11:43 PM - 25.03.05
Time stretch
Everyone's a critic sometimes. Rewards for me are books or records. Payday I went to the new independent store in the mall and the book store to see what was on sale. Came way with a good flamenco CD and a new Brook Benton as well. This one had the one song I've been searching for all along - Think Twice - with the added bonus of Frankie and Johnny. So I was sitting working on this PC singing along. Spooky apparently thought I was in pain I guess. She came in to the room, crawled on my lap then wrapped her little body around my neck purring loudly. Guess she thought that would make me feel better. She didn't stop until I stopped singing either. Oh well.
Spent a good portion of the afternoon with my assistant for the election. Threats by the official opposition - again - to bring down the government on a vote against the budget because there are funds allocated to help implement compliance with the Kyoto protocol. Under the Canada Elections Act, political parties may not fundraise anymore. Instead they receive an allotment through Elections Canada at prescribed intervals based on their previous performance at the polls. I suppose that has a lot of merits but it does block the growth of smaller parties or independents and that is a shame. Anyway the first disbursement since the last election last year in June is due out in April. The motiviation is now backed up with cash in other words. I had checked the city of Calgary's website a week or two ago checking to see how much growth was recorded for my area so I could start dividing the new areas in to polling divisions and then set up each polling place. Should have guessed that with a nearly zero vacancy in commerical rentals that there would be an equivalent situation in the residential market. I had no idea how much that would be so. Thirty new streets fully developed and whole sections of land already graded and serviced just waiting for the framing to be thrown up in several of the northern communities we serve. In some places the growth has reached the city limits or physicla structures that were considered intractable with respect to further growth a few years ago - like the recently decommissioned sour gas plant and some wells/pipelines to go with that. Four hours of just driving community by community to look at the new sections. The issue is the density of the construction. Multi-family developments pose much greater problem with respect to finding enough space to accommodate all the voters that will fill them. There is about one third of the new growth that contains that style of housing. AS usual it is located close to much previous development that is equally as densely populated. HMMM.
I was thinkging about some of the e-zines and news stories that have come out recently. There is a really interesting seminar being held in Florida next month dealing with Environmental and business issues across the Americas. The cost for non-members is $150 US for two days of workshops from legal experts. Can't get much better than that. The problem of course is a flight there and back again plus lodging, plus loss of waged time. Can't swing it but it is good to know that the issues are being addressed and monitored across the continents. We all share the same air and water after all.
The explosion of the refinery in Texas somehow picks up on that theme in a number of ways. BP/Amoco has been a member of the local oil patch since the end of World War II in Calgary. In addition, their presence is to be found all around the world - from Australia to Egypt, from the North Sea to Argentina. They are also a big player in both the Canadian and US arctic regions. The security investigators are saying that there is no indication of foul play - though how one could say an explosion that took so much away from the people in Texas City isn't an act of violence - but the timing of the explosion is within days of the US government declaring that the wilderness refuge in Alaska is open for exploitation by companies including the one with the exploding refinery. Maybe there is no other explanation than the fact that the plant was old and very poorly maintained or maybe not. Don't know - just seems odd that's all.
In Cnada in addition to elected memebers of the federal government there are people appointed to sit as senators with the intention of freeing them from the burden of political considerations when voting on whether to approve legislation formulated in the House of Commons. The chamber of sober second thought modelled on the British system where the House of Lords is the equivalent of our Senate. It was announced yesterday that nine vacancies that have arisen since the new government was electd were to be filled and the new appointees were named. I was really pleased to hear that Elaine McCoy was named from our province. She was one of the really good cabinet ministers sidelined in the provincial government when the extreme right of center crowd stole their way in to the party she represented. See the comments on voter_fraud that have been posted earlier. She is a strong advocate of thing like secondary education and human rights protection. Sometimes remaining true to one's principles does have a beneficial result in the end.
Anyway one of my principles is always violated when I'm working on two jobs simultaneously - that of spending enough time with my family best go do some of that now. Good night dear diary.
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