Quotulatiousness

May 31, 2024

“You only support that because it’s in your self-interest to do so”

Filed under: Economics, Education, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Helen Dale considers the painful notion that political ideas that work for the “elite” (defined in various ways) may not work at all for people unlike members of any given “elite”:

When I reviewed Rob Henderson’s Troubled for Law & Liberty at Liberty Fund, I made this observation:

    The reality that classical liberalism — the closest to my own political views, I admit — has at least a whiff of the luxury belief around it stings. It’s discomforting to acknowledge that what goes by the name of paternalism has its own intellectual pedigree, while liberalism can be a system developed by the clever, for the clever. “Highly educated and affluent people are more economically conservative and socially liberal,” Henderson says. “This doesn’t make sense. The position is roughly that people shouldn’t have to adhere to norms and if/when they inevitably hurt themselves or others, then there should be no safety net available. It’s a luxury belief.”

[…]

Joseph Heath […] uses the phrase “self-control aristocracy” to describe those who really do benefit from maximal freedom. These are people who can make better choices for themselves than any authority could make on their behalf. When the state or large corporates boss them (us) around, they (we) get really bloody annoyed. They (we) know better!

Heath’s phrase is simply a layman’s term for the personality trait various formal tests measure, and which overlaps with executive function to a considerable but as yet unknown degree.

    Because I am self-conscious about my membership in the self-control aristocracy, I am acutely aware of the fact that, when I think about questions of “individual liberty” in society, I come to it with a particular set of class interests. That is because I stand to benefit much more from an expansion of the space of individual liberty than the average person does – because I have greater self-control. So I recognize that, while a 24-hour beer store would be great for me, it would be a mixed blessing for others […]

    What does this have to do with libertarianism? It is important because every academic proponent of libertarianism – understood loosely, as any doctrine that assigns individual liberty priority over other political values – is a member of the self-control aristocracy. As a result, they are advancing a political ideal that benefits themselves to a much greater extent than it benefits other people. In most cases, however, they do so naively, because they do not recognize themselves as members of an elite, socially-dominant group, that stands to benefit disproportionately. They think of liberty as something that creates an equal benefit for all.

My response to reading Professor Heath’s piece was simplicity itself: I feel seen. I’ve even done the night school thing while working full-time. I’ve written books and chosen to play sports that require a long time and lots of skill to master. I retired at 45.

Politically, I’m not a libertarian. Libertarianism is a distinctive and largely American ideology (as the recent and bonkers fracas at its US Convention indicates) with philosophically unusual deontological roots. I am, however, within the British and French tradition of classical liberalism (which does assign individual liberty priority over other political values). And like many classical liberals I’ve been blind to problems of laws and governance for people unlike me.

I disclose this because I’ve worked in policy development in both devolved and national parliaments. I’ve probably given politicians and civil servants alike dud advice. There is almost certainly a shit policy out there (in either Scotland or Australia) with my name on it. However, this mind-blindness doesn’t only apply to people who advocate libertarian politics. I think it applies to a significant number of political ideologies just as strongly as it does to libertarianism.

That is, the ideology serves the inherited personality traits of those who promote it. “You only support that because it’s in your self-interest to do so” always struck me as a genuinely mean criticism of people who were involved in politics and policy (I may have been one of those people, natch). The problem — as I’ve been forced to accept — is that it’s true.

The best that can be said about VIA Rail is that its financials aren’t as dire as Canada Post

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Media, Railways — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley outlines the financial black holes that are the two Crown Corporations — Canada Post and VIA Rail Canada:

VIA Rail 918, a General Electric model P42DC locomotive, at Belleville, Ontario on 23 December 2008.
Photo by Martin Cathrae via Wikimedia Commons.

If you’re unfamiliar with Via’s financials, I’ll advise you to sit down now.

In 2023, the average passenger on The Canadian line [Toronto/Montreal to Vancouver] was subsidized by the taxpayer to the tune of $1,014.77. Revenues on the route were less than half of expenses. And your average Canadian can’t even hope to ride the bastard thing: A bunk bed for the 34 hours and 35 minutes it takes to get from Toronto to Winnipeg still goes for the bargain price of $895.

