ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABOLUUTELY

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "FOLLOW THE MONEY":

21:22
I don't think they even take care of their own snow removal despite all those healthy bodies hanging around doing nothing. Maybe they change a light bulb or two ?
Posted by Anonymous to  Our Town and Its Business at 19 March 2015 at 08:37

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Fire stations in the city used to have beautiful gardens in the forecourts. Equipment gleamed from polishing and elbow grease. 

The Professional Fire Figherrs Association, in Scarboraaough I think argued in arbitration, ofirefighters are not janitors and should not be maintaining  facilities. 

The arbitrators agreed and the borough had to hire contractors for maintenance of facilities. . Aurora had a volunteer brigade at the time.The firehall was their clubhouse. They had a kitchen,a bar and a pool table at the back of the firehall. 

The Province used to borrow from Public Service Pension Funds. Half the money came from the public purse and interest was paid. 

The teachers argued in arbitration they should have the right to control their own investments. They got that. 

If they make bad investments municipalities have to come up half the shortfall.  From taxation of course. 

In the last contract arbitrated for the Aurora Police, the arbitrator gave the police more than they asked for. 

Shortly after the Region.was created, child care in fine new facilities was provided.

The province dictated standards and  ratio of children to ECE staff.  I did a calculation once. It would have been  less expensive  to pay  a mother a salary of thousands to stay home and take care of her own child. 

The Region eventually  got out of the child care business and leased the facilities to private contractors. 

My mother was a committed Labour Party member all of her life. My grandfather was one of the coal-miners who sent the first Labour Party Member Keir Hardie to Whitehall.

In a public service strike, unions  refused to care for the sick and bury the dead. My mother voted for Margaret Thatcher in the next election. 

I don't believe  people apply to work as police because they believe they might get killed on the job. 

Any more than a young guy working as a window-cleaner  thinks scaffolding, seventy storeys off the ground will not be secure and he will fall to his  death working for minimum wage and no benefits. 

Or the trench he's digging  will cave in on him and bury him alive. Or he does not get proper training to handle machinery or chemicals and gets torn to pieces.

I don't think a policeman's job is clean or tidy. For reasons the public cannot begin to imagine. 

But I  think there's a need for balance. 

I don't think we've had that for a very long time.

 I think limp-wristed  self-obsessed politicians are the reason. 

Evelyn Buck