Mr. Walsh goes to jail

Former Liberal cabinet minister Jim Walsh will be spending a few months behind bars for his part in the House of Assembly spending scandal.

Judge David Orr sentenced Walsh to 22 months for fraud and 12 months for breach of trust.  The sentences will be served concurrently.

By contrast, former provincial Conservative leader, natural resources minister and government leader in the House of Assembly Ed Byrne got two years less a day for fraud and 18 months for breach of trust, also served concurrently, for his part in the affair.

Walsh is the only one of the politicians charged thus far who opted to plead not guilty and face a trial.  That likely had something to do with the sentence. The Crown recommended 18 months while the defence suggested no more than half that time to be served conditionally.

Former Liberal cabinet minister Wally Anderson was sentenced last year to 15 months for forgery and none months for breach of trust.

Former New Democrat member Randy Collins will be sentenced January 15.

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Alberta poll in question

Ye, verily, lo and behold, good citizens:

There are problems with reports coming from Alberta about the Wild Rose party and polling.

Sounds very familiar.

One thing leaped out in particular and this had to do with the reliability of online surveys:

Unbeknownst to most Albertans – even many politically savvy ones and apparently to most political journalists, too – was the import of this statement.

First, this is an on-line survey, based on interviews with a group of Albertans, obviously interested in politics and quite possibly committed to a political party, who selected themselves for the job.

The advantage of on-line panels of this type is that they’re inexpensive to conduct. The disadvantage is that their results cannot be called scientific and they are not particularly credible.

Also unknown to most Albertans following this story is the fact that the phrase “margin of error is 3 per cent” is highly controversial in professional polling circles when applied to this kind of survey.

The implication is that the survey was based on sound scientific methodology and can be counted on to be accurate within a margin of 3 per cent.

The fact is the survey is based on the opinions of people who selected themselves to join the panel and answered questions on-line. In other words, this is not necessarily a particularly trustworthy poll.

That probably refers to issues like the ones raised in this businessweek.com article in 2008.

And it points out again why reporters need to ask more questions about polls and pollsters before they report the results.

Lie say this little gem from an American association of polling firms giving 20 questions journalists should ask about polls:

6. Are the results based on the answers of all the people interviewed?

One of the easiest ways to misrepresent the results of a poll is to report the answers of only a subgroup. For example, there is usually a substantial difference between the opinions of Democrats and Republicans on campaign-related matters. Reporting the opinions of only Democrats in a poll purported to be of all adults would substantially misrepresent the results.

Poll results based on Democrats must be identified as such and should be reported as representing only Democratic opinions.

Of course, reporting on just one subgroup can be exactly the right course. In polling on a primary contest, it is the opinions of those who can vote in the primary that count – not those who cannot vote in that contest. Primary polls should include only eligible primary voters.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, reporting poll results as a percentage of “decideds“ is “one of the easiest ways to misrepresent the results of a poll…”. Some people won’t be shocked by that nugget.

If you scroll down you’ll also find a good section that points out methodological problems with online poll results.

And that’s before people misread news reports that seemed to suggest Danny Williams scored a 70% approval rating with all Canadians surveyed by Angus Reid last fall during the local poll goosing month of November.

At some points, local news organizations will either stop reporting obviously unreliable poll results or hold off until they get answers to some tough questions from the people flogging the polling fodder.

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Brent Price Comparisons

For those who have been following along with the discussion of oil prices and provincial government revenue, it’s interesting to compare the price of crude oil at comparable parts of the fiscal year.

On Monday, as you may recall, we took a look at production.  As the chart showed, offshore oil production in 2009 is well below production last.  It’s so far down in fact that the provincial finance department’s predictions for 2009 might prove to be as accurate as the work of some late-night television psychic.

Well, prices are not doing much better.

Here’s a rough look at daily spot prices for Brent crude for the period 01 April to 30 June in both 2008 (blue) and 2009 (red).

Basically prices in the first three months of 2009 were running about 50% below the same period in 2008.

