A Job Proposal ....

For Conrad Black

How about this?

The CBC is in desperate need of an attitude adjustment.
Whether through a top-down management shuffle or through a permanent defunding and forced privatisation. The Canadian Broadcast Corp. has long outlived its usefulness ... completely abandoned being relevant to Canadians outside of a few people who call themselves "Friends of Canadian Broadcasting" and in fact completely antagonistic to  more than half the population.


All the while sucking up out tax dollars to the tune of nearly $1.4 BILLION dollars every year.

What better way to accomplish a thorough realignment of the priorities at the Ceeb than to hire Conrad as the new CEO and President? Give him the task of taking the parasitic organisation off the public teet and set them to the business of either proving their worth or selling off the assets paid for by the Canadian public .... and returning out money.

I'd bet that Conrad would be up to the task.

OMMAG

Air Canada ... Just another reason to let them go to hell............

It seems that a lot of talk is being devoted to Air Canada this week.
Deservedly so ... The Math ... not so hard.
According to the MSM writer being interviewed and the tools at SUN TV :
>Market Cap: $227 Million = $0.227 Billion
> Pension Liabilities: $13 Billion

A reality check by an SDA reader and commenter:
> $1.59 billion in liabilities vs $1.7 billion in assets (with statements from the financial report)
Some people take this as a sign that Air Canada is not in as bad a shape as being claimed. Well ... no it is not as bad a a MSM reporter makes out in his efforts to  create a story. AC is still a piece of crap and deserves to be broken up and sold off just to remove any possibility that taxpayers will be robbed again to bail the worthless company out.

However what I take away from the information provided is that the pathetic efforts of Sun TV news to fact check (non-existent)... and the willingness of people to jump on any bandwagon that comes along just go to show how gullible people can be.

Let's face it Charles Adler has always been a bloviator and bullshit spinner.... no different at SUN TV ... just now a larger soap box to elevate his self esteem. As for the interviewee ... Dan Cook of the Globe&Mail ... since when has this bird cage liner been concerned about facts?

OMMAG

Just Another Reason to Detest Air Canada

In my years of work I've had quite a bit to do with the former Crown Corporation and constant parasite .... Air Canada.

What I have seen I have seldom liked and often was left with my head shaking in disbelief. Atrocious customer service... obnoxious and arrogant employees... outright lying to passengers...overpriced fares.. especially on their protected gravy routes where no competitors are ever allowed to play.

The news today included the apparent demise of the spin off company Aveos which provides mechanical overhaul services for the very necessary major aircraft service schedule.
It seems that AC ... with it's ongoing game of chicken played against the various union groups within their fold the company has painted itself into a corner.

They've been failing to abide by the statutes and regulations that require them to maintain the aircraft they operate and they have been screwing the spin off service provider Aveos in order to cut maintenance costs.

Going back to 2009 when the Canadian Government bailed out Air Canada and set up the spin off of Aveos the writing was on the wall. Observers like yours truly were convinced that the politically motivated  financial support was going to be a short term band aid fix for a company that is suffering from terminal cancer. The cancer that Infests AC has metastasized to every part of the corporate body.
This is the natural result of decades of political protection and the ingrained culture of entitlement that runs from the board to the executive offices .... to the air crews to the support staff and to the janitors.
Air Canada has been on some sort of  life support ... at the expense of Canadian Taxpayers since well before the sell-off to private equity and ever since ... just why ... nobody ever seems to have a good answer for.
But every single time this decrepit excuse for a business gets the chills our government Buys Time .... by throwing more money at it.

Do we actually NEED Air Canada?  I think not. Every time the rancid pile gets in trouble someone else ends up paying for it ... we should have resisted the temptation to give in to the whining liberals and howling NDP moonbats and let the thing meet the fate it deserved in the first place.




Too bad those Aveos employees got the shaft ............................

OMMAG

Reviving Manufacturing in the West .....

"The Dyson solution involves shifting the education system, the tax system and the government's priorities to making industrial manufacturing something that is once again desired, supported and rewarded."

