The Grasshopper and the Ant (Canadian Version)

The Real Version

There’s an ant. His parents were quite well off and he got a university education before he inherited his father’s business. He hasn’t had to do any real work in his life and has never had any trouble paying bills. He has never faced racism, sexism, or anything more adverse than the embarrassment of being a half-assed golfer. He sold his father’s very profitable small business to an international conglomerate based in the United States. Part of the sale was a seat on the board and some voting shares in the conglomerate.

The conglomerate, that employs mostly grass hoppers at substandard wage levels, recently sued the Canadian government under chapter 11 of NAFTA to sell an environmentally harmful in the Canadian market. That same conglomerate also tried to bust the union that made sure the grass hoppers got paid a living wage and didn’t get killed at work. That very same conglomerate also opposed every piece of environmental legislation.

The grass hoppers went on strike and the grass hoppers’ children and wives and husbands and relatives protested against having their air and water poisoned.

The ant and his buddies on the corporate board pulled up stakes and moved to Appalachia. When the grass hoppers in Appalachia reacted to the ugly and greedy business practices of the ant in much the same way the Canadian grasshoppers had the ant ran away from there too. After a short stint in Mexico, where the Campesino grass hoppers that opposed them were actually murdered by paramilitaries with ties to the FBI and CIA, the ant and his conglomerate headed for China and swung a sweet deal where political prisoners would be used as slave labour to produce poisons that would be shipped to warehouses in the US, then transported to Canada who lost the NAFTA lawsuit.

The moral of the story is that Brian Mulroney would sign anything as long as strange men would things in his mouth and give him money. Stephen Harper would pay strange men, with our tax money, to put things in his mouth.

who wished he hadn't paid Monica to put something in her mouth.

And then there was Svend, but let's not go there.

I remember when all the homeless were camped out in Stanley Park (Vancouver) and they were protesting a lack of affortable houseing and free rooms. The news crew grabbed like 10 or 15 of them and drove them to a shelter around 2 in the afternoon and the same people were back at the protest for the 6 o'clock news. The news phoned the shelters, and NONE of them were over 40% capacity.

Shelters have a reputation for being dangerous and good place to have your shoes stolen DMP. They only ever really fill up when the weather gets incredibly bad.

Godz, you make me shake my head in disgust. They can make $42.00 a day? Woo-fucking-hoo. Can you live on that? Winnipeg is knwn as a place with a low cost of living and I know I couldn't live on that. I'm guessing they can make about $100 a day panhandling, likely more. You want them to work a double shift for even less than they can make panhandling.

I'm betting your friend wants them to be wearing clean clothes when they show up for work too...most employers do. And to be sober and sane...addictions and mental problems are rife among the homeless.

OK, so some of the homeless have big problems like Mental illness, drug addictions, alcohol problems, social problems, handicaps and one of the biggest ones, depression. Institutionalise them. Then the shelters wouldn't have a reputation for being dangerous and good places to have your shoes stolen and only ever really fill up when the weather gets incredibly bad. Then folks who are just unlucky and jobless wouldn't mind using them. One of the stupidest words I know when it comes to mentally handicapped people is "integration". I lived not fr from 999 Queen shortly after they emptied the nut bowl, and it wasn't pretty.

I stayed in shelters a few times in the '70s and early '80s when I was hitch hiking a lot. I never had any problems then.

We didn't have so much of a homeless problem back then, Fig. We hadn't emptied out the mental institutions and still had a social safety net. It was a different time.

The funny thing is that integration can work in a lot of cases, but it requires the support of case workers and a lot of help from government. That all went away when they emptied out the institutions.

The more money you give the poor... The more they will expect from the government.
In Cornwallis, NS, when the base closed, they looked into giving the milirary housing to the welfare. Those homes were declared inadequate so they sold them to the local population, for cheap. Those homes were good enough for military famillies, but not good enough for welfare??? They expect way too much from the government. They think the government put them there, not giving them jobs. They expect a lot for nothing. It rots my a$$ to see them collect welfare. Its ok to be in a rough spot. To go all your life on it is something else. My mother in law had to be on it for a while. SHe was in her fifties. She moved and fond a job. She just turn 60 and still working.

I think Britain should leave the EU and join NAFTA. Britain has more links to North America than Europe, and NAFTA isn't trying to become a unified nation like the EU is.

Maybe a bit off-topic, but thought I would post it.