So prices were down by something on the order of 40 to about 50% and production was down by 14% in April, 39% in May, and 18% in June.  That pretty much guarantees that revenues would be off as well compared to the previous year. 

Sure enough,  figures obtained from Natural Resources Canada confirm that. Figures for September confirmed the general pattern for the first half of the fiscal year. Oil revenues are running about 15% below the provincial government’s budget forecast.

Not 15% below the December fiscal update that talked about bringing in something like $1.8 billion in oil royalties but 15% below the budget forecast of $1.26 billion.

Provincial government oil royalties are a function of  production, the royalty formula and the exchange rate for the Canadian dollar.  In the front end of the fiscal year there was a bit of a premium for a cheap Canadian dollar.  But as the Canadian dollar has climbed against the American greenback during the past six months, any premium that resulted from selling oil in U.S. funds and then converting to Canadian dollars vanished. 

And if you look at the actual royalty figures it’s pretty clear that the improved royalty rate coming from Hibernia in payout couldn’t offset the drop in production, the drop in price and the shifting exchange rate.  That’s a clue to the magnitude of the change in oil revenues.  Even with all three fields in the optimum royalty condition, royalties are well down in 2009.

Just to keep close track of all this, your humble e-scribbler will have to go looking for the October and November royalty figures later this month  That way it will be much more clear if the trends established in the front end of the year are continuing. Odds are they have carried on, despite the claims from the finance department in December.

As a last point, consider that a forecast by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in 2009 showed offshore oil production declining in Newfoundland and Labrador over the next five to seven years.  There’s a bit of a peak close to 2020 and then things trail off again as some of the older fields dry up.

 

That’s the sort of information that should be guiding provincial government budgeting. Revenues aren’t going to be climbing ever higher.  Demands for essentially services will, however, and the costs associated with that will rapidly escalate. This is an old refrain around these parts as regular readers well know.

That doesn’t mean there have to be spending cuts;  it just means there has to be greater fiscal discipline, consistent and prudent planning and some serious attention paid to reducing the province’s debt load. In other words, the provincial government needs to be doing exactly the opposite of what it has been doing for the past three years.

There is hope.

Until last fall, you’d never have heard a cabinet minister admit what your humble e-scribbler and others have been saying for years.

But first Paul Oram and then others admitted the provincial government’s fiscal plan  is unsustainable.

Acknowledging there is a problem is the first step toward doing something about it.

Let’s see what happens.

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Sikorsky settles with NL S-92 families/survivor

There’s a settlement in the lawsuit launched by the sole survivor and the families of passengers and crew who died in the crash last march of a Sikorsky S-92 operated by Cougar helicopters.

A spokesperson for Sikorsky told Canadian Press:

"All of the claims in regard to the Cougar Flight 491 crew and passengers have been resolved…The settlement agreements are private and confidential, so I must decline to provide any details."

Last June, the families and the sole survivor filed a lawsuit against Sikorsky and related companies in Pennsylvania.  The case was withdrawn in July in an effort to reach a settlement.

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In your wildest dreams…

You likely never imagined a popular revolt at the idea that parliament would not be sitting for about the same number of days that Tom Rideout was Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador.

[Okay, well, it would actually be longer than that but just go with it for now.]

But revolting the people are.

Well, at least a chunk of them.

Susan Delacourt surveyed some of the online efforts, including this tee being flogged by the crowd at rabble.ca. 

Click and you’ll get the rabble.ca Cafepress store.  Go ahead.  Click it. Your humble e-scribbler doesn’t get a cut.

Meanwhile in Newfoundland and Labrador, does anyone care that the provincial legislature only sits  - in total  - for the same number of  days Tom was Premier?

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Oil production remains lower than forecast

Provincial government oil production forecast remains way off track.

Budget 2009 predicted oil production would total 98 million barrels in 2009.  In December, the financial update raised the forecast to 101 million barrels.

But as of the end of November the offshore had produced only 59 million barrels and with only four months left in the fiscal year, it would take a miracle to hit the spring projection let alone the December number forecast by the provincial finance department.