So goes the tone of the story from the Globe&Mail ..... James Dyson reinvented ....

From my own perspective .... as the "high foreheads" in our own business and finance community along with the dumbasses in the political and chattering arenas were balyhooing the "paradigm" of economic evolution ... as they imagined it ... from a manufacturing and technology economy to the conceptual "service economy", nobody was asking the question of "How do we create value?"

Those who did ask that question (me) were often told that we just did not understand how it worked!
I beg to differ... I and those like myself understood very well how it worked.

Now 30 years later ... so apparently does at least ONE susccessful businessman who is also willing to say so.

On the surface the G&M writer seems to be pushing the idea that we NEED government support to make manufacturing business successful .... on the contrary ... what Dyson is saying and what the rest of us neanderthals understand is that the government IS the problem.

Get government out of the marketplace and kill these endless regulatory bodies ... businesses including the manufacturing sector can thrive.

OMMAG

This Is Why Politicians Are Hell Bent on Keeping the SCAM Going...

A sound reason for business ... Big Oil  ... Big Energy  ... EXXON /Gulf/Petro-Can/Shell /GE .... to back the global warming scam (they do know it is a SCAM) is because they can profit from it. The stupid ... and the ignorant have bought into the BS about this whole business being a matter of "science" and continue to do so.
Of course for the international proponents of wealth distribution this still remains the opportunity of the century... the UN and it's minion agencies have never been this close to achieving an international consensus for their dreams of entrenching wealth redistribution from successful to the failures and parasites of this world.

For sure ... the main proponents from the research industry have a vested interest in keeping the fraud going since they live off the research money that comes from the corporate world and from the business of "Big Enviromental Activism".
Unfortunately ... their trough is also being  filled with taxpayer dollars.

Tax dollars are being thrown away in the hundreds of billions provided to mainstream energy industry  players through an endless stream of subsidies to provide risk free incentive for these major business entities. Thanks to our government's largess ... these big energy players get to dominate every possible avenue of alternative energy development. To be sure ... every last one of these "alternate energy" sources is completely non-viable without being propped up by subsidy.

Bio-fuel of every description ... takes more conventional fuel to produce than it is worth and that is not even considering the financial costs to produce the bio-fuels or the cost of lost use of resources when the normal production of food or fiber or oils and the land needed for this production are diverted to the unproductive energy sector. Yet ... the big players still get a guaranteed profit. Thanks to taxpayers.

Wind energy ... which has limited opportunity for economic viability ... is being subsidized around the industrialized world for no other reason than the same players are benefitting from those subsidies.

Solar energy ... as in solar to electrical power ... requires more dollar value in subsidy to even implement (as in install the equipment) than it is able to produce in energy over the entire servicable lifespan of the equipment.

On the political front ... Big Green ... is a win / win proposition. They get political support from the organizations that receive the corporate donations ... and they get political support from the dumbasses that believe the BS of the activists.

The only possible downside for politicos is the relatively limited backlash from an informed public with the sense to see that they are being gamed and want something done about it.

From a blog posting at Autonomous Mind the political and industrial influencing effect is examined.:

Excerpt...


There are plenty more examples of these kind of inconvenient facts, where the supposed enemy is a friend and supposed ally is an opponent.  The bottom line is these companies will support whatever helps their bottom line.  They are super powerful and influential corporates, and with the subsidies on offer utterly committed to keeping the climate change gravy train on the tracks.  And we, the taxpaying consumers, foot the bill to increase the wealth of these corporations.

I'm not a conspiracy oriented person ... I think that the corporations will and must do what they can do to prosper... but I do think that the lack of accountability and lack of honesty being displayed by the political classes, the Mainstream Media and by the accademic community is something that needs to be addressed and fought hard to rectify.

Businesses do have a right to prosper ... not at the expense of the taxpayer.

There is no point in arguing facts with the suckers in the green camp .... the only thing you can do is remind politicians that there is a person or more out here who knows the game that is being played.

