Meancouver

So the Fraser Institute has launched it’s latest assault on our public institutions, this time a ranking of BC hospitals. The part they and the news media, who are very receptive to any Fraser report, are in a tizzy about is that the Provence will not give them the information to allow them to identify individual hospitals. Their argument: that we are consumers who should have this information to choose which hospital we go to, treating hospitals as hotels, as they put it.

Now it is clear that Health-care systems across Canada are in a sorry state. Years of mismanagement, poor vision, and increasing demand have left them all the worse for ware. But does this report help?

Well, as an internal document that would allow the ministry of health to target problem areas within the system, yes, such a report could be of great value. But, if the Provence were to allow, as the Fraser institute demands, that the rating of each hospital be made public, disaster would ensue. All at once high rated hospitals would be flooded and lower rated hospitals avoided, probably to the point where those dying in ambulances would try to direct the ambulance to the hospital of his or her choice. Resources would have to be relocated from low rated hospital to higher ones, making the low rated hospitals even more strained. The strategy of distributing different types of specialty care and surgery to different individual hospitals would collapse. The lower rated Hospitals having to transfer these high resource services to the better equipped hospitals.

You see dear friends at the Fraser institute, a hospital is not a hotel, the easiest way to tell the difference is to look at the sign out front. If your literacy isn’t up to snuff, you notice that in a hospital there tends to be ambulances and lots of sick and troubled people from every walk of life. A hotel, on the other hand, tends to have limos out front and be filled with rich fucks like you. There are other important distinctions but I know you’re a little slow so we’ll just take it one step at a time.

So, would this information help make our public health care system better? No, that’s a big ol’ steaming pile of Fraser Valley horseshit. These are not stupid people, they know what effects their reports have on people. What it does do is it helps the privatization agenda. The strategy of this brand of conservative has long been to pressure the public and government to put into place policies that will hurt public institutions. The institution then becomes dysfunctional and they then insist that they only way to fix it is to make it privately owned. Rinse and repeat until you get that institution privatized, often at a discount price, making lots of money for the rich plutocrats who donate to the Fraser Institute and lots of trouble for a beleaguered public.

So, here they go again. Lets try to sabotage our own institutions rather then try to fix them. Let’s privatize everything! Let’s have that ownership society that the rich have been scheming Mr. Burns style to get since the Great Generation decided they had had enough of Robber Barons in the forties. Let’s bring the Robber Barons back! Yippee!

Unfortunately these conservative economists are rather ignorant about history and do not realize that this extreme economic system has already been tried. It was called feudalism, where a few people own everything and most people own nothing, not even their lives. I for one would prefer not to go back to the way of serf’s and autocrats, although it does go along with their continued confusion about acting like an indignant absolute monarch when you are in fact an elected representative of the people of Canada in a minority government. Oh well, back to the dark ages I guess. I mean, it couldn’t have been that bad, being enveloped darkness with no end in sight? Could it?

Remember the Vancouver of not so long ago? It was a place of promise and of possibility, a place where things were happening. Now it is an empty chromey shell of tiny condos and yuppie wankers.

We used to have a place called The Blinding Light, a small cinema cafe that went beyond art house straight into the fringe. It was the epicenter of experimental cinema, of a thriving super 8 movement, it was a venue for real film artists to congregate, to show their work, to try their experiments, to feed off each others creative energy.

That’s gone. Now we don’t even have what could be called an Art House cinema let alone a venue for local experimental film.

All we have now is industry schmoozathons where shallow hacks wank each other off, chattering and trading business cards, figuring out who can be used to advance their career, and then discarded as thoughtlessly as a popcorn bag thrown on the floor after National Treasure 2.

We used to have a horror film festival called Cinemuerte, which had rare and exotic prints of films you never heard of, of the surreal, the profound, the gross and the fun. It used to bring in people like Udo Kier and John Saxon, as well as other film makers and directors who may not be on the top of the marquees or first on a Hollywood producers list but who the real film lovers know have had a profound and lasting impact on cinema.

