Thursday, August 21, 2008

Homelessness


Below is Ladysmith Black Mambazo. It was my great pleasure to have them on my radio show at midnight in the early 90's.

Now, let me draw your attention to two pieces in the local press on this important issue.

Tom Sandborn, writing in yesterday's Courier rightly skewers several politicians for their playing with numbers, while accomplishing little.

The amount of pure BS that has been emitted from local gasbags on this subject is appalling, when you consider how they have refused to really tackle the issue.

In today's Sun, Dr. Kerry Jang, asks the question, "Which comes first - a new home or a cleaned up street person?"

It's a fair enough question, but he spends so much time asking it that he leaves only a few short sentences for the answer.

The answer is that neither extreme is correct.

The answer is that homeless people need homes, just as anyone does. But a home without purpose, direction, focus, love and support is not a home; it is a building.

That is why the treatment program we ran for years worked - because it was all these things and more. That is why so many government answers to these problems don't work.

The monumental premier and the city politicians believe in real estate. They don't understand that CONTENT IS CRUCIAL.

It is easy to buy or build wooden structures.

It is much more challenging and labor intensive and attention-demanding to create the structure of do's and don't and wills and won'ts that exist in a real home.

Wake me up when the politicians get it and start to invest in non-profit groups who actually know how to help homeless people find homes.

You know the more I think of it, the more I am starting to feel sorry for people like Gordon Campbell. Guys rushing around building and buying, grabbing and snaring and espousing and saying and travelling and conquering...and not a clue about what really counts and how things really work. Always on the lookout for the Easy Answer, the Ready Solution, the healine grabber.

Blah, blah, blah - zilch.

These boobs are sadder than the guy on the street.

Homeless

Admission


OK.

I admit it.

I'm an Anti-Lawnite.

Have been for a very lawn time...uh, long time.

Hate lawns. Don't get them. See them as a Protestant plot to make us all dull and the same.

One of the many joys of my home is that my back yard is a driveway bordered by a huge tree, and my front yard is a jungle choking with 20 different plants and bushes, all overseen by an enormous pine.

Did you know that Americans spend - read, waste - $40 BILLION dollars a year on grass - and that's not the kind you smoke.

"And how much water?" I ask.

One of my idiot neighbours has built in sprinklers. Pulleeeeezze.

Half the world is dying and we're watering in a rain forest to get a carpet.

Here's the really, really, really good news.

I am not alone.

Read this wonderful article, called "Turf War," from the New Yorker magazine of July 21 and marvel.

I will be happier when all the unnatural, imported from other countries grasses are replaced with vegetable gardens, rock gardens, ponds, bushes, wild grasses and weeds.

May I never again here the intruding noises of electric and gas mowers and that worst of all urban pests, the whirly trimmer thing. One day, I will rip the fishing line from one of those suckers and wrap it around the fool piloting it at 8 am on a Sunday.

Another Country Heard From

"Quebec says no to safe-injection sites for now"

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=c1e36f15-2e98-4463-b470-a2919f40848f&k=55177



Quebec says no to safe-injection sites for now
Canwest News Service
Published: Wednesday, August 20, 2008
QUEBEC - Quebec has decided not to open safe-injection sites for drug
addicts, citing too little scientific evidence about their effectiveness.

The decision comes only two days after Tony Clement, the federal health
minister, assailed the Canadian Medical Association for supporting Canada's
first supervised drug-injection site in Vancouver, arguing it is against
their profession's code of ethics to allow drug addicts to shoot up.

The federal government is a vocal opponent of the project and has repeatedly
tried to shut it down.

A spokeswoman for Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc said Clement's comments
didn't influence them.
"We are not ready to endorse what Mr. Clement said," Marie-Eve Bedard said
Wednesday. "There's a question of public opinion, but we are also concerned
about the fact that there is no consensus in the medical community about
this. So right now we don't have enough information to go ahead."

In June, then health minister Philippe Couillard said he was considering
setting up safe-injection sites in the province.

Bedard said the government didn't change its mind on the issue but has
rather decided to wait for convincing evidence such a site can cut down on
blood-borne infections among drug addicts and set users on the road to
recovery.

One of the Great recordings of One of the Greatest Ballads ever written