Category Archives: Thoughts

Consider, Municipal

Growing Hunger in Abbotsford

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I got an email from a friend about a friend of hers who had lost his job. With the economy in the shape it is he had been unable and is unlikely in the immediate future to find another job. Like so many people he was living paycheque to paycheque with no savings and now found himself looking at not only hunger, but also facing the very real prospect of homelessness.

For someone who had always been able to buy food and pay his rent it was a frightening, yet very real possibility.

Because searching for information about being homeless in Abbotsford turns up www.homelessinabbotsford.com I have been getting emails from people struggling with the prospect of homelessness etc in Abbotsford.

I had a conversation earlier tonight about a friend’s wife who was getting reduced hours at work. Fortunately for her he was still employed so that although they faced reduced income, his wife was not facing homelessness. Unlike the third party in the conversation who would be facing homelessness if she did not get more hours of work than scheduled.

With the economy in the shape it is and thousands of Canadians losing their jobs we face the potential of a tidal wave of new homeless on our streets. Even if they are fortunate and manage to hold onto their accommodations these Canadians will find themselves without money for food and thus hungry.

At the Chamber of Commerce’s recent breakfast it was noted that there were 6,000 people helped by the Abbotsford Food Bank. 6000 people needing the food bank to eat; a number that just keeps rising ever higher. Worse, 2,000 of that number were children.

We know that the Abbotsford Food Bank raises the bulk of its funds for the year during the Christmas Season. We also know that during this past Season fund raising targets were being missed, in some cases by a wide margin. News reports informed us that in the months leading up to Christmas donations of food and funds to food banks were significantly lower than the levels needed to meet the growing demand on food banks.

Which has me wondering what the current state of the Abbotsford Food Bank is and how this next year, which threatens to be one of quickly increasing need, is shaping up?

I suspect the food and funding levels are poor at best with bad, perhaps very bad, being the most likely levels. It does not matter how hard the people at the Food Bank work, the levels depend on the community.

So what are we, the community of Abbotsford, going to do about hunger and hungry children in our city, our community?

Bury our heads in the sand? Let self interest rule as it has recently? Send adults and children to bed hungry?

Or will we do whatever is necessary to make sure the shelves of the Food Bank are stocked so that people do not suffer hunger?

The choice is yours Abbotsford. Choose.

Consider, Federal

MPs are missing in action

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Gord Kurenoff’s column about Tory MPs missing in action raised a few thoughts on the matter.

When did the Langley officials ask MP Mark Warawa to “show them the money”?

Was it before the project began or was it recently as he toured the nearly completed centre? The time to line up funding by senior levels of government is prior to starting the project when you have the maximum political and PR leverage.

While I am not happy that Ed Fast failed to get Abbotsford any federal funds I think that pointing fingers at his failure to be proactive in seeking funds distracts taxpayer attention from those who should face an inquisition over the fact that when it comes to protecting Abbotsford’s taxpayers pocketbook it was to much trouble for even one member of city council to pick up a phone and ask Ed Fast to earn his keep by securing federal funds.

Of course, if council was to engage in such proactive behaviours as asking the local MP to get federal funds it would create work for them. They would have to follow up, make more phone calls, letters to the prime minister … Be proactive, seek out opportunities that would be to the advantage of the citizens of Abbotsford? That kind of behaviour would get in the way of cutting council meetings back to twice a month.

If we are going to censure or impeach our local MPs let us do it for the major failings they have committed recently.

No Conservative MP should have been re-elected after permitting Stephen Harper to call the unwanted and unnecessary recent federal election.

Conservative MP’s turned around and added grievous damage and insult to the injury already done to Canadians when they permitted Stephen Harper’s megalomania to cause him to see himself not as leader of a minority government, but as ruler by divine right of Canada. Canadians are still waiting for the bill and fallout of that reckless cretinism.

Not a peep out of Conservative MPs about Mr. Harper’s recklessness and delusional fantasies of omnipotence. If, as suggested by Mr. Kurenoff, this behaviour of kowtowing to Mr. Harper’s every whim is as a result of Randy Whiteitis and their desperation for political power the fallacy and irony in this behaviour is dumbfounding.

