The Greens want to prohibit testing of party pills on animals – but are they really promoting MAC (Mothers Against Canada). The second to last bullet point, at bottom of the webpage encouraging submissions on the bill reads:
“Belgium, Estonia, Slovak Republic, Germany have also all banned testing tobacco and Canada.”
I guess to ask you to desist from turning this into a Caption Contest will be futile. -10 points for the use of “jugs” in any caption.
Via: newspaper.li
This, fresh from Canada
A father has been ordered to pay child support to his ex-wife despite results of DNA testing that found three of the four children he helped raise are not biologically his, a Quebec Superior Court ruled.
The man learned the shocking news after he demanded DNA testing when he and his wife of 16 years separated in April 2010.
“Since I learned that I am a broken man,” the father told QMI Agency. Read more »
Credit: Bernews.com
Meet the MacNeils. This family decides to smoke on a plane forcing the pilot to do an emergency landing. Read more »
This report will seriously unhinge teacher unions. In Canada debate has moved to discussing merit pay for teachers:
Education minister Jeff Johnson got the attention of the Alberta Teachers’ Association when he recently mused about introducing merit pay for Alberta teachers. Predictably, the ATA harshly condemned Johnson’s proposal and vowed to fight any attempt to incorporate merit pay in teacher compensation.
Typical response from unions, more interested in patch protection than excellence.
One of the main arguments the ATA gave for opposing merit pay was that it does not boost student academic achievement. However, there is no evidence that the current salary grid promotes student achievement.
Under the current salary grid, only two factors matter in teacher compensation—years of teaching experience and years of university education. John with six years of university and fifteen years of experience gets paid more than Doris with five years of university and six years of experience. End of story.
It doesn’t matter whether Doris happens to grade more papers, teach better lessons, coach more sports teams, or serve on more committees than John. Even though most people would agree Doris is the better teacher, John is higher on the grid and consequently receives a higher salary. In the ATA’s view, that is exactly how it should be. Read more »
We started our Saturday by paying our respects to Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., the hard-charging US Army general whose forces smashed the Iraqi army in the 1991 Gulf War. He died aged 78. At The Standard 2012 Worst Political Blog Mike Smith is told some home truths about long term grass-roots Labour families heading for the Greens. A quick vid on how to put out a boat fire the Kiwi way is next, followed by a vote for Best Minister. The winner, at 52%, is Judith Collins. The Whale Week That Was summarised all the stories this blog covered in the previous seven days. A quite active Saturday Debate (for the time of year especially) led a post calling for nominations for Best Political Blog. Those who see WOBH as any sort of threat to them (and those that don’t too), should take heed of this Malcolm Tucker quote: “marshal all the media forces of Darkness to hound them to an assisted suicide”. A CNN piece showing Teachers in Utah taking a class on gun use shows some common sense around the gun debate. A reader has taken yesterday’s US Fiscal Cliff graphic and created one for New Zealand – great work. As Cameron Slater predicted from the outset, the Aussie Hoax DJs will not face charges. The NZ Herald continues to amuse – this time a car crashed into a poll. The blog then introduces us to two sexy taxidermists showing you don’t have to look like a front row forward to deal with dead animals. And you’d think we’re picking on an incompetent NZ Herald, and you would be right. This time they have Jesse Ryder beating himself at Eden Park in Wellington. Then a hilarious story about a Queensland woman who fell into the longdrop and was there for two hours before being discovered by her husband. Turns out that during the Falklands War the French tried to send missiles to Argentinia behind Margaret Thatcher‘s back. Commerce first eh? The last post of the day highlights a report of a man holding up a Countdown Supermarket with a hammer. Our readers get fired up about the idea of hammer banning.
Look at this for being organised. This is a video from Canada. They’re clearing snow from suburban streets.
The Huffington Post article on Canada that I blogged earlier is fascinating…we have already looked at the role of big government in stuffing everything up and then attempting to fix it.
But what about the role of debt:
Governments must lead by example when managing their own debt and spending. Low debt is the result of low spending. Federal government spending as a share of the overall economy is 15 per cent in Canada (2) and 24 per cent in the U.S. (3). The numbers are not merely the result of prodigious U.S. military spending, though that is certainly a factor. Non-military federal government spending is 14 per cent of Canada’s economy (4), and 18 per cent of America’s (5).
Just as cause equals effect, spending equals debt. Net government debt as a share of the Canadian economy is 36 per cent. In the U.S., it is 83 per cent. America’s gross government debt is now bigger than the entire U.S. economy. According to the U.S. Treasury Department website, Mainland China holds $1.1 trillion of it. To quote Mark Steyn: “If the People’s Republic carries on buying American debt at the rate it has in recent times, then within a few years U.S. interest payments on that debt will be covering the entire cost of the Chinese armed forces.”
As Americans wake up to the feckless spending of their government many are looking north wondering why Canada isn’t falling off the fiscal cliff:
It has long been said that when the U.S. sneezes, Canada catches a cold. So why have these debt-related ailments in the U.S. not afflicted the Canadian government?
The answer is that Canada has been practicing what the U.S. always preached: free markets, low taxes and minimal state interference. And it is working.
For example, Canada avoided the interventionist policies that led the U.S. to the sub-prime crisis.
From a reader:
“This is a shot of Butterscotch an orphan Grizzly cub … who kept coming back.
I was touring in the Whistler BC area a couple of years back. The Ranger who ran the Salmon breeding farm had this cub, having found him alone in the forest. Mum got shot maybe?
He took the lil guy back to the farm, fed and cared for him for a month or two and then took him (all 70 miles away) to release him where he had been found.
A week later “Hullo Butterscotch returns”.
He has since been returned again to the Wild. Not sure what happened next.”
