo that's quite a deal! OR if they had chosen NOT to join this program and did NOT spend 10 grand on appliances, they would only be paying $20 a month extra so it would take 41+ years for them to finally be able to say they were wasting money by not joining that program 'way back when'. But wait - a furnace lifetime is 20-30 years by recommendation so all the people that bought a new one in order to save 20 bucks a month on their bill will have to buy another new one before they truly reap the benefits...wow that's awesome!
Did the woman writing the comment stop to think of that for even one minute? Those people are not saving a dime - and what if they bought their items on credit card or finance plan? they are paying the bill for that every month still and I guarantee you it's more than $20. So what are people thinking?
If you want to buy energy efficient stuff - go right ahead. But if you dropped a few grand (or several) in order to do it, don't dupe yourself into thinking that you are saving any money at all. I know that my house sucks and I would love to fix the windows and put in new insulation in one wall that is realllly crappy - but after I added up $8000 for windows and $1200 for the wall re-do, I realized I would not be saving any real money for a very very long time and we are not going to live in this house long enough to reap the benefits at all. So what's the point? I am smart enough to figure that out in mere minutes, so why can't anyone else?
The other story surrounds the lower income houses that I have talked about in the past. To backtrack, a housing company came here around 2005 and started building 2 and 3 bedroom attached/terraced homes that were selling for only $95,000 to $100,000 each. It was all over the papers that year - Own Your Own Home for Less Than Rent! weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. However - with the housing market spiking around that same time, within a couple of years, those same homes were selling for over $200,000. Wow - is that affordable or what? Anyway so yeah a whole bunch of people still bought them though they had literally doubled+ in price.
And whoops - it is now coming out that the workmanship on them is so bad, real estate agents are starting to not even want to list them! One building even has it's entire foundation slab separating and 'floating', which is causing structural damage to the entire row of homes. And the people are stuck. They have only been paying the mortgage for a few years and cannot sell them for the 'new' value of $150,000 because they cannot afford to do that when they purchased for $220,000... and also because no one is going to want to buy a house that is going to fall down on top of the other ones or has mould problems, etc etc. Whoops.
But I might sound really harsh here in saying that I do not feel sorry for the people that are stuck. well okay, I do, because I am human and I care. However in the grand scheme of things, they bought homes that were supposed to be affordable housing units for almost a quarter of a million dollars and jumped on the bandwagon of owning these cutesy little homes just because all the hype said it was 'stupid to rent when you can own'. Own what? A piece of crap set on a wasteland that 20 years ago was deemed SWAMP and UNINHABITABLE???? Hello? homes that only 2 years before they bought were selling for less than a hundred grand brand spanking new? I don't get it. They did not do their homework on the most important and biggest priced item they would ever buy in their entire lives - and now they are upset and complaining about it.
My friend and I looked at those homes and my friend even went to a meeting to learn about them when they first went up, and she came back saying 'holy crap, I wouldnt buy one of those EVER'. She is just a normal person doing a normal job with no college education and she figured out that it was a bad idea all by herself. Why did so many others fall for this? We said right from the start that they are going to be pieces of crap that will fall apart in 10 years. They started to fall apart in only 6 so wow - but whatever. I dont want people to be homeless but I also do not want to bail out those who fell for the sales pitch and signed on the dotted lines willingly.
Your daily Redford Government screw up
Earlier this evening Infrastructure Minister Jeff Johnson (link now dead*) held a press conference where he announced that the proposed new Royal Alberta Museum in downtown Edmonton was indefinitely put on hold Wednesday after Ottawa pulled $92 million in funding.
Indeed breaking news but there are couple of small problems with what the Minister claimed: First the federal government only promised to commit 30 million to the RAM project, as can be seen here in this Alberta Government press release which reads: "The new museum is expected to cost a total of $340 million. Budget 2011 includes $180 million over the first three years for the project, which includes $30 million previously committed by the Government of Canada." and second, that 30 million dollar commitment has not been pulled. It still stands.
Another day, another screw up.
So what happened?
Paula Simons from the Edmonton Journal had these thoughts: It’s even possible, I suppose, that the Redford government, lacking, perhaps, in enthusiasm for Ed Stelmach’s legacy project, was looking for an excuse to mothball the project, and made federal funding a convenient scapegoat.
No doubt there will be lots more on this tomorrow.
* The dead link was from Alberta Premier Comms which stated that "Infrastructure Minister Danyluk" was holding the press conference even though Danyluk is not actually the Infrastructure Minister, Johnson is. I guess deleting tweets is just part of the change we can expect from this government.That and they don't even know who holds what portfolio within their own government. #fail
Indeed breaking news but there are couple of small problems with what the Minister claimed: First the federal government only promised to commit 30 million to the RAM project, as can be seen here in this Alberta Government press release which reads: "The new museum is expected to cost a total of $340 million. Budget 2011 includes $180 million over the first three years for the project, which includes $30 million previously committed by the Government of Canada." and second, that 30 million dollar commitment has not been pulled. It still stands.
Another day, another screw up.
So what happened?
Paula Simons from the Edmonton Journal had these thoughts: It’s even possible, I suppose, that the Redford government, lacking, perhaps, in enthusiasm for Ed Stelmach’s legacy project, was looking for an excuse to mothball the project, and made federal funding a convenient scapegoat.
No doubt there will be lots more on this tomorrow.