It’s a cruise ship. Not only are we lavishly subsidizing a cruise ship, but we own the cruise line, and we’re buying it new ships. It’s absolutely bananas. And among those applauding the expenditure is, somehow, the NDP’s transport critic Taylor Bachrach. Where’s simplistic populism when you need it? No money for cruise ships!

Meanwhile, media are being far too indulgent of Via’s alarming and increasing vagueness as to whether it’s committed to “high-frequency rail” on the Toronto-to-Quebec City corridor, or to “high-speed rail”, or to some combination of both. This could not be a bigger or brighter red flag: Beware of Oncoming Boondoggle.

Committing billions of dollars to a new rail corridor between Toronto and Quebec City without a firm idea as to whether it’s “high-frequency” or “high-speed” is a bit like committing billions to a new housing development without knowing whether it’s bungalows or high-rise condos. A train going 300 kilometres per hour, or more (i.e., high-speed rail) needs vastly more protection (fences, eliminating level crossings) than a train going 200 kilometres per hour. It’s not a minor detail or something to be worked out later.

And it’s painfully obvious why Via’s executives are sowing the confusion: Because the high-frequency rail plan that they actually have simply isn’t that compelling. It may offer no time savings at all between Montreal and Toronto — and anyone who tries to tell you a five-hour trip between Montreal and Toronto is a compelling option for business people is either a deluded railfan or works for Via.

“Canada charts path for high-speed trains, but obstacles loom,” a recent Globe and Mail headline declared, completely incorrectly. But casual news consumers can absolutely be forgiven for thinking Via’s working on a Toronto-to-Quebec City version of France’s TGV. Should the high-frequency rail plan ever get built, I can only imagine the kvetching and disappointment that would follow.

How To Install a Pipeline Under a Railroad

Filed under: Railways, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Practical Engineering
Published Feb 20, 2024

I’m on location to document the installation of a water transmission line below two railroad tracks.

Huge thanks to our project partners!
Owner: Crystal Clear Special Utility District
General Contractor: ACP
(more…)

QotD: Progressives believe you need to be changed to their design

Filed under: Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The problem for the liberal is that most people do not want to be transformed. They want life to be better but not qualitatively different. It is only the liberal, or the “progressive”, as he prefers to be called today, who welcomes revolution and relishes the violent tactics necessary to bring it about. For the progressive, it is an article of faith that the masses will resist change and must be forced to swallow it.

This is a crucial difficulty, and it gives rise to all sorts of persuasion, nudging, compulsion, and outright violence. If the masses don’t know what’s good for them, they must be made to change. Every liberal in history, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Barack Obama, has adopted this course of action. The current liberal lions, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, and their lion cubs – New Jersey’s Sen. Cory Booker and California’s Sen. Kamala Harris – appear to be even more radical.

Booker speaks repeatedly in favor of what he calls “the collective good”. Apparently, he knows what that good is, and others do not. And he seems willing to use uncivil means to achieve that collectivist end, such as lashing out at DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. His humiliation of Nielsen was not just embarrassing. As I saw it, it revealed a cold, vicious, Leninist temperament, a willingness to sacrifice individuals in the service of the collective and of his own political ambition.

Then there is Harris. “Loose regulations and lax enforcement … That’s abandoning the middle class,” she says. What she seeks, apparently, is more government control with herself in charge.

Both of these über-liberals claim to know more than the rest of us, but what is it they know?

In a truth worthy of Wittgenstein, one could say that what they “know” is that they know, and nothing else. And what they oppose is any suggestion that they do not know.

In other words, liberalism is a temper, not a philosophy. It has no fixed content – it can be either communistic or fascistic, racially “progressive” or virulently anti-Semitic, pacifistic or militaristic – but in one respect, it never changes. It exerts control and demands obedience.

Jeffrey Folks, “Leftists versus the People”, American Thinker, 2018-02-24.

