Reflection on the Blogging Assignment

As a refresher, this blog was created as an assignment for a class on Ontario Politics. The objective was to create an active blog looking at current events and issues in Canadian politics, detailing personal opinion.
Overall, I enjoyed the assignment. I enjoyed having a little extra motivation to read the newspaper and keep up with current events in an otherwise busy time when that might get pushed aside for other things. The same issues were reported on by other members of the class in their blogs, which opened up a ton of different opinions and viewpoints on the same subject. Blog posts didn't take much suffering to produce due to their length. It was fairly easy to write small commentaries on different subjects.
At first I was a little apprehensive to posting my opinion where other people could read them, especially other politics students that might have a better idea of what they're talking about, but logical arguments got logical replies, and even if they didn't agree I could stand by my opinion.
The thing I didn't appreciate the most was the extention of the due date twice. I feel I made an effort to be prepared for the original due date, and having it move back several weeks made me have to readjust my plan. Notice about the second pushback in due date wasn't passed around very clearly, and I had even brought the assignment with me to hand in.
It would have been nice to have a bit more freedom with the overall topics as well. Obviously this is a class in Ontario politics, so it makes sense if the blogs should focus around that topic as well, but there was more than one occasion where I would've liked to post on a topic at either the federal or the local level.
Overall it was an assignment that I enjoyed much more than a literary review type paper. It allowed for the best type of learning about Ontario politics...what's actually going on!

Oink Cough Oink

The swine flu has been one of this year's biggest issues, and there are so many different issues that have come up surronding it. We got the slightest hint of fear at the end of last winter, when news of the swine flu first hit the fan, but it all but vanished as flu season ended for the year. It's return was anticipated, so the government had the majority of the year to prepare for it. Yet here we find ourselves with shortages. Apparently the vaccine has a shelf life of only 24 hours, but that is only after it has been initially drawn from the vials. Therefore large quantities of the vaccine should have been pre-made ahead of time in anticipation of the demand. I'm fairly shocked that private clinics have been able to get their hands on some vaccine as well. Normally I actually have sympathy towards a mixed system of private and public health care in Canada, but when we don't even have enough vaccine to fill up our public stores, then I don't appreciate 'money' being a priority group.
Is getting the shot safe? Apparently so. Apparently there's been alot of research done with it so far, but it's not enough in my opinion. Take the 24 hour shelf life for example. That's not because we know something bad will happen if we administer the vaccine after 24 hours. It's because we don't know if something bad will happen if the vaccine is exposed for more than 24 hours. There hasn't been enough research with it yet to know.
Not too mention the whole cheerleader incident. Of course, I believe them when they say it was a 1 in a million chance, but the problem is is they don't know what sort of things might trigger such a reaction, so people have no warning to avoid the shot if they have a certain type of disorder or condition.
Plus, with the allergic reactions that have been occuring, it just continues to point out that we don't know enough yet.
Personally, I have never taken a flu shot, and I don't plan on taking this one either. However, certain factors like those mentioned above deter me from it. I don't think I would want to take one this year even if that was my sort of thing to begin with. Dealing with the flu seems like a smaller risk than getting the shot.
Although there is just as much propaganda in the other direction saying the H1N1 shot is perfectly safe, maybe even more than the regular flu shot, there's just too much on both sides of the fence to feel completely secure.

Gimme a HST break!

