Blogging While I Should be Working

People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.

1. J. Liebling (1904 - 1963)

Here I am at my computer keyboard when everywhere I look about my apartment I see tasks at which I should be engaged. What I need to do is figure out some way to earn a living at this. At least the washing machine is working while I poke away here. Today ruminations on items I’ve seen recently in the news.

Just finished looking at a website that shows waiting times at our various US Border Posts. Our border guards have been much in the news of late and it would seem that their mal-content leads them to hold the public hostage in long line-ups as they bargain with their employer, our government. First they demanded to be armed, to my mind a dubious right especially given the fact that wearing a side-arm is as much a danger to the holder as to anyone else. I’ll not even touch the issue of tasers. Now that they have those weapons lo and behold they are requesting wage-parity with police officers who are also so-armed. Let’s not go there.

Islam wants to make it a crime to question or make fun of their religion. A recent comic on the cover of New Yorker renewed this debate. Christianity once played at that game; we called it the Inquisition. Any system that is so weak that it can't stand up to criticism or parody deserves to be made fun of.

In Canada we rail about government inefficiency and miss-spending and shake our heads at the Auditor-General's Report. In Russia 50,000 artefacts worth several million dollars have gone missing. In the wake of the US invasion of Iraq the record of mankind's earliest civilization was looted. In Bulgaria $11 Billion in EU Subsidies are in peril due to corruption. Is there such a thing as honesty in government?

What is it about stardom that seems to place celebrities above the law, at least in their own minds? Somehow I have the feeling that movie stars have always miss-behaved but in recent years law enforcement agencies are no longer willing or able to clean up their dirty laundry. Since the paparazzi ensure that everything gets reported about these people's lives no infraction they commit can be ignored. The price of success, as Christian Bale can tell you, is that even petty family disputes become tabloid headlines.

It's summer and once again young people are proving that although they feel invincible in reality they are mortal just like everyone else. Hospital rehabilitation units start planning for the influx of summer vacation clients in March each year and this year a new crop are arriving right on schedule. Of course this past weekend 4 teens died by drowning raising the question as to who are the lucky ones--those who succumb or those condemned to paralysis and pain.

The list of companies cutting back on employees just added Bell Canada. Bell Canada just eliminated 2500 management staff which amounted to only 15%--by my calculation that means they have 17,000 managers. No wonder nothing ever got done! It’s one thing for businesses to reduce work forces to enable themselves to stay in business and the current round of cut-backs appears to signal a major slow-down in our economy. It’s quite another matter that many of the cut-backs announced in the last six months were made to ensure that corporate profits could be maintained for the sake of shareholders. In the present case it’s the latter that would seem to apply however I doubt if any member of the public will notice any difference in their service from Bell Canada.