May 30, 2024

As everyone knows, it takes at least three years to find a shovel in Canada …

Filed under: Cancon, History, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Quillette, Jonathan Kay notes the third anniversary of the “mass graves” moral panic here in the utterly dysfunctional Dominion:

Kamloops Indian Residential School, 1930.
Photo from Archives Deschâtelets-NDC, Richelieu via Wikimedia Commons.

This week marked the third anniversary of Canada’s strange “unmarked graves” scandal — a morbid social panic that took hold of my country in late May 2021, following unverified claims that the corpses of 215 (presumably murdered) Indigenous children had been located at the site of a former school in Kamloops, British Columbia.

As I’ve already described this saga in several Quillette articles, I will not belabour the specifics (which, by now, have also been covered in the international press, as well as Canada’s National Post and Dorchester Review). Instead, this update will focus on the manner by which Canadian public figures (journalists, in particular) have tried to evade accountability for their original gullibility, as it presents an interesting case study in social psychology on a national scale.

The background here, as anyone who’s followed the story closely will know, is a genuinely shameful aspect of Canadian history — the federally funded, church-run system of residential schools established in the nineteenth century as a means to assimilate the country’s Indigenous population. In many cases, children were forced to attend boarding schools located hundreds of miles from their home reserves. Mortality rates from infectious diseases (especially tuberculosis) were tragically high, and the whole issue was properly referred to an authoritative body known as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which concluded that at least 3,200 children died after enrolling in residential schools. The real number might well be considerably higher.

All of this had been common knowledge in Canada for years by the time Rosanne Casimir, Chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation in Kamloops claimed to have discovered the remains of 215 Indigenous children buried on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

In fact, she’d discovered nothing of the kind. But the Canadian media ran with the claim as if it were the proven truth. A typical headline: “Tk’emlups confirms bodies of 215 children buried at former Kamloops Indian Residential School site“.

If you don’t live in Canada, it will be hard to appreciate the national hysteria that resulted. In the press, Canada was officially anointed a nation of baby killers. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lowered the flag on public buildings for five months. Dozens of churches were burned by arsonists in apparent acts of retribution. The word “genocide” was thrown around in casual parlance as if we were Nazi Germany or Rwanda in 1994. The Canadian Press called the discovery of these ostensible unmarked graves the 2021 “Story of the Year.”

Then the days passed, the national festival of self-laceration abated somewhat, and it began dawning on some of us that — um, wait a minute — no evidence of graves had actually been presented yet. That evidence was on its way, right?

The Bloody Birth of Socialist Yugoslavia

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published May 29, 2024

In the final months of the war, Partisan leader Josip Tito and his forces complete their conquest of Yugoslavia. They destroy Draza Mihailovic’s Chetniks and Ante Pavelic’s Croatian Independent State and they outmanoeuvre King Peter. As Tito’s forces take revenge on their vanquished foes, Socialist Yugoslavia is born in a cradle of fire and blood.

02:08 Mihailovic’s Last Roll of the Dice
04:35 Tito Aligns himself with the Soviets
07:06 Albania
08:25 Tito begins state building
10:51 Hoxha purges his enemies
12:00 The Fall of Mihailović
13:08 The End of the Independent State of Croatia
14:54 The Events at Bleiburg
17:08 The Massacres
19:41 The Birth of Socialist Yugoslavia
20:54 Conclusion
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The Liberal Party of Canada, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Trudeau, Inc.

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Line, Stefan Klietsch ponders the idea that a lot of the problems the Trudeau Liberals are encountering in the run-up to the next federal election are direct or indirect effects of the constitutional changes Trudeau pushed through at the first party general meeting after he became Prime Minister:

With the ongoing and persistent slump of Justin Trudeau’s party in the polls, some observers have looked back at what caused the Sunny Ways team to lose its lustre in their years of governing. Some would point to the prime minister’s harassment of Judy-Wilson Raybould in the SNC-Lavalin scandal, an episode in which the prime minister clearly lost the battle for public opinion. One personal grievance of mine is the cynical promise that the prime minister had made of the 2015 election being the last such election under the existing electoral system. Others just point to post-pandemic economic conditions, especially higher interest rates.