Offshore oil production in October 2009 was 32% below the same month in 2008 and November production was down by 28.4%, according to actual production figures from the offshore regulatory board.  BP presented earlier figures in November.

To give a sense of of how far down current oil production is compared to previous years, take a look at this chart that compares April to November for each of the past three fiscal years.  The grey bars are 2007.  The back is 2008 and the red is 2009.

In order to meet the provincial government’s Budget 2009 target, oil production in the last four months of the current fiscal year would have to run higher than April 2009 in each month.

To hit the December projection, production would have to run at levels of about 10.5 million barrels a month, and that’s a figure the offshore hasn’t hit this fiscal year at all. 

Overall, if production is running below forecasts, it will be that much harder for the provincial government to hit its revenue forecasts. After all, even the finance minister admitted in a year end interview that virtually every major sector of the provincial economy – he didn’t really mention oil - was in decline.

“The recession, particularly the way it hit the U.S., impacted their ability to buy products from us and that hurt the fishing industry, that hurt the pulp and paper industry in a major way, and it hurt the mining industry,” the MHA for Humber East told The Western Star.

He said the major losses of revenue from those sectors, combined with losses of personal income tax and sales tax, impacts government’s ability to spend in other areas such as education and health care.

Of course, regular BP readers have a better sense of what’s going on with oil production than the anything the finance minister has said.

And just think about it for a second:  if the finance department’s offshore production forecasts are so far out of whack with actual production, what else in the December forecast was off in a bad way as well?

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ARC Silly Week

As a bit of a diversion, here are some local contributions to what is known as Silly Week at Aircraft Resource Center, a website devoted to scale modelling.

The concept is pretty simple:  contributors send in something off the wall. 

It could be an unusual subject, like say a one-holer outhouse with working front door and a roll of toilet paper.

Most contributors take an existing subject and invent a story to go with the new version.

Like say Dave Bailey from Newfoundland and Labrador who offered up a couple of new subjects.

The one below takes a real-world aircraft – the Convair Tradewind from the 1950s  - and invents a whole story about it being re-engined for the Canadian Forces and eventually winding up fighting forest fires in Newfoundland and Labrador.

After the expected fiddling to fit the new engines, successful ground tests and taxi trials indicated that the idea was eminently workable, and on May 19 1960 the aircraft left the water and performed a 45 minute flight. Over the next few weeks the trials proved the concept beyond question, and procurement of the two on option was finalised. Service with the Royal Canadian Navy commenced in 1961 and they went on to perform sterling service in the search and rescue, resupply, and evacuation roles.

As they neared the end of their military careers Canadair once again investigated further uses, and firebombing was an obvious choice. The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador bought one example as a high-speed responder to attack outbreaks ahead of the arrival of the purpose built but slower CL-215 fleet. Its bulbous nose contours meant that it was immediately saddled with the nickname Moose, but other than that there was no joking about the prestige attached to flying it into action.

Dave took a kit of the Convair, added the multi-bladed engines and did the paint job and markings himself to create The Moose.

It might be called silly week but there’s nothing silly about the talent involved.

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Imagine if they were senate vacancies…

Seems that something is holding up the announcement of four appointments to the provincial court.  The clerks’ room at Number 3 Iniquity court was abuzz before Christmas with anticipation of an announcement ‘round about the first anniversary of l’affair Singleton.

Don Singleton’s appointment was announced on December 23, you may recall, and withdrawn in a storm of controversy on January 12.

Since then, there has been no sign of new appointments and the number of vacancies is four times larger.

Four empty seats on the provincial court doesn’t look very good, especially when a couple of them have been vacant for a year or more and after things got rather squirrely out in Gander in the middle of 2009.

So unless there is something akin the shenanigans last time that is causing some sort of massive last minute re-think of the whole announcement, maybe it is time for justice minister Felix Collins to take the list that showed up in the department some time ago,  tick off four names and get the release out there. 

After all, it’s already been checked over to see who’s been naughty and who’s been nice and the only ones left have passed the sooper dooper clearance checks supposedly imposed by Collin’s predecessor after said predecessor got caught out in the whole Singleton business.

