I'm sad to see that so many GM workers are losing their jobs in Oshawa.
The Canadian Auto Workers union received official notice Friday that GM will begin shutting down its consolidated assembly line in the fourth quarter, which will wipe out 2,000 jobs, reducing the number of GM employees in Canada to about 8,000.
I feel sorry for their families, the latest victims of the Dutch Disease, and of the Con Master Plan to turn us into a low wage economy.
Politically, it may be the perfect time for an austerity budget. But news of a sudden contraction in the Canadian economy has economists suggesting that deep cuts now risk doing more harm than good.
And lead by example, by trimming his big mammoth pension, and stop billing taxpayers for the hopeless job of trying to make him look pretty.
You may have noticed that London is burning. The flames of anger are spreading .
The violence, which began in Tottenham, north London, on Saturday spread south and east to Brixton, Streatham, Walthamstow, Edmonton, Enfield, Oxford Circus and Islington on Sunday.
By last night further outbreaks of disorder involving hundreds of hooded yobs had been reported in Hackney, Clapton, East Ham, Lewisham, Harlesden, Elephant and Castle and Woolwich.
The establishment and the old are panicking, and calling for the army. And almost everybody is missing the big picture.
Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture: a country in which the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country.
It is no coincidence that the worst violence London has seen in many decades takes place against the backdrop of a global economy poised for freefall. The causes of recession set out by J K Galbraith in his book, The Great Crash 1929, were as follows: bad income distribution, a business sector engaged in “corporate larceny”, a weak banking structure and an import/export imbalance. All those factors are again in play.
Although the epicentre of the immediate economic crisis is the eurozone, successive British governments have colluded in incubating the poverty, the inequality and the inhumanity now exacerbated by financial turmoil.
Yup. The bankers are stealing billions, the poor are stealing running shoes. The yobs may be throwing the firebombs, but the anger is real. And it's spreading all over the world.
Or there will be justice. Or there will be trouble.
It was another hot and humid day in Hogtown. But that didn't stop me from running down to the golden towers of Bay Street. I wanted to see if the brokers and other stock stuffers were jumping out of the windows after another bad day at the casino.
Because when we're reduced to bartering our possessions to pay for food and medical care, four or five Rolex watches could come in really handy eh?
Yeah I know, I know. But at least I'm preparing for the Greatest Recession, which is more than I can say for the Con gnome Jimbo Flaherty.
He's asking people for ideas on how to save money, instead of asking them for ideas about how to create jobs.
Because goodness knows he doesn't have any...
And neither does Stephen Harper. All he's interested in is killing Big Government. And blowing his tiny trumpet.
Well, Harper saw this one coming despite the blazing winter sun shining directly in his eyes as he fielded the first questions he's taken since the historic downgrade. And he ducked -- but with a twist. His solution: say you really can't comment on a credit agency decision except to say that they were right ... about Canada!
Oh well. I suppose we shouldn't panic eh? The unemployment rate for young Canadians can't go much higher than it already is...TWICE the national average.
And if it does, and they object, at least they'll get free housing and three meals a day in one of Harper's new prisons.
As for older Canadians they shouldn't panic either. As long as they can swap their homes for a trailer, live on dog food, and have a lot of gold in their teeth.
They too can have a great retirement.
Almost as happy as this one...
Unless of course they can't wait until ninety to retire, they can only swap their homes for supermarket carts, they don't have any teeth let alone any gold, and they're fussy about dog food.
Oh Canada. You were living in a bubble. You thought the Teabagger Cons were good money managers. You idiots.
Holy Garden Gnome....where's a watering can when you need one? I see that our incompetent Finance Minister Little Jimbo Flaherty says the dismal economic news doesn't surprise him.
"This is to be expected as we go through the depth of the recession. But we've been through this before in Canada ... we know we will come out of this...This is a difficult time, it's going to be a difficult time this year. We anticipated that..."
When in fact Stephen Harper and his Con klowns didn't see it coming. Have no idea how bad it could get, or how long it could last. And because they're jungle neocons don't care how much pain it could cause. Even if that pain gets really bad. The recession of the 1980s, for instance, began in July 1981. But the unemployment rate didn't reach its 13 per cent peak for another 18 months.
