Happy New Year 2014

         The year 2013 is coming to a close and winter is already grey upon the city. Christmas music blasts into malls, on television and radio and it would be on the Internet if one touched one or another key on the computer, tablet or smart phone. Fliers fill mailboxes and full page ads take most of the space in newspapers, a sad fate for so many trees.

         On such a gloomy day I thought it would be interesting to create a digital comment on the leadership of our world. No trees will die, I promise.

As a resident of the GTA as we call the greater Toronto area I am caught up in the Rob Ford debacle. Rob is not the mayor of my community but his antics reflect badly on all of us, even those beyond the GTA. We are all in disgrace but can do nothing about it except pray that the electors in Toronto, the heart of our GTA, do not return him to power in the 2014 election. They might. There is no evidence that people of influence in the city will take action to prevent it. He continues to be reported on in local press even though he is an empty balloon of a teenage man.

       The next level of our leadership is resident in Queens Park and governs the province of Ontario. The governing party has been irresponsible for at least the last four years wasting billions of dollars on badly managed projects. The billions are sunk costs that bought nothing of residual value. An election is likely in 2014. The problem is whether or not the other parties will or could do anything differently and the likelihood is that they cannot and will likely do worse. We have not been shown their policies or even their vague promises except to do better. Whoever wins the election it is inevitable many newly elected politicians will be assigned responsibility for important jobs about which they know nothing and are incapable of managing with diligence or skill.

        Canada is governed by an egomaniac through an unelected organization called the PMO or Prime Minister’s Office. It has demonstrated incompetence in managing a scandal in the appointed upper house called the Senate which is where party bagmen and defeated candidates are sent as a reward for service to the Prime Minister. Normally Seanators are harmless if expensive and do the bidding of the PMO as do the elected members of Parliament who are beholden to the Prime Minister if they want to be re-elected in 2015. Everyone must do as they are told by the inexperienced young men in the PMO. They stand for more prisons, oil sands development, tough in foreign relations, supporting Israel, giving away resources and jobs through trade agreements to Europe and Asia. Europe and Asia have always been disdainful of Canada looking at us only as a market for their goods and services. Our best friends have been in the USA but that country is going through its own crisis. We have lost most of the skills in manufacturing that were learned and improved during the twentieth century. Will anything change when the election is called in 2015? The trend is toward a less caring society that favours the extremely wealthy who live in unseen luxury like their counterparts in other parts of the world.

      

        The world itself is in a state of change. The Russian President is becoming prominent on the world stage using old KGB tactics to control both inside and outside the country. China is rapidly overtaking the US as the largest economy often by stealing secrets from the west and keeping its vast human resources in a state of subsistence. Many other countries are under the influence of China or Russia. The influence of the US and EU is declining since both are seriously indebted to China.

        Overall there is a growing diminution of personal freedom as we in Canada and the US knew it during the 20^th Century. Tightened security, surveillance, vast data banks have resulted in the loss of privacy allowing corporations and governments to control what people think and do. This is likely to continue thanks to pitiable decision making by our elected leaders, the lobbying of corporations and ruthless totalitarians like President Putin, Premier Wen Jiabao and the frightening power of Taliban terrorists. 

As they say dear readers, “Suck it up, buttercup”. It will only get worse.