After all, at some point, even the conventional media might notice that the provincial court is short a few judges and that the vacancies are getting older and older with each passing day.

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Why I write

“In any thriving democracy, sound public policy can only come through informed debate and discussion.”

The reason for writing The Sir Robert Bond Papers remains today as it was five years ago when the first post appeared:  to support informed discussion of issues that are important in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The reason remains because the need remains. 

In the wake of political scandals and in an atmosphere of sometimes intense political thuggery, too many people of conscience have abandoned public life in our province. They have turned their backs on politics.

What’s worse, thoughtful people have turned away from talking seriously in their day-to-day lives about our province and its people and their future.

“Sound public policy” comes across as a really high-brow pile of words.  Simple put, it is about choices.  Politics is really about picking between different views, different goals, different ways and different ideas. 

In order to make choices people need to know what choices there are. So Bond Papers provides a point of view that you just don’t find in many other places, if at all. Offering another point of view has become, of necessity, the second reason for writing.

So much of what does get talked about these days in Newfoundland and Labrador is based on false information. No one can make a sensible choice based on myth and fantasy.   And that has become, again of necessity, the third reason for writing:  Bond Papers is a source of accurate information.  

All those links are there for a reason.  They take you back to where the information came from in the first place. They also take you back to the heart of what democracy is really all about.

In a democracy, everyone gets to make the choices. So when you read something here, you don’t have to just accept that it is correct because someone in authority – real or supposed – tells you so. You can go and think about it, find the original information and make up your own mind. You have a right to information, accurate information, complete information.

And in the end, you have the right to make a choice for something other than what those in authority decide is best if that’s what you think is best. You and every other individual in this province have that right. You have the right to expect your politicians to listen when you say something.  They ought to listen every day, not just when there is a by-election on. 

Anything else is not healthy.

Bond Papers continues five years after it started, five years and some four and a half thousand posts later, because the need for it remains.

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When finance ministers meet…

 

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Top Bond Papers posts of 2009

If you haven’t had your fill of lists, here’s another one.  This time it’s some of the top posts from Bond Papers for 2009.

Now by top,  we are referring to ones that proved popular with readers, ones that led to much bigger stories, ones that broke some news and -  in the case of whistleblower and breast feeding  - posts that made concrete proposals on issues of significant public importance.   Now these 11 aren’t the only great posts from Bond papers for 2009.  There are plenty every month.  These just happen to be particular favourites.

Regular readers will notice some topics have been conspicuously absent from the series of year-end posts on top stories.  Not to fear, gentle and faithful readers.  There is another post to come.  That one will deal with the 10 biggest unreported or underreported stories of the past year.  Now they aren’t ones that have been ignored in this corner of the universe.  Rather they are ones that the conventional media in the province have consciously chosen to ignore – for reasons only those editors and reporters can possible try and rationalise – or ones where the conventional media have only reported on some aspects of a much bigger, juicier story.

Now just to give you a clue, one of the stories below is tied to a larger issue.  The Rhode Island memorandum story is just one aspect of a much larger  tale.

But more on that later.

For now, here are some of the best stories of the past year here at Ye Olde Scribbler’s Shoppe:

