BC sells very little wood to China. The number one market is the US, with Japan a distant second.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8045364.stm

So here is the scenario.HEADLINE Vancouver airport YVR has closed because of the world wide flue epidemic. Although well protected against the unlikely event of a terrorist attack YVR had absolutely NO infrared scanners for detecting fever and did not have even one well trained medical evaluation “swat team”. Due to this the winter Olympics has been canceled. However due to the large number of security personnel the facilities will be used as various police and army navy air force personal with nothing to do have a competition.

My comment? This is way more likely to happen then any terrorist attack!

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Or is it just that people’s paranoia is now a force for good. I shudder at the thought.

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As everyone is well aware the participation rate among voters over the years is dropping. Many people have their reasons, especially politicians, and academics. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that people do not get involved with something unless they feel they get something out of it. And that’s the problem, voting is becoming more and more an action in futility. Politicians do not answer to the people, in fact they do not even listen to them, unless it is one of those very rare occasions when the People’s ire is up. So why is this so?

The problem is very simple to understand. We have a political system where the people are disengaged from how they wish to be governed. This disengagement is facilitated by the political system we have (and that exists in most countries of the world). Central to enabling this disengagement is the political party. Political parties are representative of the people’s desire in name only. For they function strictly as an elitist organization with their own plutocratic goals, and really do not give a damn about the population as a whole. Parties foster their own special interests and look after their own agendas. It is this reason why, nothing ever really changes, because we vote for not a representative, we vote for an individual who is elected who will take orders from a political party that is not responsible to answering to, or interested in the will of the populace.

Political parties get this power from us, when we vote. When you vote, you are doing several things that these parties want you to believe and not to know:

- Firstly, it empowers their existence. By voting, you give away the control and responsibility that you thought you had for your life and your part in the decision making of how you would like the society that your apart of to be run. These parties then take it for granted that they can make decisions for you, even for those that you do not want them to. Voting only empowers the existence of political parties and the enslavement of yourself.

- Secondly, parties do not formulate social policies by the people’s will, they construct social policies behind closed doors by those who have vested interests in the way things are run. When you vote, you are not voting for someone to represent you. That so called representative has absolutely no power to make decisions or speak for you, for if they tried, they will get thrown out of the party. All you have voted for is for someone to take orders from a leader(s) that you have no direct control over. In short, you have only voted for a patsy, or puppet, that’s all MLA’s are.

- Thirdly, and most importantly, you lose your entitlement to life. As everyone is well aware when you are part of a family, the everyday trials and tribulations that come to dealing with everyday issues, from the house budget, to just the ordinary joys of living, it enlivens you. Alas, this process is dying in modern democracies, people do not feel involved or attached to their communities as they once did. People often talk about community souls lacking, well you get that, when people do not feel they have any part in the running of their communities. This happens when you hand over the reins of your community, province or country to elitists. Like management of a home, a country’s, province’s or community’s soul has to be enliven by the people, and that means the people must be allowed to be involved with the way things are run. This can never happen with party politics, even if you become a member of a political party, cause members are just puppets. The elitists are in control.

So change the system you say? Change the way parties vote for each other like for instance with the Single Transferable Vote, STV. I have news for you, nothing will change. Why? Cause you will still have the same parties, with the same elitists, and the same backroom decision making. It is not the political voting structure that is the problem, it is the political infrastructure itself that is the problem! As someone who has lived under a form of STV in another country, I can tell you, politicians find ingenious ways to undermine the system, the crafty bastards they are.

So what to do? Some thoughts.

- Get rid of parties. Ban them. Do not allow the representative you voted for to form associations with other representatives. A representative must represent the people who elected him, absolutely.

- Governance by federation. Representatives must come up with policy that is based upon the people’s will. This can be done by voting by representing what their ridings want.

- Get rid of multilevel governments. We do not need to have three level of governments, one representative for a riding is enough. Provincial issues will be handled by representatives in the respective provinces. City issues by the representatives in that city.

- Open government. Government must be open to the people. People must be able to see how their representatives speak and act for them.

Non of these things can happen with a political party oriented system. Don’t make the mistake that you can change things from within. You can not. The vested interests in a political party will only keep things the way they are, they have no desire to changes things, especially if it means lessening their power.

So what to do?

To make changes first you have to get rid of the system you have. To do that, you have to take the political elites power away, and this is done through the vote. DO NOT VOTE. Yes this sounds counter intuitive but that is what must be done. No political party will have the nerve to run a country or province, if they win power with only a few percent of the electorate, if they did, it would eventually incite bloody revolution. Once they have no power, then things can be changed. Yes there will be turmoil for a short period of time. But eventually, the people will win.

