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MatterVille
Brought to us by Simon Little and the fine folks at the NWGlobalHydrahead:
A Kamloops-area branch of the United Steelworkers union is spending its weekend feeding, and in some cases, housing wildfire evacuees.
Kyle Wolff, president of United Steelworkers Local 7619 which represents the Teck Highland Valley Copper Mine, spearheaded the effort...
(link)
....The volunteers have set up a mobile kitchen at Kamloops’ McArthur Island evacuation centre, where Wolff says they’re feeding both evacuees and stranded travellers from as far away as Vancouver and Prince George.
He (Wolff) says multiple people have also stepped forward to open their homes to strangers with nowhere to stay.
“As funny as it sounds, I didn’t expect anything different. We’ve always been there for the community and any time we’ve ever reached out for assistance we get more phone calls than I can handle. I had to at one point send people home, because we had too many volunteers, which is not a bad thing,” Wolff said...
Gosh.
Where's that Wizardry-driven troll truck now?
______
And look who just arrived (late Sunday morning) looking for her 'I Am Linda' Antidote.
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Sunday, July 09, 2017
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12 comments:
SH:
Bravo Steelworkers!
Global is never on the 'losing' side… A little good news...
The BC Liberals long intoxicated by power, and privilege, have been so busy looting, they forgot who would be blamed for the state of our interface forests. And now, we are where all the fire experts that have been on CBC radio: on live radio and docs, said we would be.
We went for a drive yesterday, but didn't go far because if a fire comes, it will come like a hurricane and we will not be allowed back to rescue our pets. Every summer in since 2003 has not been a carefree time…it frustrating and largely needless.
The BC Liberal Brain Trust sees wildfires as photo and 'community building' opportunities. No forest creature can outrun a fire storm, no human can put out a fire that creates its own weather.
This "Ideas" doc about the history and behaviour of fire is hard to listen to:
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/visions-of-fire-part-1-1.3165292
Following the Kelowna Fire in 2003, el gordo did do one smart thing. He hired a former premier from one of the prairie provinces, who was an engineer. Don't recall his name but the report he wrote was excellent. the stupid thing el gordo and photo op queen did was not to implement the recommendations of the report. The report was very clear on what had to be done. The B.C. Lieberals failed to follow up with on the report's recommendations because they deemed them too expensive. of course they needed all that money for royalty and tax breaks for their political supporters.
We can look forward to having the msm and the political operatives of the b.c. lieberals to start blaming the NDP for this rash of forest fires. just watch. it will all be Horgan's fault.
Gary Filmon
FireStorm 2003 Report - Province of British Columbia
Google Search Criteria: 2003 Kelowna fire, report
NVG, thank you for the information.
This is as good an opportunity as ever to give a shout-out to our Westminster parliamentary system.
Background: Magna Carta limited the Crown's power, the English Civil War confirmed the supremacy of parliament, and the Bill of Rights established that extraction of money from subjects requires the approval of a popularly elected House of Commons. The Sovereign thereafter guarantees his or her subjects a government that can pass bills into law and perform essential executive tasks. The parliamentary vote of confidence---that is, on bills about expenditures and/or the extraction of money from subjects---is the test any government must pass, and failure to do so requires an immediate replacement, BC being a recent example of how it works: the Sovereign (our Queen is represented by the Lieutenant Governor) either finds the replacement government among the parliament extant, or, failing that, calls another election. In our case, the Greens and NDP together hold a majority of seats and the matter was clear, despite BC Liberal claptrap to the contrary. The new government will now have the opportunity to test confidence for itself. The Westminster system once again proves its utility, as it has done many times in its 330-year history (that is, since the Bill of Rights). There never was any "crisis" as a result of BC's very close contest.
Since Horgan and his new government won't be sworn in until the 18th of July (that is, in a "Beatle week" from today), Christy remains Premier and her party still in executive control---albeit somewhat limited now, and diminishing by the hour---because it can never happen that the Queen's subject have no government, not even for an instant. Why, then, did Horgan not assume the job immediately when the BC Liberals lost the confidence of the Assembly? It would have been impolitic, impractical and presumptuous for Horgan to present a cabinet for swearing in before the LG's decision had been made. He may now proceed with a task made more difficult by the one-seat tightness of this parliament.
But the government remains functional all the while.