In the Great Depression, Canada's jobless rate didn't peak at 20 per cent until 1932, four years after the crisis began. Which means that we could be facing years of mass unemployment and misery in a country without a proper safety net. Where so many Canadians are already so desperate they're hoping that a lottery ticket will save them. With jobs continuing to dwindle, experts say lotteries, sweepstakes and other games of chance will cross the threshold from casual entertainment to last resort as more Canadians like Gonzalez desperately seek economic salvation.
How this could happen in my beautiful country I'll leave for another day. All I know is that the first priority for any Canadian government is to ensure the survival and the dignity of suffering Canadians. And right now that means overhauling our rotten E.I. system that condemns Canadians to poverty and humiliation. Which is why I'm so happy to see the NDP propose this.
"Statistics show roughly 60 or 70 per cent of people who don't have a job aren't eligible in the system as it currently stands. That's a huge amount of people.
"If anything, we should be making it easier for people to qualify. We've paid billions into this fund [and] at the same time the government has made it harder for people to collect the benefits they've paid into."
And I only hope the Liberals will support this measure because if they don't they will wear this shame FOREVER. They helped create this E.I. nightmare so they have a moral responsibility to help put it back together.
And as for the Cons...if their foul alien ideology prevents them from doing the right and Canadian thing...then just bite the bullet and bring them down. And let Canadians decide who wants to protect them and who doesn't. Who wants to turn Canada into a neocon jungle and who doesn't. At a time when unemployment and the E.I. nightmare could happen to ANYONE. We're going into a dark tunnel and nobody knows how dark or how long it will be. But for me the proverbial light in that tunnel remains the same: a better, more human Canada with no time for Cons and their cruel, rabidly ideological policies. Now more than ever.
I see that British police aren't buying the latest Great Recession mantra; just think happy thoughts and it will go away. They're preparing for a summer of rage.
Police are preparing for a "summer of rage" as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned.
Britain's most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming "footsoldiers" in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.
Now I must admit that when I first read this story I had a hard time imagining hordes of middle class people rioting in the streets. Could they really be THAT angry? But then I read what Chesley Sullenberger....the hero pilot....told Congress today. They cut his pay, they terminated his pension, they forced him to work two jobs seven days a week to survive. And I thought why shouldn't people be really angry at an inhuman economic system that treats people like animals? And do we really just want to put lipstick on that pig again? When it's causing so much misery. ...and torching the planet. Or will the Greatest Recession be the greatest opportunity to push for real change?
Will rage consume us? Will it lead to fascism? Or will it be the burning light ....of a new world rising?
Maybe it's the weather. But I'm finding it hard not to join in the generalized gloom. Remember the beautiful rink on the frozen lake I showed you the other day? Well that's what's left of it. It broke up and floated away. Like so many other things these days. The Greatest Recession just keeps on claiming new victims. More and more people are losing their jobs or having their hours cut. In China an army of unemployed migrant workers 20-million strong is on the march. In Britain they're worried about the rise of the British National Party. It's gotten so bad even the sharks are having a hard time. So many big and small stories and yet the one that brought it all home to me this week, was reading that Scott is selling his comic collection.
Right now, I am still at least five weeks away from my first potential EI check (of unknown quantity) and have gone unpaid from my former job since mid-January, including my severance pay owed..... This is serious stuff. I am not yet at the end of my rope, but I sure can see it clearly from here.
When I read that...and I thought about how he has a wife and two young kids...I felt sad, angry, and worried. Sad about Scott and all the other Canadians who are losing their jobs, or living in fear that they could be next. Angry because Stephen Harper's rotten Con government doesn't have the decency to reform our sham of an E.I. system, so Canadians don't have to wait so long for benefits. And worried that if it could happen to Scott it could happen to anyone. It's all happening so fast. What will this country look like a year from now? You know I'm usually a cheerful idiot. But these days it's so hard to be cheerful about anything.There is too much fear in the air. Too much misery already. I don't have any confidence in this rotten incompetent Con government. The Greatest Recession those idiots didn't see coming, is claiming more and more victims. Scott is selling his comic collection. We need to change the world. But it's just getting darker and darker...
