a worthy rebellion

I was shocked and appalled a few weeks ago to read about the Catholic School Board in Windsor Ontario cutting school libraries to save money.

As one protesting parent remarked. "We have chapels in the Schools because we believe that is important. We have gymnasiums because we want children to learn the value of physical fitness. What does eliminating the libraries say about our priorities?"

Despite their original intransigence, I was heartened to read that the board has responded to pressure and backed down. The whole story brought back bad memories of Mike Harris and his omnibus bill which closed a number of Public Libraries and was pitched by a politician at the time explaining - "we have to be tough, ...we may even have to close a swimming pool or two" implying that the library closures were perfectly acceptable.

So Bravo to the protesting students, and parents! Libraries are key to the development of research skills, critical thinking, and in schools they may prompt students to a life long love of reading. They are also environmental models of sharing and re-using resources.

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Pope Benedict XVI

acknowledges the 'deadness' of some of the huge bureaucracy of the Church...

Christ is Alive in His Church

While necessary to keep the monolithic structure together, it can be stultifying and soul-deadening...

Good for him.

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It passed

I can never understand how so many people in the U.S., including so many who don't have health care insurance, consider universal health care 'communist'...



When all it really does is provide for those who can't provide for themselves...



(Though that in itself is probably seen as 'communist' in the U.S.. I sometimes think that Scrooge's comment on the poor should be enshrined in the U.S. Constitution 'If they'd rather die, then they had better do it and decrease the surplus population.')

Of course, once the government bureaucracy gets into it it'll become much like ours, and soon will need to be dismantled and re-done, just like ours needs to be. But it's a start...

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Starting all over?

Woman is living proof that she's not dead

But now she's only 3 months old...

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Not gone bad.

Completely out of control and existing solely for itself and those it supports!

Registry: Bureaucracy gone bad?

While I hope they get rid of the long gun registry, and now I'm being off-topic, but I still wish some people in government would begin to seriously look at the health care system and Roy Romanow's suggestions for it. If people think that the Long Gun Registry is a good example of bad bureacracy, let them take a look at our health region. There's a terrific example of a bureacracy existing to feed itself, to the detriment of the users...

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Ah! The era of

unlimited officiousness...

Poppy seller told to undergo risk assessment

This is not surprising. More and more things in our society and cultures are becoming victims of the bureaucrats - people who are put in charge (or who take charge) of controlling things, whose only job is to make sure that there are more and more things that they can control. If there were a list of groups that contributes little to society, I would put them at the top is the list (And then someone would take control of the list, and design a bunch of rules as to who can or can't be on the list, and then make people apply for positions on the list, and then...)

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