But looking back to the very beginning of the Trudeau era, the Liberal leader arguably planted the seeds of his inevitable downfall quite quickly after winning his majority in the 2015 election. I speak here of the constitutional package that Trudeau pushed the Liberal Party of Canada to adopt at its 2016 Biannual General Meeting.

It is a recurring theme in Canadian politics that party leaders who form government tend to become more distant and isolated from their grassroots. But whereas most prime ministers and premiers would be content to delegate management of constitutional party debates to their submissive sycophants, a sitting prime minister took it upon himself to invest his personal brand in an appeal to the party’s convention floor to pass an omnibus “modernizing” constitutional package. Since the prime minister did not again participate in the party’s constitutional debates after 2016, he evidently got everything that he wanted all in one go, and with minimal resistance.

Trudeau’s cynicism here is worthy of mockery. Imagine thinking to yourself, “Just months ago, the rejuvenated grassroots institutions of the Liberal party swept me to power and ended the decade of Liberal decline. Better fix what ain’t broke!” The changes, which included slashing of the influence of Electoral District Associations and of policy conventions, were obviously not intended as some grand exercise in democracy empowerment, but rather were intended to protect an incumbent government from any inconvenient messages and influences from a potentially unruly party grassroots.

Yet it was the same independent party grassroots that had helped bring Trudeau to power in the first place. In the 2015 campaign the Liberals had run on what columnist Andrew Coyne called a “daring” platform, a platform crafted with more input and insight than can be offered by only pollsters and political operatives. The then Liberal platform was obviously a factor in the Liberals’ poaching of supporters from the NDP, which had at times held a lead in the polls. From cannabis legalization to electoral reform to the Canada Child Benefit, where did all the big new Liberal ideas come from? The party grassroots and institutions, of course.

The Dumbest Joint … that all woodworkers need to know

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Rex Krueger
Published Feb 21, 2024

The half-lap joint, strong and simple. Maybe not monkey simple.
(more…)

QotD: Is a “Pickup Artist” just an amateur method actor performing “fake it until you make it” drills?

Filed under: Health, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The underlying principles of Game are sound, because they come from the world of advertising. Heartiste was very good about referring to the marketing background — sociobiology may have provided the theory, but marketing, particularly Robert Cialdini’s seminal Persuasion, provided the practice. Social proof, consistency and commitment, all that jazz, it’s just marketing, and marketing certainly works … as far as it goes. I’m not privy to the numbers (not being a senior exec at a major corporation), but I’m pretty sure that an ad campaign that verifiably produced a 5% increase in sales would be a smashing success. An ad campaign that got 10% would make you Don Draper, a legend in the field who is also complete fiction.

Which forces us to consider a second question: How much of Game’s “success” is just practice? I’d wager very long money that no one, in the history of seduction, has ever said “I hit on fifteen girls a day, but I never seem to get anywhere”. And that of course is the very first thing the Game gurus have you do — just approach girls, dozens of them every day. Practice any skill for an hour a day and you’re bound to get a lot better pretty quickly. If you stink at golf, for instance, go hit a bucket of balls every day after work; in a month you’ll be dramatically better than you were, even if — make that especially if — you were terrible to start with.

Then throw in the marketing-style success rate. A 5% sales increase might not seem that big, but it’s millions of dollars. So, too, “scoring with 5% of your approaches” is a stunning success rate compared to 0%, especially since, you know, it’s sex, which our culture has taught us is the only meaningful standard.

Finally, though I will cheerfully admit to never having been a PUA, or anything close to it, I’ve read a fair amount of their stuff, and it seems to me that what they’re teaching is “how to fake self-confidence”, which is to say, they’re teaching Method acting. The theory is that you “fake it ’til you make it” — that is, by acting self-confident at all times, eventually you’ll really be self-confident. That virtue is as virtue does, and vice versa, goes back at least to Aristotle, so I’m certainly not going to argue with it. I’m simply going to point out that self-confidence, though of course very real, is more than just a set of behaviors, though our culture makes it very difficult to distinguish the two … and, worse, makes both of them very difficult to distinguish from “just being an asshole”.