* The dead link was from Alberta Premier Comms which stated that "Infrastructure Minister Danyluk" was holding the press conference even though Danyluk is not actually the Infrastructure Minister, Johnson is. I guess deleting tweets is just part of the change we can expect from this government.That and they don't even know who holds what portfolio within their own government. #fail
Occupy.... Tim Horton's
I saw a FB group today for an Occupy Tim Horton's movement, after a lesbian couple was apparently asked to leave the bench in front of a Tim Hortons in Ontario this week. I saw posts calling for people across Canada to protest in front of their local Tim Horton's restaurants from coast to coast in a joint appeal to get Tim Hortons to stop allowing franchize owners to discriminate against LGBT people. The protest for that particular restaurant (owned by a christian pastor apparently) is to be held tomorrow but I saw lots of posts calling for a Canada-wide Occupy-style protest.
Well gee I hope they don't hit my local timmies cos the very outwardly flamboyantly gay guy they have working there might find it rather amusing. This kid (he is in his early 20s) is probably the most outwardly gay man in the whole city. I've certainly never seen the likes of him around here lol. Most move to Calgary or Vancouver (including my own brother, so dont get your knickers in a twist thinking im all homophobic and stuff). Im saying that my local timmies, in small town ALBERTA no-less, has a guy working there that might as well be waving a rainbow flag above his head with a big I'm GAY button on his shirt for the one or two people a year who don't notice that he is... rather gay :) This guy sings little songs to people when giving them change or taking their orders, he even has managed to sneak in wearing his fake boobs on occasion, and his name tag is always changed to something fanciful and fun instead of his given name. Ive actually known of this boy since he was a wee young man in my daycare center and 15 years ago we knew we had living proof for naysayers = that people are born gay or straight or bi and that's the way it is. We knew when he was only 4 years old that we were witnessing a young gay man growing up. He sang all day long then too actually.
But anyway I am getting a little off track. My point is, because of what happened at this one store, there are people calling for protests at EVERY tim hortons, because they did not like the official response from head office. Well I am sorry but I bet there isn't even a timmies in Toronto that has as flamboyant an employee as we do here in redneck land. And he works at THE businest timmies in town. And has been there over 3 years at least so far.
so before you decide to get out there and occupy tim hortons with the rest of these people, make sure your local chapter really is as discriminating and evil as is being portrayed. If a small alberta city can survive with the gayest guy in the world handing out donuts, im pretty sure there are a hell of a lot more - and this is STAFF, not patrons. Perhaps there is more to this story than has been told. Just educate yourselves before jumping on the bandwagon.
But I would actually like to see it happen here - and see this boy come out in his staff uniform with all his little fancy flashy bracelets and earrings and necklaces, hold up a protest sign, and say [sing] 'oops gotta go boyzzzz, my break is over' and head back into work. Now THAT would be a sight to see!
Well gee I hope they don't hit my local timmies cos the very outwardly flamboyantly gay guy they have working there might find it rather amusing. This kid (he is in his early 20s) is probably the most outwardly gay man in the whole city. I've certainly never seen the likes of him around here lol. Most move to Calgary or Vancouver (including my own brother, so dont get your knickers in a twist thinking im all homophobic and stuff). Im saying that my local timmies, in small town ALBERTA no-less, has a guy working there that might as well be waving a rainbow flag above his head with a big I'm GAY button on his shirt for the one or two people a year who don't notice that he is... rather gay :) This guy sings little songs to people when giving them change or taking their orders, he even has managed to sneak in wearing his fake boobs on occasion, and his name tag is always changed to something fanciful and fun instead of his given name. Ive actually known of this boy since he was a wee young man in my daycare center and 15 years ago we knew we had living proof for naysayers = that people are born gay or straight or bi and that's the way it is. We knew when he was only 4 years old that we were witnessing a young gay man growing up. He sang all day long then too actually.
But anyway I am getting a little off track. My point is, because of what happened at this one store, there are people calling for protests at EVERY tim hortons, because they did not like the official response from head office. Well I am sorry but I bet there isn't even a timmies in Toronto that has as flamboyant an employee as we do here in redneck land. And he works at THE businest timmies in town. And has been there over 3 years at least so far.
so before you decide to get out there and occupy tim hortons with the rest of these people, make sure your local chapter really is as discriminating and evil as is being portrayed. If a small alberta city can survive with the gayest guy in the world handing out donuts, im pretty sure there are a hell of a lot more - and this is STAFF, not patrons. Perhaps there is more to this story than has been told. Just educate yourselves before jumping on the bandwagon.
But I would actually like to see it happen here - and see this boy come out in his staff uniform with all his little fancy flashy bracelets and earrings and necklaces, hold up a protest sign, and say [sing] 'oops gotta go boyzzzz, my break is over' and head back into work. Now THAT would be a sight to see!
Why We Need A French Speaking Auditor General
While I am not of the opinion that all bureaucrats or judges need the ability to speak both english and french, on the matter of Auditor General the ability to understand french is very important. Quebec is the most corrupt province in Canada and will be the focus of many AG investigations of fraud and financial mismanagement. The Conservatives have announced a unilingual candidate to replace Sheila Fraser, and I agree with the Liberals that this is a serious mistake. It will be more challenging for the AG to hunt down the rest of the missing sponsorship money if he or she does not speak the local language. Come on Mr Prime Minister, we need an AG who can speak french and shake down Bonhome Carnival for information if necessary...
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