Friday, November 25, 2011

The Lie My Butt Cheeks Tell Me.

SomethingsReallyMatter
LedgeClosedAgainVille


You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I had to go to the heart of Burnaby's own Bladerunner set (a.k.a. 'Metrotown') to renew my new Driver's Licence.

Well.

My new hunk o' plastic came in the mail the other day.

And this is what the top of the thing now looks like....


Personally, I do not agree with the statement about this being 'The Best Place on Earth' that now sits in my back pocket, pressed against my flesh, every single day.

Why?

Well, here is reason Number 1:

British Columbia still leads the nation in child poverty and, according to areport released today, the problem is only getting worse.

Using data collected by Statistics Canada in 2009, the child advocacy groupFirst Call found that the proportion of B.C. children living under the federal poverty line rose since the previous year.

"The number of poor children in BC was 137,000 -- about the same as the total populations of Kamloops, Fort St. John, Port Alberni and Powell River combined," reads the report card on child poverty, which First Call published with the support of SPARC BC and AMSSA.

Looking at income after taxes and benefits, the report card found that between 2008 and 2009, child poverty within the province climbed from 10.4 per cent to 12 percent. That figure puts British Columbia at the top of the national child poverty charts for the eighth year running.



Eight years.

Do you understand what that means for the so-called 'Golden Era' when we, due to the commodity boom in the middle of the last decade, were raking in the dough hand-over-fist while we cut taxes for the well-off and slashed programs for those who are not?

Shame on all of us.

.


8 comments:

Rusty M said...

The slogan is the liberal party slogan and here's some trivia for you ... the 'flag' that everybody thinks is the BC flag isn't the BC flag at all, its the SoCred logo from circa 60s, it first popped up prominently displayed on liquore store clocks.

You could look it up, Casey ...

Bob Broughton said...

Metrotown is the Bladerunner set? I thought it was the Logan's Run set.

Rusty M said...

I always thought of that parking lot as being like a lobster trap ...

Anonymous said...

Check this address for a great cartoon. It's from NS but it sure works here.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/editorial-cartoon/2011-11-26

Mr. Beer N. Hockey said...

The Greatest Place On Earth would not be exporting 40 per cent of the trees it falls on our coast either and then charge an hour's worth of what could have been an out of work sawmill worker's pay packet for case of beer for him to drink in his Jobless Paradise.

Danneau said...

And then the partiers at Grey Cup are asked to bring a donation for local food banks! There are really some terribly dishonest and greedy folks in charge here, or, in the words of Mose Allison, "Everybody's cryin' mercy, just as long as there's business first"'.

RossK said...

Rusty--

There's a SoCred under every BCLiberal Party member's bed in this province just waiting to pounce.

(and/or switch their allegiances to to John Cummings the millisecond his poll numbers cross the 25% threshold)

_______

Bob - fair point. It does give one that stuck in a videogame feeling.

By the way Rusty - Bob is a Nat Bailey afficionado)

_______

Thanks for that Anon--

Michael de Adder is a kinghell editorial cartoonist.

And he keeps a pretty good blog, too, where he often tells the story of the motivation for a particular piece.

Heckfire! I think I'll add him to the blog crawl.

_________

Don't know what to say Beer.

It really does seem to be all about screwing the little guy over and convincing him to vote for getting screwed.

Over and over and over again.

________

Danneau--

Norm Farrell had a pretty interesting post about all the so-called 'altruism' of a certain no-longer-so-giant local radio station....

Here.

(and, just so you know, I'm working hard on another of those 'crappy little camera'-type stories you enjoy)

.

RossK said...

Messed up above...

The real linke to Michael de Adder's blog is....

....Here.