Focusing on avoiding Randy Whiteitis the behaviour of the Conservative caucus and party has become so lemming-like they blindly follow Mr. Harper off the cliff of “how to blow a pending majority government” time and again.

Despite the millions of dollars of spin the Conservatives spent on Stephen Harper’s image, the Canadian people made clear that they did not trust Mr. Harper with a majority government; a judgment bourn out by his behaviour after the recent election.

In leaping from the frying pan of Randy Whiteitis the Conservatives have leapt into the fire of Stephen Harper’s being unacceptable to Canadians as the leader of a majority government and lacking the courage to leap out of the fire.

Hmmm

Be aware to Beware …

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“We need to get those MP3 players purchased and ready” I was told the other day. I had been volunteered to write a proposal for funds to replace the old, bulky and failing cassette-tape walkmans with MP3 players. The proposal was successful and the funds await spending.

I ducked the statement and avoided committing, not because I seemed to have now been volunteered to carry out the acquisition and preparation of the MP3 players, but because I have become aware of the reality and dark purpose driving the iPod/MP3 player revolution. Aware of what the real source of the technology behind the small, lightweight size of current digital music players with their large memory capacity and flexible music loading and playing management systems is.

All of these innovations were designed to maximize the number of people using this new generation of digital music players. The stratagem has worked and the use of these digital audio devices has become ubiquitous within our society. It has become “normal” for human beings to be seen to have a tendril running from an ear or ears to disappear into the persons clothing and for the person to appear distracted or “not all there”.

Seeing a person in such a state we automatically assume that the tendril is a wire(s) connected to a speaker in the ear and that at the other end of the wire(s) is a digital audio player. Since digital audio players are now so small we find nothing unusual in not seeing the device the “wire(s)” are assumed to be attached to.

I spoke of it becoming normal for human beings to be seen with thin tendrils running out of their ears and down to somewhere on their bodies because this digital audio technology is of extraterrestrial origin.

I can hear you and your sceptical “not another wacko alien conspiracy to take over the human race”.

I do not blame you for that attitude. After all, the human race has been brain washed by the government and media to believe that aliens do not exist and that even if they did exist, aliens have the fatal flaw of rushing into their conquest of humanity. Thereby permitting a miraculous, if improbable or impossible, salvation strategy to be found by the handful of humans aware of the impending doom to not only overcome the obstacles presented by the inertia of disbelief of billions of humans and the actions of humans already controlled by their alien masters but to successfully destroy the alien conquerors.

It was with those in media that we first began to become use to seeing human beings with tendrils (wires) leading out of their ears out of sight. It was in media that we also became use to seeing the lumps of what were assumed to be merely electronic devices under the clothing of those with tendrils running from their ears.

The truth is that any race that has learned to cross the vast distances of space has had to learn patience.

Reality is that, faced with the inertia of billions of humans and opposed by those already become hosts, a handful of human beings cannot save the human race from becoming hosts to their alien parasite masters without somehow managing to expose the truth of this slow moving conquest to humans as yet without a “puppet master” alien parasite directing and controlling them.

So begins the defence/salvation of the human race by those aware of the reality, the truth, behind the digital music player revolution and alien conquest strategy.

This awareness cannot be shouted from the rooftops. That would only warn the would be alien conquerors/enslavers, advance the alien conquest by making the shouter and his claims a laughingstock, imperil the shouter and others aware of the slow subjection of humanity occurring and deny those aware of the conquest underway the time needed to disseminate knowledge of the truth and assemble an army to defeat this insidious threat to the future of the human race.

No, this information must slowly be disseminated through out the entire human race so they can be on their guard and become ready to repel this invasion.

Now YOU know. Pass it along quietly and carefully. Be prepared to answer when the call for action to throw off these alien masters and their lackeys comes.

Until then to avoid servitude, avoid anything that would make people use to seeing you with a tendril running out of your brain (ear), as do I. Temporize.

Caveat.