11:56 p.m. - 2004-03-18
dollars and sense
Five planets visible to the naked eye in the next few nights - Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars and Mercury with the Moon for company. Good graphics here to help orient a watcher Planets with additional stories on the asteroid that just about came to dinner, as well as a piece about water and UFOs on Mars. Another "stellar" story was about the lone Canadian author to enter a British book contest, written on-line and evaluated by readers who voted for the winner - he won Cavanaugh. That would be an interesting experience I think, to write a novel while readers interacted with the text and you as you wrote it. The other out of this world item was about a group of Scots invading Canada - for an extreme sports competition Moonies. Wonder if there were any long lost cousins in the mix.
I heard from one of my staff last night - she was paid. Yes! My other staff member got their pay slip telling them what their deductions were, with a promise of a direct deposit tomorrow. He called to ask if there really were supposed to be deductions for taxes and benefits. Yep. The Federal government is the one footing the bill and they extract their pound of flesh in accordance with the laws of the day. He had me worried for a few moments though - I thought perhaps there was more trouble with accounts payable and I was not in the mood to hear of any more mess ups. Thank goodness there weren't. No social insurance number, no remittance of tax means no job either. Truthfully, I don't mind paying taxes, with the proviso that they are used to build a healthy society and that everyone pays their fair share. It's that last part that everyone chokes on and one can't blame the evil government for the selfishness of the citizens and corporations who take as much as they can get,at the expense of the community. Think about it, how would decent roads in this frost-bitten country get built without taxes. Just one of many benefits we all share. Given that the loss is in the billions to the taxbase that's quite the theft from their fellow Canadians.
I didn't hear a word from Canada Post about the lost package I sent to Elections Canada. However, I did get several calls from workers at EC asking for clarification with respect to information contained in that package. Problem solved I guess.
I had done a demographic analysis of my electoral district last week, using 2003 census numbers from the City of Calgary - they had broken it down community by community on their website. So the end result was I tallied over 120,000 people living in my constituency, rather than the 107,000 Elections Canada estimates from a federal census carried out three years ago. That's nearly a 15% increase in population in three years. Our budgets, resources like computers, and staffing are determined by the population numbers EC goes by, so I sent my revised numbers in with a request that that is acknowledged in their estimates. When I was discussing the challenges that growth causes us with one of the new Returning Officers, he asked if he could have a look at the number crunching I'd done since he'll be in the same situation. No Problem. After thinking about it, I decided to send it to all the Calgary Returning Officers. There are about 100,000 to 150,000 new souls in the city since the federal census and the loss of resources to serve voters here becomes significant when one considers the cumulative impact. It must have been useful to the others because I've heard from most of them today letting me know they've come up with similar spreadsheets.
It's getting very springlike here now. Fresh sweet air wafting in the windows,and I can see my Nanking Cherry tree starting to show signs of budding. Birds all over the place, to the delight and despair of our cats. Mr T also has a feather fetish and it drives him wild that he can't collect any more treasures poor boy. Speaking of which it is probably time to get the babies fed and bedded for the night. They get quite naughty when they have to wait. Night dear diary.
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