1. Equalization flips, flops and fumbles (January).  This one was topping the traffic counter for weeks in the early part of 2009.  it basically documents the raft of different and often contradictory positions the provincial government has taken on Equalization since 2004.  It’s only when you actually sit down and list things off chronologically you can see the entire convoluted mess.
2. BP’s draft whistleblower law (January).  The provincial Conservatives might not be able to deliver on their 2007 election promise, but your humble e-scribbler helped them out in January.  Here, in its entirety is a workable, draft law that would protect people who reveal dirty secrets in the public interest.
3. Uncommon tourism potential (February).  Really one of a series of posts on the idiotic idea of stringing hydro power lines through Gros Morne park.
4. Enhancing east coast search and rescue (March).  BP’s proposal on improving search and rescue capability offshore without resorting to the knee-jerk townie crap about putting helicopters in St. John’s.
5. Wheeler deal numbers and stuff (April).  How quickly everyone forgot that the provincial government’s energy corporation  can wheel electricity anywhere it can find a market. The April deal was good news when it happened and it is still good news even if the official version tries to pretend the whole thing doesn’t exist. This post puts some hard numbers on the deal.
6. Kremlinology (June).  The first post in what has become a running – and successful – series.  In June, your humble e-scribbler pointed out that something was off with Trevor Taylor.  By September, the old boy had thrown in the towel and left politics. Sometimes big stories grow out of the very smallest of clues.
7. The Wookey Hole Witch (July)  Okay so this one is a bit different.  A post on a search for a new tourism actor in a small English town has turned out to be a popular hit for people searching the Internet.  The witch has replaced Janice Mackey Freyer as the queen of the regular search hits.
8. Rumpole and the Summer of Discontent (August).  Problems in provincial court in Gander and four vacancies on the bench that still haven’t been filled.  
9. RI contradicts Dunderdale (September)  Natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale told the people of Newfoundland and Labrador a bit of a nose-puller about why a memorandum of understanding on Lower Churchill power went nowhere. Your humble e-scribbler got the straight story from Rhode Island.
10. Unsound financial management (September)  Cabinet minister Paul Oram admits what your humble e-scribbler has been saying for four years:  provincial government spending is unsustainable.  finance minister Tom Marshall and others chime in to agree.
11. 66 at 6 in 2 (October).  A simple idea:  improve public health by having 66% of new mother’s still breast feeding at the end of six months after delivery, and hit that goal within two years.

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New Year’s Contest: name the new NL senator

So parliament will start anew in the New Year and all the empty seats in the senate will have new bums to fill them.

Who do you think will get the nod?

Who do you think should get the job, if it wasn’t a partisan wank-fest?

Drop a name in a comment space. See if you can beat some of the suggestions on a post from last October.

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The Spin Economy

Spin is bullshit.

Plain and simple.

In this Canadian Press story, much is made of the fact that 29% of employers in a survey by careerbuilder.ca said they planned to hire next year.

Logically, that means that the overwhelming majority – 71% – planned to keep things just as they are or reduce staff.  And since the story says only nine percent of those surveyed planned to decrease their staff levels, that means that – you guessed it - twice as many of those surveyed weren’t planning to do anything with their staffing at all next year as indicated they’d be hiring.

So where in the name of merciful heavens did Canadian Press get the idea this means the survey is “adding optimism” that the year-long job doldrums are over?

They got it from the news release, of course written by a company which has a vested interest in hyping the crap out of expectations for a boost in hiring.

And Canadian Press isn’t alone.  Others have picked up the pure, undiluted bullshit from careerbuilder.ca and its American parent.  It’s all in line with the line coming from different sources for about a year now that the recession was over and the recovery was underway.  Unfortunately for the purveyors of all this nonsense, repeating the same crap over and over doesn’t actually do anything least of all make the untrue suddenly and miraculously true.

What’s really more interesting in all this is not that organizations with a vested interest in hyping the crap out of something – like government for example – actually hypes the crap out of something.  Nope.  Notice instead that even the venerated Canadian Press  is now being affected by the same problems that have afflicted other news outlets.  Reporters and editors aren’t suddenly innumerate. They just don’t have the ability any more to weed out bullshit, even when the bullshit is so patently obvious as in this news release.

If only 29% of employers plan to hire next year – or 20% in the United States version of the survey – rest assured of one thing: the recession ain’t over.

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Top 10 Best/Worst Communicators of 2009

From Bert Decker, his list of the top 10 American communicators.

Some you will recognise and agree with.  Some you will recognise and wonder: “WTF?”

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Top 10 Stories of 2009

No need for elaborate commentaries for this one. 

Here are the 10 stories that  - in the not so humble opinion of your humble e-scribbler - had a huge impact on Newfoundland and Labrador in 2009 and/or which will continue to affect the province into the future.

Odds are this list will look like all the other locally generated lists of top news story for 2009, even if the ordering may be slightly different.