OMMAG

Seven Traits of Failure

Forbes Magazine ... has a short list of executive traits that are common  to failed and failing or about to fail companies.

See the list   Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Execs .

Seems to me that every company I've ever worked for has promoted or hired these types ....

Another good reason to go find a new job right now.

OMMAG

Here We Go Again............

Back to the old games .... softwood lumber produced in BC is subsidized because it's cheep!

It's not fair whines US lumber industry....

Waaa Waaa Waaa .....

First it was subsidies ... go to court ... court says BS Bubba ... go home ... Bubba whines and refuses to play.

Next it was cutting fees .... too low = subsidies .... go to court .... court says BS Bubba .... go home.... Bubba whines and refuses to play.

Then it was back to court ... they're not playing fair says Bubba ..... court says pay back those fines and duties you stole ..... Bubba whines and refuses to play.

Tell ya what Bubba ... we'll let you come and buy out the producers ..... bugs and all! Soon as you pay back the money you owe.....


"We're following the rules as they've been set out," said John Allan, spokesman for the British Columbia Lumber Trade Council. "When the U.S. lumber lobby feels the pinch . . . they use their political forces to put pressure on the U.S. administration to come after us."

OMMAG

So ? What's your point Poindexter ?

In a piece of faux news presented by Business Review Canada (businessreviewcanada.ca) some writer thinks it is noteworthy that some CPA wrote a report based on some study of CEO compensation. The spin put on this piece seems to be that by camparison the average wage earner is paid less than 1% of what these corporate hot shots get.

As if this has an intrinsic signficance!

Note worthy is the fact that the usual leftard MSMers (CBC - Torstar -Vancouver Sun - CTV etc) have latched onto the piece. Because .... as we should all know ..... any chance to present a theme that encourages non thinking acceptance of such received wisdom from your moral and intellectual betters is an opportunity not to be wasted.

If you care to dip your attention into the peu profonde here's the link :
Can Bus Rev .... if you have the time to kill do a search on googlenews to see the links to the MSM rehash of the article ... note that CP even takes credit for the story. No attribution that I can see.

So what's my point?

Just another example of how lazy, stupid and dishonest the pinheads in the MSM really are.

OMMAG

In Other Governance Related News

EU getting grief from PM Harper over Bank Tax ..... GOOD!

Will Harper Stand up for Canadians and Common Sense ....Tell them to Drop Dead? .... Or will he continue to let Jim Prentice kiss the European Cleptocrat's butts?

He's already got Flaherty and the Moore Kissing The US's Congress' ass! .... And Just Exactly Why is this a Culture and Heritage Issue?

Read Michael Geist ...



OMMAG

Shakup at Westjet

An oasis of ethical management in the great cesspool of the transportation business.

Sean Durfy stepped down as president and CEO of the Calgary-based airline Monday night. He'll be replaced by industry veteran Gregg Saretsky, who was an executive at the now-defunct Canadian Airlines for 13 years and has worked in the industry for 25 years.

Yep a guy realizes that the buck stops at his desk and does the right thing.

I love this company.

OMMAG

Airships - Is the Time Near for Retro-Technolgy to Take Off?

Is a sight like this in the future of Manitoba's Interlake and northern communities?



Something I have always been interested in is the idea of using refined versions of old technologies in our present day. One such concept is the use of the Lighter Than Air craft (LTA).

The basic technology employed in LTA craft has not changed since day one of the invention.
What has changed over the years is the supporting technology to make them stronger, more reliable and more adaptable for numerous uses. I think the possiblities are barely seen by most of the advocates of the LTA.

There are a number of initiatives around the world to launch variations of the LTA with the main promoters being the groups that have invested in the manufacture of the craft.

Here's one outfit that has big plans ASE

Another group that calls itself Environmental Logistics Corp. is seeking support from the community of St. Laurent MB in order to establish an operating base. Their idea seems to be that LTAs could be used to transport year round to remote communities and that the Interlake town would make a good jumping off point.

Who knows? This idea may have merit.