Severian, “Mental Middlemen II: Sex and the City and Self-Confidence”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-05-06.

May 29, 2024

“The more they rant, scream and lecture, the more cool singing ‘Ausländer raus‘ and ‘Deutschland den Deutschen‘ will become”

Filed under: Germany, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Our deep undercover secret informant in Deutschland, eugyppius, recounts the latest scary outbreak of deadly neofascist singing in the beleaguered country:

The latest threat to German democracy including “one of the men in the video can be seen offering a slack, distinctly metrosexual Roman salute and giving himself a two-fingered Hitler moustache”

“Fascism”, as popularly understood, is both very bad and also very ill-defined, being a negative political vice characterised primarily in opposition to that equally ill-defined political virtue known as “democracy”. This “democracy”, whatever it may be, is distinguished above all by its fuzzy associations with a wide array of other virtues, like diversity, inclusiveness, equity and transsexuality. Fascism is mostly the opposite of all of these things, which sounds bad enough, but it gets much worse: Because democracy is a very fragile virtue, forever requiring vigilant defence and social fertiliser, fascism has become the most ineradicable and indestructible of weeds.

Or perhaps it is better, in our post-pandemic era, to say that fascism is like a virus. It is always spreading, despite (or because of?) our best efforts to kill it off. We vaccinate children against the fascist virus with years of indoctrination about the evils of National Socialism in school, but to judge from the present state of our political discourse, this programme has worked about as well as the mRNA jabs worked against Covid. Never have we preached so stridently against fascism, and never has it been so omnipresent.

Another curious property of fascism, is that it does not merely infect human brains. It can also taint cultural artefacts, like phrases. All of the very best people can use a specific phrase, but that does not matter at all should the fascists get ahold of it. Once they have run the benign words through their evil fascist mouths, anyone who utters them afterwards – whatever his intentions – may well be guilty of fascism. If only democracy were that effective and powerful.

As we’ve learned from the events of the past week, the Germ Theory of Fascism applies also to songs, even vacuous pop music. All of the most democratic people in Germany have worked themselves up into a collective outrage against an unremarkable 1999 Italodance tune called “L’amour toujours” (“Love always”) by Gigi D’Agostino, because some very bad fascists have been caught singing some very naughty lyrics to its indifferent melody. The fascists themselves have been cancelled of course, and the song is on its way to its own separate cancellation as well.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

[…]

The SPD only deepened their performative self-parody by posting this graphic to Instagram:

The Sylt revellers had chanted “Germany for the Germans”, but in this image the SPD proposed an improvement: “Germany for those Germans who defend our democracy”. Checkmate fascists! Except, “Germany for the Germans” is a slogan most closely identified with Der Heimat (formerly the NPD), an “ultranationalist” and “neo-Nazi” party. Realising that they had unwittingly reproduced the forbidden Nazi incantation, and were therefore guilty of spreading this horror virus, our crack SPD social media team swiftly deleted their post and threw up a hasty apology:

    We just published a post condemning in the strongest possible terms what we all saw in a video from Sylt. We did not manage to strike a tone that would resonate with everyone. We would like to sincerely apologise for this. Our aim is to make it clear that we do not want to leave this country to the far right and hate preachers. We want to defend our democracy and our freedom. Let’s continue this fight together in solidarity!

This is one of those missteps that really leaves you scratching your head. After hours of foaming at the mouth about “neo-Nazi slogans”, our virtue-mongering social democrats posted their own version of those very same tainted words to Instagram, in apparent ignorance of their origins and deeper significance. We are left to ask what they imagined they were angry about in the first place.

It’s hard not to agree with eugyppius’ conclusion:

I have my own theory about all of this.

