So, I think we are getting hosed, pardon the pun, on gas prices. I can’t understand why prices are so quick to jump up and so slow to come down. As I have stated before, you can’t have it both ways. But that is what price regulation was supposed to eliminate right? Oh well. Recently, I have been told that when the government brought in price regulation they added a two cent per litre addition to pay for the cost of the new system. While this information came from a reliable source it did not come from the government, nor have I been able to get anything from the goverment explaining the system or the costs. So, if anyone has anything to back this up or refute it, please educate me.

Two cents per litre. The province consumes about 3 million litres per day.  That means we are paying $60,000 per day just for the priviledge of regulation. Okay what’s $60,000 between friends. What about $21,000,000.  Yup twenty-one million. To do what? To determine the average spot price for the week and relay this information to the oil companies. Okay, with one eye shut and water dripping between my eyes, I figure I could do that in about 30 minutes. Maybe less. $21,000,000. Hey Rodney. Want to save the Nova Scotian public $10,000,000? I’ll do price regulation for only $11,000,000! What a deal!

PS. I really do it for about $30,000 a year, but don’t tell him.

Waiting for his call, I remain,

A Sour Kraut.

As I travel the roadways of Nova Scotia I try to see our province through the eyes of a visiting tourist. It helps to bring the unique things our province has to offer into focus. The other day, for example, I was driving on the 103 and I was amazed by a unique bit of our culture I saw. There on the side of the road was a glistening display of the intelligence of one Nova Scotian. It was a two litre pop bottle. While littering makes me want to scream, this piece of plastic held a precious surprize. It was filled with urine. Yup, someone peed in the bottle and then chucked it out their window. While some may find this amusing, I find it repulsive. Not physically. I have three young children and the memories of trying to change a diaper while a steady stream of pee is covering me and the change table are still fresh in my mind. I find it repulsive because any visitor to our province may associate me with the moron that deposited that bottle on the side of the road. The bigger problem is that I have seen these bottles more than once.

So this is a higher form of littering, but it seems as though the stupidity of our population when it comes to throwing stuff out of the window of their vehicle knows no bounds. I can’t comprehend what goes through someones mind, or lack thereof, when they send the contents of their fast-food meal out the window. Where do they think it is going to go? But my favourite is the pile of ashes and cigarette butts you can find at stop sign. Yes, someone has decided to do a little tidying up in their car and they open their door and dump their ashtray at the stop. Brilliant.

Tim Hortons has received some bad press due to the number of their cups that appear on the roads and sidewalks. Well, I have a solution for them. Do not sell coffee to anyone driving a “magic” pick-up truck? You know these trucks. There the ones that “magically” get rid of garbage. The owner finishes their coffee, cigarette package or hamburger and they throw the cup, wrapper or whatever in the back of the truck. Then they set off down the road and once they get over 70 kph, voila, the garbage all disappears. It must be magic. It can’t be that these Nova Scotians are either the laziest people on earth or are as dumb as a bag of hammers.

Come on. Our tourists have enough to think about just trying to avoid the cracks and holes in our roads. They shouldn’t have to worry the imbecile that threw a bottle of pee out the window could be working in the kitchen of the restaurant they are eating at.

Amazed, disgusted and

A Sour Kraut.

So what’s up with the Province’s plan to publish the result of standardized tests. Seem’s like a good thing to me. Children write the tests and each school’s test results are made public. Let’s be straight on one thing. The Province is publishing the overall school score and where it ranked against other schools. It is NOT publishing individual students scores.

While I think it is a good thing, the province thinks it is a good thing and the majority of parents think it is a good thing, the teachers and principals are against it. Huh? They state that ranking schools against one another will “demoralize” schools that perform at the bottom of the ranking. Okay, but maybe thats a good thing too. Maybe if the students, parents and teachers realize they are not doing as well as other schools, they might want to try something different so that next year they are up near or at the top. That’s what happens with good students, good sports teams and good businesses. Why not with schools? Well , say the teachers and principals, it does not take in to account the “challenges” that some schools face and others do not. This is “politically correct speak” for schools in poorer neighbourhoods -the “challenges” – and schools in more affluent areas where these “challenges” do not exist. The undelying subtext to this is that if your child is going to a school in a lower household finacial area forget it. The chances that he/she are going to reach for the top are slim. But, nobody says it this way. You can’t. We don’t speak the truth anymore.