1. Cougar 491:  A tragedy that prompted a genuine outpouring of sorrow across the province and left a mark on psyche of many that just won’t go away any time soon. A public inquiry will examine offshore helicopter safety and make recommendations in 2010.
2. H1N1:  The health pandemic dominated the news in the front of the year and again in the fall. People changed their habits and many organizations changed the way they conduct their affairs:  for instance, shaking hands in greeting was out for a while in many churches. In the end, this province wound up ahead of the country in percentage of population inoculated.  That’s something everyone can be proud of.
3. The Recession:  It’s been walloping Newfoundland and Labrador much harder than many have acknowledged and the effects of the largest global economic downturn since the 1930s are being felt in everything from layoffs and temporary closures at mines to a continued increase in people from  returning to this province other parts of Canada because they can’t find work anywhere else.  Expect the recovery to take a while.
4. Hibernia South:  So many people lined up to criticise the Hibernia deal over the past 20 years and everyone one of them turned out to be full of crap.  From Ian Doig to Bill Callahan to Danny Williams, they were all dead wrong.  Danny Williams was so wrong about give-aways he used the Hibernia royalty regime as the basis for his deal to bring more oil into production. The royalty regime hashed out two decades ago and adjusted in 2000 will pour billions into the provincial treasury. The new deal added a couple of tweaks but all the heavy financial lifting is coming via the old deal. The new deal will bring new oil ashore, swell provincial coffers, produce more jobs and set a foundation for future developments around the Hibernia oil field.  The development deal didn’t need all the hype and bullshit the provincial spin machine laid on it:  it could stand up on its own merits and garner well-deserved credit for the administration that delivered the signed agreement.
5. Double political suicide:  First Trevor Taylor, then Paul Oram.  Two stalwart Tory politicians ended their political careers  - unexpectedly - in the space of a couple of weeks last fall and in the process sent shockwaves through the provincial Conservative party. When Tony the Tory has to write letters to the newspapers defending his team’s future viability, you know the province’s governing Tories were badly shaken. In the subsequent by-elections, the Tories swept one and lost one.  More political changes may well be on the way in the run-up to the 2011 general election.
6. AbitibiBowater:  A carry-over from 2008, the closure of the century old paper mill at Grand Falls in March shock the economic foundations of the central Newfoundland town. The reverberations are still being felt. Plenty of people never imagined the company was serious.  Surprise!  They weren’t bluffing.
7. Have Province:  The provincial economy finally generates enough revenue so the provincial government can deliver its constitutional obligations without hand-outs from Uncle Ottawa. Announced prematurely in November 2008, “Have” status arrived in 2009, much to the chagrin of some politicians. 
8. No Hydro Lines Through Gros Morne:  “The argument was made, quite rightly, by people that you don’t want to create an eyesore in…one of our best tourism attractions in the province.”  Amen to that. There were other political climb-downs in 2009, but this one stood out because it was the most unusual one for the provincial government to stand on its haunches about in the first place.
9. The ABC’s are over/The End of the Ig-man: The rapprochement between the revanchist provincial Conservatives and their federal cousins happened quietly but the fact it happened will wind up having a profound impact on politics in the province.  That’s especially true at the federal level where the sitting members of parliament have already been dismissed by the national media as DW’s bitches.   What will they do when the next federal writ drops?  What price might the provincial Tories have to pay to get back in Steve’s good books?  Will the whole thing fall apart? Only time will tell. The other half of this story is the Ignatieff implosion.  So much hype; so little delivery.  When their boring stuffy academic  - and an economist to boot – is more popular than yours, you can be assured there is a giant political crisis desperately needing attention.  The second half of the problem:  Bob Rae as the only apparent alternative.  Nice guy but an aging former premier is not likely to catch fire with the electorate.
10. Darlene Neville. As Russell Wangersky already noted, this is just the latest in a series of problems with people hired to fill important jobs reporting to the House of Assembly.  The problems aren’t confined to one office or to one government administration.  The offices are important ones, however, so there is a pressing need to sort out how they are filled.  Maybe one solution would be to get cabinet out of the game entirely and leave the running of House offices to a special committee of the legislature. 