Westminster parliaments are designed around the principle that legislation, whether new, amending, or repealing, is almost always needed, sometimes in ways unforeseen and urgent. Bills, once tabled, wend their ways through three readings and any amendments the Assemby sees fit to make until what passed into law typically resembles what was tabled. One of the big advantages over the American congressional parliamentary system is that bills don't get bogged down or abandoned by horse-trading and are passed in a timely fashion.
Although having proved its mettle in many trials, Westminster faces challenges nonetheless. Gordo, quintessential neo-right saboteur of democratic regulation of profiteering, ruminated that, once voters have "approved" the winning party's platform, parliament becomes unnecessary: voters, he suggested, need only pass judgement on how well the government has fulfilled its proffered agenda at the end of each term. Naturally the BC Liberal modus operandi of concealing unpopular actions preferred keeping the Assembly idle. Minimally it must pass the budget every year. Some would abolish our Queen as Head-of-State, others recommend electoral reform that might not fit well with the constitutionally enshrined parliamentary rules, and still others demand open heart surgery on certain parliamentary procedures.
IMHO, Westminster is not broken and doesn't need fixing---with the exception of fixed-election dates.
@Scotty on Denman:
You are right. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The BC Liberals, especially the late Christy Clark version, have given the Westminster system a serious stress test, and it held. Some of the attached time-honoured conventions have taken a beating however, and may require some repair in British Columbia.
But we can rest assured the BC Liberals will assist and hasten those repairs with a new-found interest, especially for the convention of ministerial responsibility. Starting July 18th; the day they no longer have ministers.
The Westminster system is a farce allowing a party getting less than 40% of the popular vote to be a dictatorship.
It needs reform soon.Do some research. There are much better systems out there
@Lenin's Ghost:
Does your research leave you with a favourite you can share? I'd be interested in whether you're talking about a different system, or different methods. Which country or jurisdiction uses the closest to your ideal?
Thanks.
Proportional representation in various forms across the planet. I haven't researched this in a few years but Australia's system was a favourite.
I've also done some research and had some minor experiences with the Swiss system. The Canton idea there is also quite interesting.
Some hybrid taking the best parts of various systems may make something very nice.
Researching different systems of electing representatives and forms of government in different places can be very enlightening.
I wish I could add more to this, but, due to some serious illness over the last few years, my memory is not the greatest.
Lee: the Westminster system is a parliamentary system, not an electoral system. It can function whether members are elected by single-member-plurality, proportional representation, run-offs, et cetera.
Recent debate about electoral reform was with respect to electoral, not parliamentary systems. In fact, the procedures of parliament are more-or-less enshrined constitutionally and cannot be easily amended (Canada's amending formula is almost impossible to exercise). Electoral systems, on the other hand, are statutes which may be enacted or repealed by the government of the day.
No law can ever pass without a simple majority in parliament.
If you do your research, you'll find that there is no such thing as the "popular vote" because we do not vote at-large, but rather riding by riding. Incidentally, many ridings are won by an outright majority, and the vast majority of ridings do approximate what the majority of citizens in residence want. Don't forget that many of the people who don't vote refrain simply because they're okay with how things are or with whatever the voting electorate decides.
Personally, I don't think strict, mathematical proportionality is the panacea pro-peppers claim. I view SMP as an electoral system that tends to reward parties that build bigger tents through compromise, whereas pro-rep tends to factionalize the political spectrum into more particularist advocacies. The difference in terms of parliamentary dynamic is that compromises are made by party members on their own dime and time in an SMP-elected parliament, whereas, in a pro-rep-elected parliament with many more smaller parties in a hung situation (the usual result of pro-rep elections), compromises are made on the public's dime and time (BC's recent result exemplifies the closed-door negotiations that would be required in virtually every pro-rep election to negotiate a deal among parties to form a government), and most often in camera without reference to voters. Moreover, since many of these smaller parties are less able to afford election expenses, huge compromises on promises made to their respective supporters are affected for the sake of maintaining or losing parliamentary confidence, introducing a dynamic from which individual voters are mostly excluded.
There's irony here: pro-rep, by virtue of parliamentary rules that can't be changed, ends up being less proportional ---as when a party with only a few seats holds the balance of power and has influence disproportionate to its actual democratic weight---and less representative, as when parties must break promises for the sake of confidence in a hung parliament. Maybe they should change the name.
@Scotty on Denman:
Not sure if your post addressed to "Lee" was meant for me, but if so, it would have been better addressed to Lenin's Ghost. Your first para is the reason I asked he or she the question.
Thanks for your take on the issue. As I stated initially, I agree with it.
Cheers
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