Although, from what I have read they are pretty vague about details of the operation and their ability to move their plans forward and from what I can see haven't been able to set up as much as a web site so far.... I'd like to see this project move.

What worries me a lot about these things is that such self styled entrepreneurs always seem to be going around with cap in hand. I understand from first hand experience what it is like to get financing and other formas of support to launch a new business BUT I find it raises cautionary flags whenever I see the first steps revolving around some public hand out. I suppose that for a community like St. Laurent there is little jeopardy in signing a commitment to approve development of land, setting land aside and even agreeing to local tax breaks for a new business to come to their area. Now we need to see just how serious the pitch men are about their business ideas.

Blair Sherwood, president of Environmental Logistics Corp., spoke to the St. Laurent Community Development Corporation Nov. 16 about the possibility of building an airship hangar in the RM this past week and had this to say about the project, from an article printed in the Interlake Spectator

"I think it went over fairly well," said Sherwood. "I'm awaiting a letter of support from the council and CDC so I can go to the next step. Once we have that, we can seriously look at different investment options for major investors. Without local written support, we'll have to look at other locations."

"The intention is to serve northern Manitoba as a substitute transportation for ice roads, which are becoming less reliable," said CDC president Tammy Terrance.

"I believe the ramifications for the area to be huge, not only in jobs, but worldwide recognition as the place where the industrial cargo airship industry took off, if you'll excuse the pun...."

"With the lake, relatively short distance to a major aerospace centre and the airspace in and around St. Laurent having few if any restrictions, it allows future development of this industry there...."

"If we get the letters of support, then we can seriously complete our fundraising,"

Good Luck I say.

BUT ... I'd be a lot more hopeful of a successful result if you could show some interest by those who would actually be paying for the service and other business groups who could make use of the LTA craft and operations to launch or enhance their own ventures.

Without such market support, at least in the form of interest shown, I see little hope for a successful enterprise. After all that is what investors really want to know.... do you know your market, how sure is it and how big is it???

It would also be reassuring to know that your plans did not hinge on flakey environmental dogma like the proposition that Ice Roads are going to be less reliable as time goes on. As was asserted by the Community Development Corp. rep for the region.

Get your ducks in a row people!

Oh yes! and get your head out of the clouds ... German Failure back at it...

OMMAG

Brand New....

Since the fates decided to take my old truck.....


5.4l-4wd-trailer towing group, rides like and has an interior like a limo.

Power drivers seat, satelite radio, blue tooth, USB jack, ipod jack, 3 power plugs, cup holders everywhere, and ready to pound out a Winnipeg winter.





OMMAG

Cable TV Broohaha..... No Good Guys In This Show.

There are only self serving and lying bastards on all fronts in this pissing contest at the CRTC hearings!

Clowns in politics and clowns in the media business.... cons at the con-conference.

This is only about how to gouge more money out of the Canadian Consumer in order to protect vested corporate interests when what it should be about is Canadians having the freedom to choose how they spend their money

For starters lets look at our media corporations...

The same clowns who would have you believe that they have no bias and present a fair and balanced view of the world to your home would have you believe that they are the champions of something they call "Local Broadcasting".

As if this is the issue that they are arguing about in their efforts to secure still further government support for their existence!

These jokers were once located in every city across Canada with TV and radio stations that offered local presence and local content. Since the 1970s the CBC has continuously scaled back and eliminated local market operations to focus on their "National" operations based in Toronto.

They are NOT and have no intentions of being a local broadcaster in any sense of the term.

They represent very little of what is Canadian outside of their own little clique of employees and a minuscule number of devotees.

To have them argue that they deserve a payoff from the carriers who distribute their signals to Canadian homes is as twisted a piece of prevarication as has ever come from the mouth the most glib con artist. The fact is that the cable carriers already pay them for their product and that the consumers are not buying and advertising revenues are going down the toilet. Further, it is a fact that without the cable carrier access into the consumer homes the CBC would have an even narrower audience.