Once upon a time, teenagers sustained a vibrant countercultural leftism, which was all about telling the establishment to go fuck itself, ingesting inadvisable quantities of drugs and engaging in a lot of inadvisable sex. All of that was very transgressive and exciting, directed as it was against a much more conservative and straight-laced German society. They shocked people, and that was the point. In the decades since, all of those hippies have grown old, and the most ideologically committed of them have become that which they used to hate, namely a lot of insufferable shrivelled scolds. As is the way with scolds everywhere, they’ve unwittingly inspired a new countercultural movement on the opposite side of the political spectrum. The more they rant, scream and lecture, the more cool singing “Ausländer raus” and “Deutschland den Deutschen” will become. Maybe, if they don’t like these words, they should try chilling out and finally shutting the fuck up about fascism. God knows there are more important things to screech about.

In the meantime, our new fascist anthem L’amour toujours has hit the top of the German charts.

A visit to failure pier

Filed under: Middle East, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

CDR Salamander has some advice for any US congresscritter with a spine (unfortunately, that probably means none of them):

This old operational planner has one bit of advice to Congress in their role of having oversight of the Executive Branch; subpoena the Decision Brief for the Gaza pier operation.

This was on the lowest of low scale of military operations, Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Response. There is little to nothing classified about any of this rump of a capability. Call in member of the Joint Staff who were involved in this planning — and I would prefer if you could find a few terminal O5/6 to testify as well. You might actually enjoy some candor.

The Commander’s Intent, the Higher Direction and Guidance, the Planning Assumptions, the Constraints and Restraints, the Critical Vulnerability analysis, etc. It is all there. If not, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense should tell the American people to their face.

This is a larger issue than anything happening in that impossible corner of the globe. Over the weekend, we saw yet more indications of an empire in decline deteriorating from bad to pathetic.

From the time the first load came off the pier, the aid barely made it past 300 meters until it disappeared into Hamasistan.

I’ll go ahead and tap the sign;

[…]

Generally this latest act in this other-end-of-the-Med-from-the-Greeks tragedy that has unfolded in front of everyone. As we saw at the top at Ashkelon Beach, first some ancillary bits floated over to Israel as the Eastern Mediterranean reminded everyone it is at the eastern end of a big sea with weather and waves and stuff.

We then found out that three soldiers were injured in a forklift accident. Just to add insult to injury, as the locals laughed, it appears more of the business end decided to try to make it to Haifa on its own.

[…]

I’m not sure how you scatter Army property all over the Eastern Med without a boot getting dry, but maybe I’m wrong. Gaza is lava, and all.

Empires don’t often die in a blaze of glory, no. More often than not they end in simpering apologies and excuses from poor leaders putting the wrong people in positions they have no place being, and when they fail — there is no accountability.

Ontario’s long and winding (and subsidy-strewn) road to beer in convenience stores

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Wine — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Apparently I’ll have a little bit more to celebrate on my birthday this year as the Ontario government’s glacially slow-to-change alcohol sales rules are being liberalized as of September 5th to allow all the province’s convenience stores to begin selling beer and wine:

“The Beer Store” by Like_the_Grand_Canyon is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Premier Doug Ford promised Ontarians beer in corner stores, supermarkets and big-box stores, and by God he has delivered. As of Sept. 5, all Ontario convenience stores meeting eligibility criteria will be allowed to sell beer, wine, cider and pre-mixed drinks. As of Oct. 31, the privilege will be extended to all grocery and big-box stores. The province says it expects as many as 8,500 new booze-procurement sites to come online under the new regime. By Ontario standards, it’s absolutely revolutionary.

The new regime is also, of course, hilariously complicated. And absurdly, offensively expensive.

It is fair to describe the new regime as somewhat more competitive, and certainly more convenient. In addition to offering potentially thousands of new locations, supermarkets (including the roughly 450 already licensed) will be able to offer volume discounts on beer — i.e., a 24-pack will cost less per bottle than a six-pack. This was a privilege hitherto reserved for The Beer Store, the American-, Belgian- and Japanese-owned conglomerate that dominated beer sales in Ontario from the end of Prohibition until fairly recently.

Private retailers will even be able to set their own prices, which until now has been considered blasphemy.

It is not fair to describe the new regime, as the government does, as an “open” market.

