Quotulatiousness

February 20, 2011

Tunnelling man desperate for coffee

Filed under: Cancon, Humour — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:09

An amusing story from Yolk Region News:

Duane Oppenheimer, 59 1/2, of Newmarket was charged with mischief and unlawful excavation on Wednesday evening, after cleaning staff at Upper Canada Mall discovered a large rectangular crack in a utility closet floor. The crack turned out to be a hatch leading to Oppenheimer’s tunnel, a 200-metre subterranean passageway that extended under the mall’s south parking lot and continued below Davis Drive into an adjacent subdivision where it emerged inside the Oppenheimer’s garage.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, who said “Who knew that people in Newmarket were so industrious?”.

November 26, 2010

Canadian retailers are “furious” at customers for looking to the US for cheaper prices

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:16

A brief filler piece on the Canadian Press newswire explains only part of the reason so many Canadian shoppers are headed south to do their Christmas shopping this year:

This is Black Friday in the U.S., but many Canadian retailers are a furious red at the thought of consumers heading south for bargains.

The Retail Council of Canada says there is a long list of reasons to shop north of the border.

It says retailers are a vital part of any community’s economy and it employs 10 per cent of the workforce.

It also reminds consumers that Canadian taxes — which cause much of the traffic south — help pay for health care and education.

The higher taxes are certainly a big part of the explanation, but even if you control for tax, Canadian prices are generally higher than their US counterparts. For example, a paperback I picked up at random from our coffee table (published quite recently) has a price of $7.99 on it. If you’re an American, that is. Canadians pay $10.99. The Canadian dollar is around US$0.98.

Nice little markup, eh? Add the 13% Hack-and-Slash Tax on top of that, and you know exactly why thousands of Canadians are willing to put up with long lines at the border to do their shopping in the States.

December 22, 2009

Anglicans now allowed to shoplift

Filed under: Britain, Law, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:11

There’s updating your church to appeal to modern attitudes, and then there’s this:

Thou shall steal after all! Holy row greets fatherly advice from York vicar
Church of England priest Tim Jones preaches it’s OK to shoplift, though it’s best from a big retail company not family business

In issuing the 10 commandments to Moses atop Mount Sinai, God was pretty unequivocal: “Thou shalt not steal.”

However, there’s good news for anyone whose passion for pilfering has hitherto been tempered by the eighth commandment: according to one Church of England vicar, we can steal after all.

Father Tim Jones, the parish priest of St Lawrence and St Hilda in York, told his congregation on Sunday that certain vulnerable people face difficult situations.

“My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift,” he said. “I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither.”

Well, that pretty much seals it, doesn’t it? Any other commandments we can dispense with — with the blessings of the Church of England?

August 22, 2009

US daytrips to Canada drop significantly

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

Megan McArdle has an interesting post about the precipitous drop in US visits to Canada:

Kevin Drum is puzzled:

Well, here’s today’s [chart]: day trips to Canada are down. Way down. It’s not clear why, either. The accompanying story blames it mostly on new passport rules, along with “other factors, including the recession and the higher Canadian dollar.” But that doesn’t really hold water. The downward spike from May to June might be due to new passport rules, but the chart makes clear that travel has been steadily decreasing ever since it recovered from 9/11 in early 2002. Obviously passport rules have nothing to do with this 7-year trend, and neither does the recession or the strength of the Canadian dollar.

Blog_Canada_Day_Trips

Megan points out that the strengthening Canadian dollar does actually account for much of the change, with the passport requirement only being the final nail in the coffin. Security theatre, as pointed out in the comments, probably accounts for some of the decline as well.

The comment thread is quite interesting, as both facts and “facts” get deployed to support pre-existing positions. Do read through them.

I’m finding this an interesting discussion, as I’m headed the other way tomorrow . . . I’m taking a week-long course near Pittsburgh. I remember the days of the cheap Canadian dollar, when we used to use terms like “Canadian Peso” or “TundraMicroBuck”, and I don’t particularly miss them. I don’t know if I’ll be doing much shopping while I’m in Pennsylvania, but the price differences are much smaller than they were the last time I was in the states.

August 17, 2009

QotD: The perils of being a retail customer

Filed under: Humour, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:38

Of course, it’s entirely possible I was simply bored. Numbingly bored after meetings with financial planners over the preceding two days and being forced to repeatedly use the, impossibly awkward to enunciate, word arithmetic to correct suggestions from across the table that mathematics was in some way directly relevant to my cash flow model questions which arise when considering any investment model strategy. Then again, maybe I just wanted to be recklessly adolescent in that rather staid, middle aged, considered manner one does when one throws their Infinity VISA card at the clerk who a moment ago was convinced you were invisible and who then has to dispel his anxiety over whether or not you are going to hit him up for spare change or a smoke, maybe with an offer to squeegee his cash register monitor or, in exchange for a 10% discount, offer to blow him over there behind the flat panel 1080p display.

Such moments, me the cash — them the goods, remind me why I hate being a consumer. “Hey, Buddy! It’s money. My money. Take it. Take it!” You’d think, by now, Sony would know that the only reasonable outcome to expect from hanging a crisp white shirt and Windsor knot tied tie on a monkey is only slightly better than, well, a perhaps well dressed monkey dressed well. “Buddy! Wake up. Can’t you stop grinding that organ for one second?” But, even dressed up, it’s just a monkey which can’t seem to speak intelligently to confirm information and facts I’ve already fully digested from online product reviews and support documents. “Can’t we skip a beat to do things a little different this time? How about you agree to take your hand off your organ long enough to take my money. That’s it, Buddy. A little closer, now. Sorry?” What’s my monkey up to now? “Of course I don’t want to buy an extended monkey warranty. Do I look totally bananas to you?” I’m more certain than ever before the monkeys were different when I was young. “Hey! Don’t lick my credit card. Stop that.” Stupid monkey. “And I expect you to wash it before handing it back to me.”

Dark Water Muse, “The Stupid Monkey (or ‘Why it sucks to be a consumer’)”, Dark Water Musings, 2009-08-09

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