Dicks v. cunts

Why is it that the epithet "dick" and its derivatives, ie dickface, dickhead, dickwad, etc., has less impact than the epithet "cunt?"

When it comes down to the world-wide plot by a few California billionaires to destroy the global taxi industry, the best that Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi can do is call them "dicks."

They're not dicks, they're cunts!

And while the dicks and cunts behind Uber are dicks and cunts, why do we find one of those epithets more wounding than the other?

Knenshee knackered

So some shitbag in Boston, who is obviously trying to supplement his Lyft/Uber paycheques with a little hush money on the side, has recorded Naheed Nenshi saying rude things about Uber.

What, the Uber management team are dicks?

This is news???

Nenshi hits a homer

You and I weren't the only ones scratching our heads when Naheed Nenshi became mayor of Calgary, Big Steve's adopted home town. That truly was a WTF moment, was it not? A brown guy gets elected Big Dog in the city of big dreams, big trucks, and big bar tabs?

Nenshi's got an essay on view in the national newspaper of record this morning, and it's a beauty.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/divided-canada-stands-to-lose-what-makes-it-great/article26848363/

Saints Sinners Muslims Jews Christians

When Edgar Bronfman went to his reward not too long ago, the papers were full of tributes to his great accomplishments as a businessman, philanthropist, and his leadership of the World Jewish Congress through some very difficult times. Nowhere in those accolades did I notice any references to a recurring theme in Mr. Bronfman's writings and speeches; the necessity of establishing a binding peace deal with the Palestinians.

Parse his writings and speeches carefully enough, and you can make a case for Edgar Bronfman being a great champion of Palestinian rights.

Mr. Bronfman's wealth earned him great respect, especially among the many recipients of his philanthropy, who loved his money but couldn't care less about his convictions about an Israel-Palestine "solution."

His wealth accrued from the fact that his dear daddy had the sharpest elbows and the roughest enforcers among the underworld clans who provisioned America with booze back in the prohibition era.

The good deeds of the son absolved the sins of the father...

And here's a good one; Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi was recently voted world's best mayor. Nenshi is the Muslim mayor of the most red-neck big city in all of Canada... how does such a thing even happen?

What Nenshi's success tells me is that even among a population that is traditionally very conservative, excellence trumps stereotypes.

When a right-wing Christian city elects a Muslim as mayor; when a billionaire Jewish philanthropist champions Palestinian rights, you know hope is still alive...

Red flags galore as Islamist Canadian mayor moots alcohol ban

Well, he may not have actually "mooted" an alcohol ban yet, but believe me, when Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi floats thought balloons like this one, you know it's in the air!

Ah, but the wild west is sadly much tamer now than it was in the good old days of the permanently pickled Ralph Klein. Calgary has been gentrified and politically correctified in these post-Ralph times. The red-nosed redneck wouldn't have a chance in the new and improved Calgary of today.

All things considered, that's not necessarily a bad thing... but for God's sake, Nenshi, lighten up, will ya?

Municipal politicians are people too!

The magic of outsourcing; why Temp Foreign Workers are displacing Canadians in Calgary's Parks Department

On the face of it, you'd think Rob Ford and Naheed Nenshi would have little in common, other than having been elected mayor of their respective cities.

Nenshi is the cerebral and soft-spoken mayor of Calgary, who has done more than any individual in recent history to roll back that city's reputation as the redneck capital of Canada.

Rob Ford you already know about.

But they do have one other thing in common; they both went down the road of outsourcing public services to private contractors.

In Ford's case that was outsourcing garbage collection in Toronto. In Calgary, it was summer maintenance of the city's parks, which led to this story at CBC today.

To save the good burghers of Calgary a few bucks on their property taxes, which are already among the lowest in Canada, park maintenance was outsourced to a private contractor.

The private contractor needs to make a profit, so they offer the outsourced jobs at 25% less than what the city workers used to make for the same work. Surprisingly, they suddenly run into a worker shortage!

Not a problem; fire off a Labour Market Opinion request to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, and before you can say "nay ho" you've got happy Chinese foreign workers trimming the lawns in Calgary's parks.

That's the way the system works, and it's the way it was intended to work. The hard-right Thatcherite fundamentalists in the Harper regime are firm believers in the free trade of everything, including labour.

The only reason Jason Kenney has been putting on a show of "reforms" recently is because there is an election on the horizon.

The 300,000 plus "guest workers" we are hosting are doing 300,000 jobs Canadians should be doing. If the cheap-ass employers would let the free hand of Canada's labour market work its magic, they'd soon find their employees. But they'd have to pay the wages that the laws of supply and demand dictate.

That's why they favour government intervention in the labour market; crank up the supply of labour to drive down workers' wages. And the strategy was working beautifully, until a few of the horror stories began to trickle into mainstream media.

Suddenly the TFW program is in the spotlight, people, i.e. potential voters, are getting pissed off, and just as suddenly the Harper gang is keen for reforms, or (if the polling numbers need a goosing) cancelling it altogether!

Canadian workers can vote.

Temporary Foreign Workers cannot.

Calgary mayor blasts CP Rail over latest disaster

As well he should.

Naheed Nenshi is apparently bold enough to draw a line from CP Rail's layoffs of thousands of workers and the fact that their trains seem to be falling off bridges and tipping into wetlands and rivers with alarming frequency.

Hedge fund boss Bill Ackman recently announced that he plans to sell off about a billion dollars of his CP Rail holding. His miraculous "turnaround" at the railway consists of making the trains longer and firing thousands of workers.

Mayor Nenshi asks a serious question and deserves an answer; how many bridge inspectors have been fired?

Calgary mayor declares war on street hockey

Yes, it's true!

Right there in the penultimate paragraph; "there won't be room for street hockey."

So this guy has declared war on Canada's national game?

SHAME!!!

That's crazy talk!

This guy is a traitor!

How are all the new immigrants supposed to adopt Canadian values if they don't even have a chance to play street hockey?

For a thousand years it has been a Canadian tradition to build suburbs that are conducive to playing the national game, street hockey.

Nenshi wants to turn a thousand years of Canadian history upside down???