This and that for your Thursday reading. – Rupert Neate reports on the latest numbers showing the world’s 500 richest people adding a full trillion dollars to their wealth in 2017. And Will Fitzgibbon and Dean Starkman highlight how offshore tax avoidance schemes are sucking prosperity out of the rest
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Eduardo Porter examines how high-end tax cuts create gains for only the wealthy few. And Lydia DePillis points out that decades of increases to top-end incomes haven’t translated into anything close to proportional spending which would share the gains with society at large.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how Quebec’s latest poverty plan falls far short of the “basic income” title it’s received in some national coverage – and on how we should insist on political leadership toward the genuine article. For further reading…– CBC has reported on the new plan and the response it’s received,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Abacus Data has polled the Canadian public on climate change, and found far more appetite for meaningful action than we generally hear from the political class (and particularly right-wing parties): Twenty years ago, when the world’s leaders were debating the Kyoto Accord,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Michael Paarlberg discusses how the ratchet effect is making American health care far more durable than Republicans may have realized – while recognizing that there’s a lesson to be drawn for the design of other social programs as to the value of a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On discriminatory treatment
Following up on this post, let’s take a look at Tom Parkin’s other recent post which offers plenty of food for thought. Parkin’s view broadly matches Guy Caron’s position on Quebec’s treatment of people who wear niqabs – but seems to me to fall short of making the case for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Leadership 2017: The Quebec Question
Don MacPherson has joined the many commentators whose main take on the federal NDP’s leadership race is to zero in on how Quebec voters might react to Jagmeet Singh’s Sikh background and head covering. And Adam Radwanski has rightly challenged the pundits’ consensus to some extent. But (as noted in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Colin Gordon discusses how contempt for democracy is one of the uniting principles of the right around the globe while reviewing Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains: At the intersection of Buchanan’s market fundamentalism and his embrace of Jim Crow lies a fundamental reservation
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Gary Younge examines how Jeremy Corbyn and an unabashedly progressive campaign platform are making massive gains in a UK general election cynically called to exploit Labour’s perceived weakness: Seeing the response to Labour’s election manifesto last week was a clear illustration of just
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Neil Irwin writes that many progressive policies – including child care and income tax credits – serve the goal of facilitating economic participation far better than their right-wing “supply side” counterparts. – Ann Pettifor examines the future of globalization, and warns that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Ethan Cox reports on new polling showing that Canadians are highly concerned about inequality – even if our governments aren’t doing anywhere meaningful to address it: Of Canadians surveyed, 73 per cent said their and their family’s economic situation had stayed the same
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Owen Jones writes that excessive reliance on corporate profiteers is the reason why the UK’s trains don’t run on time. And Nora Loreto argues that postal banking is needed (among other reasons) to rein in abuses by Canada’s biggest banks. – Shannon Daub
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Linda McQuaig discusses the need to fight fake news about Canada’s health care system (and the corporate raiders trying to amplify it): (I)t was with some pleasure last week that I watched as a Republican congressman tried to insist that Canadians routinely flock
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: We won’t walk to a nearby walking trail #nlpoli
The Town of Happy Valley-Goose Bay commissioned a consultant to look at possible future development of a sand pit in a residential area of the town. You can read the report at the town website.The consultants first held a public meeting open to all tow…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: We won’t walk to a nearby walking trail #nlpoli
The Town of Happy Valley-Goose Bay commissioned a consultant to look at possible future development of a sand pit in a residential area of the town. You can read the report at the town website.
The consultants first held a public meeting open to all town residents. Then they tried other ways of soliciting opinions, like setting up a booth in the local mall. Then they did a survey of a sample of town residents.
Out of all that, the consultants figured out two interesting things. First, they “determined that the individuals which would most effected [sic] by the development would live within a 400-meter radius of the area of interest.” Second, they community feedback through all those means told them that 400 metres was also “the maximum distance that the average person would walk to reach a park or recreation area.”
400 metres.
In order to get to a place to exercise, the average resident of Happy Valley-Goose Bay would walk no more than 400 metres in order to get there. otherwise, they either wouldn’t go – presumably – or they’d pile in the truck, car, quad or whatever.
Just to put that in context for you, 400 metres is about the distance the average reasonably fit person would walk in about four minutes. And in case you hadn’t quite picked up on this, walking is a very popular form of… wait for it… exercise.
Forty-two percent of respondents to the research wanted the park for sports and recreation. “One of the most popular suggestions,” the consultants wrote, “was the development of a walking and running trail. … [This] trail be designed so that it is accessible to all age groups – with special consideration for seniors with mobility issues. There were also suggestions to include a bicycle trail which could be incorporated into the current bicycle trail system within the town.”
So there’s a major-league disconnect there between people who wanted walking trails and maybe a bike path in the park but the folks most likely to use it wouldn’t walk to the damn thing if they lived more than four-minutes’ walk away from it.
Make out of that what you want.
-srbp-
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Accidental Deliberations: New column day
Here (via PressReader), on how the North Saskatchewan River oil spill may not lead directly to a needed reevaluation of the risks of pipelines – but a public expectation that we’ll shift away from dirty energy may be more significant in the long run.Fo…
Continue readingWednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Glenn Greenwald interviews Alex Cuadros about his new book on how Brazil has been warped politically and economically by the whims of its billionaire class. And PressProgress takes a look at the impact…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- John Milloy discusses the difference between trade and corporate control – while noting that recent “trade agreements” have tended to favour the latter without being the subject of meaningful public de…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Jeff Guo reports on Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson’s research showing how the U.S. went from standing out internationally for its relatively equal distribution of wealth, to being equally exceptional in it…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Martin Lukacs highlights the Canadian public’s broad support for the Leap Manifesto – and the opportunity available to any party willing to put its contents into practice. And Shawn Katz is hopeful that the N…
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