That gone. Now all we have is nothing. Although once, last year, Peter Greenaway was in town and gave a lecture at the cinemateque. He was funny and eloquent, he talked of the culture of cinema and of visual illiteracy, the place of ascetic in film and his continued disgust and disappointment with contemporary cinema. Following his talk the audience proceeds to ask of nothing other then his distribution deals.

This place, our city, our home, used to have verve, uniqueness and a community of artists and innovators working on strange and wonderful things. We used to have artists doing art instead of working shitty jobs to pay their bloated rents or fighting developers for the last few scraps of viable studio space. We used to have edge and vision rather then “artists” whose sole talent is to make paintings that match the furniture.

The Olympics are coming to Vancouver, the world is coming to Vancouver. We will be flooded by people who are worldly and experienced and cultured. They will come, and they will see the pristine venues, the posh restaurants, the bright and happy volunteers who are paid to take time off from their cushy jobs, the streets swept clean of the addicted and the mentally ill who have been pushed as far inland as possible. They will see the well designed merchandise and the impressive skyline of glass and steel set against the backdrop of forest and mountains. They will see all this but they will also see that Vancouver has no soul. Apparently such as this is not important enough for us even to be aware of, and thus was not budgeted for.

Watch as Susan Bonner deftly cuts Prentice’s answers to threads. It was the people of Canada who paid off the debt not the Liberal budgets? Really? I dont remember working on the budget or making any payments personally to the debt. Oh wait it was my tax dollars under the Liberal budget. I love the fact that he tries to claim facts as points of debate.

http://caiti-online.blogspot.com/2008/02/jim-prentice-we-believe-you-just-like_20.html

On another point it is kind of sad to see successive Tories fall on the sword of integrity by having to go on TV and tout a paper thin attack. Luckily the next election will be about governments and not “Leaders”. I want a capable government not a strong “Leader” and to be honest, that isn’t what I’m getting. Time to stand up for Canada and throw the bums out

backfire….

http://farnwide.blogspot.com/2008/02/backfire.html

and apparently neither is the National Post:

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=8f3dbecd-3985-417e-b387-839753fe9494&k=66744

It’s not very often you hear words of praise or preference about anything Dion from the Post but I like many other Canadians have come to the same conclusion: Im just not dumb enough to buy that argument.

The Liberals poor stewards of the economy? Yeah give me the Trudeau argument about services and spending; that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in 2008. The basic fact is outside of the oil economy the Conservatives have an absolutely terrible track record when it comes to financial management. I lived in Canada during the successive Liberal surpluses and unlike the outraged Conservatives, I was always pleasantly surprised when our surpluses were bigger than projected. You know sometimes its not a bad thing to be proud of yourself when you do a bit better than you thought you would. But then again outrage is more the common sentiment from the land of Oil and Gas.

So the Post supports Dion’s economic plan. Why? Well it’s simple. Canada needs a tune up. Unless you live in a hole or far out rural Canada things in Canada’s city need a fix. Obviously you’ve forgotten that the world will see the state of Vancouver in 2 years. Yeah its a great city to live in but man things are needing a paint job. Now a lot of Tories like to carp on about their tax dollars and probably right now they are hunting high and low for a “bridge to nowhere” to latch their argument too. The problem with that argument is this: Our country is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. Add on a harsh climate in some spots and you need a healthy infrastructure to keep the country running well.

Im not sure if its a continental affliction but it seems the general mindsense of politics:conservative-good/all others-bad,tax cuts,tough guy dickhead “leadership” and redneck diplomacy, all seems rather redundant to me. I lived in Europe for five years and to be honest I earned more, had more spending money in my pocket and my quality of life was higher.

So why would we convince ourselves that trying to improve our country by investing in it is a bad idea? Im not advocating investment in Toronto but investment in Canada. Im truly tired of such divisive partisan arguments and to be honest Mr Harper even your own side isnt buying your argument these days.