As things stand the CBC should be paying the cable operators for the privilege of using the bandwidth but since they are nothing but beggars and feeders of the public trough they have nothing to offer. Never mind the billion$ annual cash injection we taxpayers are forced to contribute. Never mind the forced distribution of their dubious product through Canadian content regulations and never mind the money from the Canadian broadcasting fund... your cable carrier should now be robbed to pay them still more. And if you have even the most rudimentary understanding of commerce you will understand that this means YOU pay.

The CBC laughably suggested this week that the cable companies also be forced to provide a lean channel package that would be lower cost. Sure ... lots of people would be happy to have a pared down channel package and skip all that costly extra programming access. Of course the Can Con rules would make it mandatory that the CBC product be included in that package.

Same story for CTV .... although without the $B annual guaranteed funding thanks to the federal government. CTV is part of the Bell Globe Media and just happens to have it's very own access network to the millions of Bell telephone and digital TV customers and it's Bell Satellite operations across the country.

Not just a content producer is Bell .... but a direct competitor of the Cable and Satellite operators ... that just happens to be another con at the con-conference. Demanding that the government force their competitors to carry their product and pay the vigorish on top.

As for Global .... a joke in a pack of jokers .... scraping the bottom of the pond like a diseased carp for any offal that might have sunk into the muck.

And what of the cable and satellite operators?

Just the hogs on the other side of the public trough. Sure they are private businesses and sure the stakeholders have put billions of their own money into the infrastructure and sure they pay for the product they carry to your home. But that is where the free market stuff ends and where the consumer gets it in the ear.

Not one of these operators allows the consumer to choose what the product purchased contains.
They all complain that they are bound by the CRTC rules but they all lie about how these rules affect them. In fact the carriers have repeatedly supported the status-quo in regard to programming content and consistently offered only lip service to placate consumers over complaints of price fixing and gouging. The carriers also do not need the three Canadian broadcasters in any way shape or form. Demand for the the offerings of the networks is at an all time low and going down steadily. Except for the mandates of the CRTC the cable operators and the satellite operators would not be wasting their bandwidth on these losers. The operators who service a significant proportion of their customers with fully digital systems know every time a set top box is switched on and what channels are selected. They have the ability to collect all the data they need on the viewing habits of their customers and they know damned well that the customers are NOT watching CTV/CBC/Global.

Although the cable operators rightly assert that the media content producers are attempting a new cash grab through government mandate , they are anything but the staunch defender of the consumer as they have attempted to paint themselves.

None of them ... not the Networks and not the Carriers are concerned about anything but maintaining and improving their hold over the market and the consumer. Which makes all of them baldfaced liars.

As for the government and the CRTC who are supposed be looking out for the citizens of this nation.... I have not heard one bit of sense or concern for the consumer or the tax paying public come from these quarters. Granted the CRTC is only supposed to be arbiter ... BUT the problem is that they are pandering to the corporate players and treating their obligations to the public as extraneous nuisance.

And that is what really has me steamed.

These cretins need to be reminded that they are to SERVE the public interest and one way or another they are going to be reminded of that. Until the government of Canada and the CRTC are willing to take a stand on behalf of the people who they are supposed to serve then Canadians have NO one speaking for them in this arena.

What the HELL are we paying taxes for?

Canadians have told the CRTC and every polster who has ever researched the issue of content and cable fees that what we want is CHOICE. We want to decide for ourselves what channels we receive and when we watch them and we want to pay for WHAT we watch and not the arbitrary selection we are forced to take along with our personal choices.

Send an email to your MP ... regardless of what party they stand for.... and give them a reminder of who they are supposed to be working for.

OMMAG

The Economic Geniuses of the MSM

Specifically Canadian Press ...

In a chicken little piece Titled : "Bank of Canada in bind as loonie continues climb toward parity with U.S. dollar" ..... that goes 7 paragraphs before letting slip the underlying reason why our dollar is nearing parity with the USA...........

"The Bank of Canada has a great opportunity. If U.S. weakness continues, the Canadian dollar might actually underperform other currencies waiting for what the bank might say," Scotiabank currency analyst Camilla Sutton said. "

OOPsee ....... The Canadian Dollar isn't the problem ... The US Dollar is the problem.