Coffee, newspapers and value meals get HST break



I don’t know how much I agree with this move. The whole point of HST is to lower administrative costs to businesses by having only one single tax, yet many things are exempted anyways. Why are these things exempted? The spot where the consumer if going to feel the impact of this new form of taxation the most is in things that are quite costly as it is, such as gasoline, a necessary commodity for many people. The fact that your morning Mcmuffin will now be $4.52 instead of $4.20…prices of products change worse than this all the time. It’s not like the money that gets collected by this sales tax is getting dumped into a bottomless hole. The idea is to help pull the government out of its deficit and deliver us with better services. How can people complain about the wait-lines of universal heath care, and at the same time try and deny the government the funds to do something about it? What about newspapers? Apparently the removal of the HST from newspapers was a well applauded move that would save jobs and money in that industry. Are people not aware that all they have to do is jump on a computer and read their daily newspaper for free? What about heading down to McDonalds, Chapters or Tim Horton’s and reading their complementary newspapers? That offsets the cost of your slightly more expensive breakfast or coffee right there. Tax on newspapers might create more of a noticeable shift of people choosing to read their paper online instead of purchasing a hard copy, but as the Internet becomes more and more mainstream, that is a shift we should expect to see now anyways.
I think all this concession has done is show a crack in the Liberals defense. As much as they say they aren’t going to budge anymore…well didn’t they already say that before this? This is just going to result in more vigorous lobbying and complaint.

Who Wants to Be Green?

Ontario would issue green licence plates



So a provincial plan to reward drivers of eco-friendly vehicles with ‘green’ license plates would offer them several rewards. The details of the program are in their initial stages and have yet to be finalized. One current gray area is which vehicles will be the recipients of this reward. Some push towards existing models like the Toyota Prius and SmartCar have been pointed out, but there is also some mention that these might not be good enough and actually be ineligible. Instead the program may be looking towards vehicles that are even friendlier than before. This is all quite noble, but with the high, above average expense of these vehicles, it certainly only reaches out to a small sector of the public. In the same strain though, demand for these vehicles whose main price hike is due to the cost of technology will help funding to both improve and cheapen the technology in the future.
The other gray area of the program is the rewards it offers. Access to the carpool lane with only a single passenger seems to be the key one. This reward would probably be more stimulating if there were more carpool lanes to begin with. It also seems fairly nearsighted. If the goal is to switch people from using gas-guzzlers to environmental friendly vehicles, eventually the carpool lanes will become congested with many single passenger vehicles, taking away the purpose of them.
Another reward frequently mentioned is free parking in designated areas. This sounds like it could be fairly Toronto, or city-centered, possibly not inferring any benefits onto more rurally based supporters of the plan. If large box stores like Wal-Mart offer up premium parking for the green-license plate club, will law enforce it? Handi-capped works well, but there are an awful lot of pregnant middle-aged men out there.
Some criticize the plan as being too little, too late. It’s true that the majority of the focus for environmental change should be on industries instead of people, who are collectively responsible for more than 70% of pollution. However, vehicle use is a large proponent of individual wear and tear on the environment. There is no such thing as too little. There could be better, but a little is better than nothing.

Enough? Not Likely.

So the handheld devices law is finally here. Too bad it’s not really that useful. If you read back to my previous blog entry on the cell phone ban, you’ll see that I illustrated the true danger of cell phones; driving becomes to automatic when your focus is on the conversation, and abnormal events on the road can’t be responded to fast enough. Well, since this new law only bans ‘hand held devices’, and does nothing to curb or control hands-free devices, the problem certainly doesn’t get solved.
It is beneficial in a few ways though. Putting a ban on texting, Internet surfing, and fiddling with I-pods and GPS should help keep eyes on the road instead of in the lap. Texting while driving just sounds ridiculous, but apparently it done almost as frequently as actually talking on a cell phone.
Therefore, the new law sound be beneficial and reduce the numbers of accidents based on texting and other related functions of these devices, but probably won’t affect the rate of accidents from actual conversations.
Some people would argue that you can talk to passengers without increased risk, but that could probably be linked to the passenger being aware of your situation as well as you, providing and extra set of eyes.
The problem with increasing the ban to include all phone usage is practicality. It’s typically too hard to tell whether someone is using a hands-free device for it to be feasible to fine someone. Sure, there are ride checks and things like that, but it’s fairly easy to discreetly shove the earpiece into your center console before you get to it. However, a full-out ban might decrease usage by people afraid to be caught, or the odd one that doesn’t try to hide it.
The current status of the cell phone ban leaves something to be desired, but it is a step in the right direction.