This was in kind how the first democracy was, in Greece two and half millennia ago. So it does work, in fact, in works very well, the only people who lose out, are the elites, and so they should, this is not their country, or province or city, IT IS OURS.

So I say: DO NOT VOTE!

Don’t empower the political elites, they do not deserve to lead you.

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Plus the seat counts under STV by party might match the vote counts by party reasonably closely, and running Conservative candidates wouldn’t help elect the NDP, and running Green candidates wouldn’t help elect the Liberals so those would be nice improvements from the current dysfunctional system as well.

I’m cautious by nature so I see some reason to be careful in changing the voting system, but if you figure the proposed system (STV) has been used in Ireland and parts of Australia for about a century with no ill effects, I don’t really see much cause to worry.

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Seems nobody wants to vote here, so do I.

We may be better stick to Vancouver RE.

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Funny, I don’t remember any pinstriped bankers showing up at my door to force me to buy a house. Maybe I’m living on a different street than some of my comrades.

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Elsewhere, manufacturing employment is down 106,300 jobs or 5.4 per cent, while construction has shed 86,500 jobs or 7.0 per cent, so the April pause is source of hope for the sectors.

Aerospace manufacturing in Quebec has been holding its own on the job front, said Serge Tremblay, executive director of the Centre for Aerospace Manpower Activities in Quebec.

There were ominous sings in February, when some big players began announcing layoffs to cope with the slowdown in orders.

But there have been no major additional layoff announcements since then. And Bell Textron said recently it has been calling back 400 of the 500 employees who were let go in February.

In Alberta, the sudden drop in oil sands construction had sparked large layoffs, many in Fort McMurray.

Union officials estimate 20,000 construction jobs disappeared in the oil sands alone, prompting electricians, for example, to defer raises.

Clark Builders president Paul Verhesen, for one, has laid off more than 100 workers from a staff of 600.

Still, the rest are “gainfully employed and busy” on a number of government projects, he said.

http://www.globeinvestor.com/s.....2/GIStory/

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In the US we have freedom of information so unlike Canada it is easier to follow the game. We see that jobs numbers in the US were only mitigated by massive government hirings. What does that mean? Sort term McJobs and monster taxes to follow.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/67789.html

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If it weren’t for the STV referendum, I might not vote at all.

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Between the Liberals and NDP, I normally wouldn’t mind which way it goes, but I REALLY don’t like the idea of axing the carbon tax, because I don’t believe the NDP will actually replace it with cap and trade (which I agree would be better).

I personally believe if they won they will come in, cut the carbon tax, then pretend to try and push cap-and-trade but back off as soon as unions in carbon-intensive industries complain, and the environment will be worse off for it.

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Seriously though I’m sick and tired of Gordon Campbell and the Liberals. But what the hell is the alternative? NDP, I don’t liek NDP on a good day but even if i did want to vote for them who the hell can take Carol Jame seriously. Why do the NDP forever take bad leaders. Like my wife says “NDP will do everything they can to capture the minority vote, but don’t you think if they want to get elected they should go after teh majority?”

NDP are brutal, and the Liberals only pander to money. Greens are completely unrealistic. So what are we left with? We need a true BC liberal party, the current Libs are conervatives, how they are allowed to use the Liberal name is beyond me. We need a party in between the NDP and the conservatives.

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This will dramatically force the cost of heating our (future) homes higher and higher, as we subsidize the profits of those best described as “the pig men”.

How will homeowners in Vancouver handle the tax load of the billion dollar PPP boondoggle village?

When the artificially stimulated building industry collapses, after years of a free ride on the cheap credit bubble and Olympic spending (all borrowed by the Liberals), what will power our economy? The forestry jobs so heartlessly destroyed by Campbell and the Liberals by removing the requirement for wood processing to be done in local communities? It was a gold rush for the forest companies, at first, as they clear cut and sent all the logs to china. Perhaps Starbucks and Walmart can fuel our economy with 8$ an hr jobs, because you sure won’t see a 10$hr minimum wage under the BC Liberals.

I am voting against STV. I have studied political science for years and the Canadian political system specifically. First past the post may not be perfect, but STV will not, in my opinion, improve any of the things that are being sold to people and WOULD require computers to do the counting. You know the ones, kind of like having the diebold machines in the US. You would always be certain of a perfect count as long as computers remained completely hack-proof . Oh, right….nm…

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