Quotulatiousness

October 14, 2017

It’s not the actual dollar amount wasted, it’s what it reveals about the federal government

Filed under: Cancon, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Colby Cosh, giving full credit for the scoop to Tom Korski, on the minor-but-revealing way the federal government treats taxpayer money:

Even as I summarize this news, I can see the potential for various kinds of carping from ad men or illustrators who don’t want their oxen gored. “Sigh, this is just business as usual.” Like hell it is: under the Conservatives the finance department used plain covers or inexpensive stock photos for the budget. This is exclusively Liberal tomfoolery.

“Okay, but the cost is perfectly reasonable for what we got!” Two hundred thou for one document, huh? Try that one out on a newspaper art director. Try it out on anyone who ever worked for a magazine, particularly one with newsstand sales that actually depended on a fancy cover.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Even if it’s a bit ridiculous, it’s ONLY $200,000 against a background of billions.” But is it? To me this is the most intriguing part of all. Blacklock’s quotes an e-mail (“It’s fresh. I love where this is going”) from someone who has the title “senior marketing advisor for the finance department”.

Am I the only one left asking, “Why the hell does the federal finance department need a marketing advisor?” The “senior” part denotes a six-figure salary, none of which is included in the cheque that was written to the nice creatives at McCann. Is the finance department a business whose revenues depend on effective advertising? Does Canada’s federal government have several finance departments contending with each other for market share?

[…]

This is the sort of use of public funds for essentially partisan purposes that we can’t throw anybody in jail for, except in my daydreams. Blacklock’s uncovered e-mails make this positively explicit: in arguing over the 2016 budget cover someone observed that, “Justin Trudeau’s election mantra was all about positivity, change, and optimism for the future. We want this budget cover to illustrate that feeling.” I would say this utterance is not quite in the tradition of our public service, except for my fear that it is a perfect expression of the real tradition.

Brexit hangover – a proposed deal for the “Remoaners”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In Spiked, Brendan O’Neill offers an olive branch to the Remoaners:

I propose a deal with Remoaners: Leavers will stop calling you enemies of democracy when you stop behaving like enemies of democracy. Sound good?

By Remoaners, I don’t mean the 16.1million who voted Remain, the vast majority of whom are not part of any elite, and a huge chunk of whom now accept Brexit must happen. I don’t even mean those sad people who traipse through the streets shouting ‘Brex-shit!’ and who agitate, or at least tweet, for Britain to stay in the EU: the rights to protest and speak are essential to democracy and these people must be free to fulminate for as long as they like against the democratic will. No, I mean those sections of the elite who have sworn their financial, political and institutional clout to the cause of preventing or diluting Brexit. You guys: we’ll stop calling you destroyers of democracy when you stop trying to destroy democracy, cool?

The war on Brexit – which is a war on the largest democratic mandate in British history, on the very right of the masses to decide the fate of their nation – is getting serious. For too long Leavers have had a tendency to chortle at the myriad spittle-producing haters of Brexit in business, politics, the law. But it’s not funny anymore, because they’re in the ascendancy. Not courtesy of democracy; the people have rejected their preference for oligarchy over democracy, for technocracy over debate, for expertise over the public’s opinions and beliefs. No, their rise, their influence, is built on their economic supremacy and behind-closed-doors influence, on the fact that they are wealthier, better connected and – let’s be frank – more ruthless than us, the demos.

The seriousness of this bloodless coup d’etat against Brexit has been perfectly and brutally summed up this week in the elitists’ suggestion that we revoke Article 50. Not content with seeking to wound Brexit – by, for example, suggesting we stay under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, or institute a second referendum even before Brexit has become a reality – now they’re openly calling for the whole thing to be reversed. The Observer revealed on Sunday that, contrary to what some ministers have intimated, Article 50 is revocable. This is all the proof we needed, said a QC in the Guardian, that it is ‘not too late to step back from the Brexit brink’. Translation: the plebs, the unwashed throng, took us to a political cliff edge with their strange, prejudiced passions, and now it falls to the clever, the legally minded, the rational, to put Britain back on course.

Boy Scouts to admit girls as members

Filed under: Humour, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On Facebook, John Ringo explains why the Boy Scouts of America is opening its membership to girls:

The Boy Scouts will now admit girls.

https://www.history.com/news/boy-scouts-to-admit-girls-to-their-ranks

One of the main (mostly angry) responses (mostly by women) is ‘Why is this necessary?’

They apparently are either blind or haven’t kept up with changes in the Girl Scouts.

Girl Scouts have eliminated almost all training and badges for ‘outdoorsy’ or essentially anything ‘unsafe’ (like, say, rafting.) No training in how to build a fire unless it’s already in a fire pit. (No training on how to build such a pit.) No training in, well, scouting, tracking, etc. They’ve basically cut everything ‘Scout’ about Girl Scouts and they’re now a full-on SJW front coupled with a fundraising group. God forbid you don’t make your cookie quota. ‘You want to hike? Hike your neighborhood and SELL MORE COOKIES!’

So the BSA basically felt so sorry for them they’re letting GRRRLS with COOTIES into the BSA! IKKY COOTIE GIRLS!

Both groups also have had a big fall-off in membership of late. So the Girl Scouts are flaming angry about it all. ‘How dare they steal our precious cookie tram… I mean precious girls?’

I’m guessing there’s going to be a big boost in Boy Scouts, though.

‘Fuck, yeah, dude! Woot! THERE’S GIRLS! Scouting just got AWESOME!’

‘Do they get to keep the skirts? Do they? Please tell me they’re keeping the skirts…’
🙂

(And, yes, I know they’re only in their own troops, work with me here…)

Boy and girl scouts saluting, American flag in background, circa 1960s. (Credit: H. Armstrong Roberts/Retrofile/Getty Images)

BAHFest East 2017 – Jerry Wang: BLANKIE: Baby LAb for iNfant-Kindled innovatIon and Exploration

Filed under: Humour, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

BAHFest
Published on Sep 24, 2017

Watch Jerry propose an ambitious research program to “make big science with tiny people.” By leveraging the unique morphological and neurological capabilities of babies, he aims to advance the frontiers of science and engineering with giant baby steps.

BAHFest is the Festival of Bad Ad Hoc Hypotheses, a celebration of well-researched, logically explained, and clearly wrong evolutionary theory. Additional information is available at http://bahfest.com/

QotD: WW2 sabotage manual or typical management at your company?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, History, Quotations, WW2 — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

(1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

(2) Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of per­sonal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.

(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and considera­tion.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.

(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

(5) Haggle over precise wordings of com­munications, minutes, resolutions.

(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

(7) Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reason­able” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.

(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the juris­diction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Simple Sabotage Field Manual, 1944.

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