But that won't stop the folks who are cheerleading for a failing economy.

No matter how plainly the US economy is tanking there are those who wish to see ours go down with it. Somebody has to make the case that it can't happen fast enough.

Apparently, the job of the Bank of Canada is to pander to the wishes of people who can't stand to see a stable Canadian economic policy.

Why do they do that?

And while you are at it try this : Insane Blog Comment of the Day!

OMMAG

Those Who Are Ignorant of History ............

Are more likely to buy into today's variety of miniature auto.

Actually a pretty interesting little car.

http://microcarmuseum.com/tour/bmw600.html

But with the current frenzy among those who feel the need to make meaningless gestures or simply posture about being more "Conscious and Caring" .... I wonder just how the fate of this little gadget will relate to the fate of the current generation of government made and promoted econo-boxes.




OMMAG

Get Your Class Envy Capitalist Bashing Slogans Ready!

Barclay's Bank President Bob Diamond just scored himself a jackpot.

The slum dogs are baying and the MSM are shreeking .... "Only The Rich are benefiting!" they scream!


Never mind that Bobby bankrolled the Global Investor's fund with his own money at the outset.

Mr Diamond reaped the reward of having been in charge of Barclays Global Investors, the fund management arm of the bank, for six years.

During that time he used £6million of his own money to buy shares in the investment firm.

In total, Barclays Global Investors executives are sharing £365million after the company was sold to the U.S. fund manager BlackRock yesterday.

Never mind that the deal he put together is worth over £ 8 billion ......

That's 4.56 % in commissions to the Execs .... not very much. And Bob's £22 million didn't happen over night either. Although that's the kind of thing the leftards like to prattle about.


OMMAG

They Should All Be Asking These Questions

Update : Meanwhile What happens to all that loose money when the economy goes on again?

From .... Canadian Press

TORONTO - As several provinces prepare to wade into red ink as the spring budget season approaches, there are new warnings that the cost of borrowing may go up if governments don't show a plan to return to balanced budgets once the economy recovers.

The meaning of this?

Remember the 1980's ? Remember sky high interest rates and spiraling inflation?

It starts with Government Spending and Debt!
Refresher course in Economics 101 :

Governments do not produce wealth. The only wealth that governments have is what they take from the productive population. Every dime a government borrows is a dime that ordinary citizens owe. It's ALL YOUR money.


Oh yes! If they were paying attention .... they'd have listed Manitoba as well.

OMMAG

Sunday Science and Technology

Check out the interactive tool : Not In English But Easy to Figure Out!


Interactive customer marketing and customer survey technology is being used by motorcycle manufacturers.


Taking the web survey to the next level BMW has provided not just a Q&R tool but an online user customization where you can make a number of modifications to the machines.

Following the lead of Harley Davidson in the USA where on-line shoppers or browsers can create a compilation and get a better vision of what their favorite combinations of hardware and finishes would look like, BMW has a well designed application that seems to allow more user flexibility in some areas. The HD site provides more hardware options because that is how HD markets their products.

BMW is just beginning to get into this sort of product option marketing and while the hardware choices they are offering are fewer for now they seem to be willing to look outside the box with the finishes.

The big difference here is that HD only offers this with existing products.

BMW is allowing the customer or the market demographic to shape how the product will actually look.

That is IF they go ahead with the product development and put it in the showrooms and customer's hands.

I sure hope they do!

Here's my rendition :




OMMAG

It's Never Fair

It never fails!
Give in to one little bastard and there's another on complaining.. "It's Not Fair" !


Right! In the interest of true fairness Don't Give Anything To Any of Them!

OMMAG

New Job Day ....

First day on the job with a new employer. Haven't worked for someone else aside from clients for over 5 years....
Oh well every day is a new adventure.




Off now to facilitate the making of tractors for the new kulaks.....

In the meanwhile ..... Dust My Broom has plenty of good reading.

OMMAG