Near as I can tell, Ontario will by 2026 have the following retail environments in place:

  • The Beer Store. Smelly, surly, and the best-available value. Only beer — no cider or mixed drinks. It’s in the name.
  • LCBO locations. Government-run liquor stores retain their near-absolute monopoly on hard liquor sales, in addition to selling beer (especially craft beer, in which The Beer Store’s owners aren’t so interested), wine and everything else.
  • LCBO- and/or The Beer Store-branded “agency stores” in rural areas, which sell everything the LCBO does, but operate inside of convenience stores, small supermarkets and other local businesses, and are staffed by non-government employees.
  • The existing supermarkets licensed to sell beer, cider and wine (and in rare cases all three!), plus scores of new outlets — the new 8,500 new locations.

The Beer Store maintains a monopoly (in urban areas) on wholesale for bars and restaurants and on refunding cans and bottles, although its new “master framework agreement” (MFA) doesn’t even oblige it to maintain its current number of locations — which in urban areas have been dwindling rapidly. I’m a 17-minute walk from my nearest Beer Store. The house I grew up in, in the heart of midtown Toronto, is a 45-minute walk. I’m not schlepping a leaky garbage bag full of empty cans either distance.

Why Germany Lost the Battle of the Atlantic

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Germany, History, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Real Time History
Published Feb 2, 2024

In March 1943, German U-boats are on the attack – they sink 108 Allied vessels that month alone. Some Allied officials fear a German victory in the Atlantic is imminent. If the Allies lose the Atlantic, Britain loses its lifeline – and maybe even the war. But by May 1943, it will be the U-boats limping home in defeat. So how, in just two months, did the U-boats go from hunters to hunted?
(more…)

QotD: Wine

Filed under: Business, Humour, Quotations, Wine — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

“I don’t mean to sound cynical,” [Antonio Terni] said as he tipped the Conero sideways for a moment and eyed the tint. “But I do hate all this pseudo-intellectual mental masturbation about wine. I make two wines: one for Americans and one for myself. They’re both fine.”

Lawrence Osborne, The Accidental Connoisseur, 2004.

May 28, 2024

Rishi Sunak’s big-brained election-winning strategy: bring back the draft

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

Embattled British Conservative leader Rishi Sunak has had another of his patented brainstorms for a policy that will absolutely win his party huge numbers of “gammon” votes in the July 4th general election:

I thought the misty nostalgia for postwar “National Service” had died out long ago …

Here we go: straight off, let’s get the youth to do some indentured servitude, sorry, National Service.

The Sunday Times reports:

    Every 18-year-old will be required by law to sign up for a year of National Service under plans unveiled by the Conservatives this weekend.

    Rishi Sunak’s first manifesto commitment would see youngsters given the choice between a full-time course (for 12 months) or spending one weekend a month volunteering in their community. There will be sanctions for teenagers who do not take part. Up to 30,000 full-time positions will be created either in the armed forces or in cybersecurity training. The weekend placements could be with the fire or police service, the NHS or charities tackling loneliness and supporting older, isolated people.

    The Tories have pledged to set up a royal commission to design the £2.5billion programme and establish details such as how the cybertraining would be delivered. A pilot will start next year and by the end of the parliament legislation will be passed making it mandatory for all 18-year-olds.

[…]

The Prime Minister says: “This new, mandatory National Service will provide life-changing opportunities for our young people, offering them the chance to learn real-world skills, do new things and contribute to their community and our country.” I doubt very much it will do this. The youth could learn real world skills in a weekend job that they’d actually get paid for but under Tory Rule they must become an indentured servant of the State instead.

It was floated that “the weekend placements could be with the fire or police service, the NHS or charities tackling loneliness and supporting older, isolated people”. Really? The fire and police service having to babysit some surly 17-year-old teenager glued to a mobile phone? Is this really what a police officer wants?

No doubt the vast majority of the youth will be dumped in some NHS hospital to do goodness knows what, or indeed a nursing home. And what about all the people who are currently off work and on anti-depressants “because of mental health”. Will they be forced to volunteer, or let off the requirement?

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