If you show that test scores are lower in lower income areas, and you make it public rather than keeping the information inside the education system, maybe there will be enough of an uproar to get things done that will change it. Whether it is more money for extra programs or a push to get parents to do their part at home, hopefully something will be done to break the cycle. It would happen if ol’ Rodney is in an election year.

But what if all the uproar is a result of teachers not wanting to be graded. I assume the union doesn’t want any information out there that may show that some teachers are just not cutting it. That sort of thing would not be usefull at the next contract negotiation session. That’s being awfully cynical of me. After all, the union, like any union has the students best interest at heart, right? Right?

Not that I think that unions are bad. Not at all. I have read about unions that are starting in India that are doing wonderfull things when it comes to reasonable wages and improved working conditions for people who have been working in deplorable sweat shops. Here in Canada we have the CAW negotiating $70,000+ salaries for people to put panels on car doors, and then complaining that the manufacturing jobs are leaving. One of the Canada Post unions CUPW or CUPE, I can’t remember which, was the largest commercial landlord in Ottawa a few years back. Don’t even get me started on the miner’s union in Cape Breton. When deer season started no one showed up for work, yet the union wouldn’t allow anyone to be disciplined. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

I digress. Publish the scores. I think the children can handle it even if the teachers can’t.

For now, I remain,

The Sour Kraut

Okay, I have just about had enough. The other day we are all hit with a 12 cent per litre ransom on the gas we purchase. Why? Because the refiners wanted to make more money. Now I am ususally a stallwart defender of business and the free market system, but not this time. We have a situation of an Hurricane approaching the oil refining facilities in the Gulf and some of the refineries shut down operations to ride out the storm. There was never a North American run on gas. There were never any shortages outside of the Southern Texas area, and yet the spot market price went through the roof. Some might like to know that the jump in spot market prices were only for Gulf States delivery. Needless to say that we are not a Gulf State. Yet here in our little Province, and the rest of Canada as well, we were told we had to pay more. The paper even reported Michael Collins of Wilson Fuels stating that on Friday morning, his trucks were shut of at the rack at the Esso refinery in Eastern Passage.

If I was Mr. Collins I would have gone over to the refinery with a big gun. Now, if there was any chance that the gasoline in Esso’s storage tanks could possibly make their way to the Gulf States, (Who pays for shipping? Canada Post might be the most reasonable) I could understand Esso saying to the people of the Province that they had a better deal for their gas elsewhere. But, this gas wasn’t going anywhere. It was staying right here, ready to go into your tank at whatever price Esso deemed appropriate. Hey, wait a minute. We have regulation. Our vigilant Premier and the rest of the Government are looking out for us by regulating the price and making sure we don’t get the short end of the stick. Right? Well, the price stability promised by regulation goes right out the window when the “Interrupter Clause” gets used. What the hell is that?! A clause that allows price instability? Had the Government had the cajonnes to stand up to the oil companies we would have seen that by Monday all the fear was gone and everything was getting back to normal. Spot prices dropped dramatically. When is the Interrupter Clause going to be used to drop the prices back down? Who knows?

If it wasn’t enough that the Government and Refiners are giving me gas, NSPI gets together with its cronies to hammer out a deal to raise electricity rates by 9.3%. Why? Because their fuel bills have increase dramatically over the past year. Sure oil, coal and all other commodities have spiked over the past year, but as all are starting to come to realize it was a result of a speculation bubble rather than supply and demand fundamentals. By the way, that bubble burst in July, when oil was at $147 a barrel and gold was approaching $1000 an ounce. Sure the NSPI claim sounded pretty reasonable back then. But now we are looking at $93 a barrel oil and no indication that it won’t continue to fall further. Would NSPI launch a review before the UARB today for 9 – 12% based on rising fuel costs? I don’t think so. They might get laughed out of the room. So what do you do if you are NSPI and the basis of your 12% claim is looking shaky? You do a deal to lock in rates with your biggest customers and go for a smaller increase of 9.3%. That’s an easy one to sell. Hey everybody, we needed 12%, but with our hard work and negotiating skills we can let you off with an increase of 9.3%, which if oil prices keep tumbling will be pure profit for us, but oh well, 9.3 is better than 12. You can bet the bigger guys have a clause that if fuel costs go down they can renegotiate. But for everyone else, we just have to pay. Hey, UARB! Show some leadership here. Put a stop to this and tell the NSPI that you will revist it if prices come anywhere near the levels they were when NSPI decided they needed the increase. Or, give them the increase based on a certain world oil price. If it doesn’t maintain that level NSPI has to give the increase back.

Sure, like that will ever happen. Until then,

I remain,

A Sour Kraut