As the seagulls return and winter’s crap emerges from the retreating snow, it’s St. Patrick’s Day weekend, with plenty of trad music and drinking possibilities and of course the parade on Sunday afternoon. And the day itself is not till next Wednesday.
Updates from March, 2010 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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I was struck yesterday reading this heartfelt opinion piece in which Marie-France Bazzo contrasts the handwringing over a possible increase in university tuitions with the startling rates of illiteracy in our society. How can we waste so much effort on luxury, she asks, when there’s a much more serious problem to face in the same educational arena?
Well, we do it all the time. Two other examples have come up recently in local media. One was evoked by Fashion Week, in which stories about the banning of super-thin models were one thread in the media coverage. Arguably, worrying about people being underweight is ludicrous in a society where obesity is one of the major causes of ill health, but people have been headclutching about this for some time. (Yes, I know there’s an argument that ultra-thin images can inspire anorexia in some. But it’s still a minor social problem compared to the obesity issue.)
The other is the recent announcement that Quebec is going to fund in-vitro fertilization treatments to the tune of many millions of dollars. Here the counter-arguments break into two major headings. One is: how can they spend that kind of public money on a luxury when so many folks can’t even find a family doctor, when people are dying in emergency room corridors in the one place where they expected not to die of neglect? The other is: this planet is foundering under constantly growing overpopulation, so is helping middle-aged couples squeeze out a kid not a truly decadent thing to squander resources on?
I could probably find more, but there will always be first world vs. third world issues, luxury issues versus populist issues, glamour issues vs. unglamorous ones, and it’s often more interesting and more bankable to look at the top end first. We do it all the time.
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A Rue Frontenac writer points out that the recent seizure of documents at Groupe Catania has repercussions at City Hall, where the ruling party is still trying very hard to change zoning so it can hand over a major building on Mount Royal into Catania’s control.
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The city and its blue-collar workers have gone to the Essential Services council to hammer out limits for a possible strike action – refusal of overtime – to begin next week. The workers have had no contract since 2007.
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Spacing provides a video version of the Copenhagen angle on streets as public spaces from a talk given last month at McGill by two Danes.