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Kids say the darndest things

Before Christmas Memorial University political science prof – and former Williams administration spin-meister -  Alex Marland had some choice observations about his former boss and said boss’ apparent popularity with voters.

Umm, that bit of context didn’t appear in the Telegram story, by the by, even though it is more than a wee bit relevant to the story.

But anyway, Marland had this to say:

"It's something in political science we call economic regionalism," he said, explaining Williams is seen as somebody who's not trying to favour any particular group. "It's almost like he's trying to help out the Newfoundland society as a whole," Marland said.

Williams has also learned to target his anger and desire for reform against outsiders, he said, like Hydro-Quebec, New Brunswick or Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as opposed to people in the province.

Target his anger outside the province?

That’s what political scientists used to call bullshit.

Just ask all the traitors and quislings just exactly how far outside the province political anger gets targeted.

And economic regionalism?

Let’s just say that Marland was about as far off base on that one as he was on the anger ball thing.

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Scenes from a parking lot: recycling at Walmart

Discarded chewing gum is used to pave in front of every Walmart.

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Scenes from a parking lot: Big Truck

There’s is no amount of l’il blue pills that can overcome the inadequacy symbolized by the honking great, brand new pick-up trucks to be found in parking lots around St. John’s these days.

Just sayin’.

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The Cure and The Disease

The guy who tried to blow up a Christmas Day flight to Detroit hid two containers of flammable materials inside his underwear.

His unsuccessful effort  - he set fire to his own scrotum and created some minor panic – end when passengers seized him and doused the smouldering bits of his crotch with anything liquid close to hand.

In the security,  American and Canadian authorities made it even more difficult to get on an airplane in the first place without actually making it any less likely that someone with stuff secreted around their genitals can get on an airplane in the first place.

The initial response included manual searches of carry-on baggage.

Remember that the guy hid the package next to his package not in his luggage.

They also conducted pat searches.

Again, unless they grabbed everyone’s package the odds of finding a little do-it-yourself flame kit would be slim.

Now the geniuses who now decided passengers can’t take a whiz in the last hour before landing  - will they now hand out catheters at check-in? - have decided to ban carry-on luggage.

Not surprisingly, real security experts – as opposed to the Mensa masterminds actually in charge of security screening at airports – are pointing out that the stuff happening across North America this holiday season is nothing more than theatre.

That’s right.

A show.

Something to make it look like they were doing something to prevent loons with glowing Johnsons from getting on airplanes.

And in the process they have virtually guaranteed the airline industry will lose passengers.

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Innu seek halt to water management application

In a 51-page letter filed with the public utilities board on December 15, the Innu of Ekuanitshit are asking the border to refuse to approve any agreement or suspend NALCOR’s application based on NALCOR’s failure to adequately consult with them as provided under the Constitution Act, 1982.

Specifically, the Ekuanitshit Innu are seeking:

AN ORDER refusing to approve the agreement or, in the alternative, suspending Nalcor’s application and setting aside for future examination the duty to consult and accommodate the Innu of Ekuanishit; and

AN ORDER: that on an interim basis and in any event of the cause, Nalcor pay all expenses incurred by the Conseil des Innus de Ekuanitshit in connection with Nalcor’s application to the board, including costs of counsel, engineers, valuators, stenographers, accountants and other experts or assistants retained by or for the Conseil des Innus de Ekuanitshit in and about the inquiry; and
that Nalcor and the Conseil des Innus de Ekuanitshit are to attempt to agree on a procedure whereby, upon incurring costs and disbursements from time to time up to the end of the inquiry, trial, the intervenor will so advise the applicant and the applicant shall
pay them within a given time-frame, unless Nalcor objects, in which case it shall refer the matter to the Board.

The application for costs is based on the magnitude of the project, the scope of the potential infringement on the Innu’s aboriginal rights and the Innu’s lack of financial resources.

In a separate 143-page letter dated December 21, 2009, the Innu of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam make the same application to the public utilities board.  Both letters include commentaries on aspects of the NALCOR proposal for the Lower Churchill.

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