Union Posturing:

Auto industry union bosses are still rumbling and grumbling for the media about the GM decision to exit Oshawa. You'd almost be led to think they have the clout to actually do something about that. 

Too late. GM has found a work site more suitable for assembling vehicles.

For years the unions have conditioned the assembly line workers to think that they owed their livelihood to the union's efforts to get them a square deal from those terrible money-grubbing industrialists.

And many of them actually got to believe that. They bought the story that they were working for the union instead of General Motors. 

A century ago, when Colonel McLaughlin decided to add motors to his carriages, he made a deal with Buick of Detroit to produce the McLaughlin Buick. He needed all kinds of tradesmen to assemble the vehicles.

That is how all those jobs were created. It was the need to produce this wonderful new means of transit that required workers. There were wages to be made by people who qualified for the jobs offered. The unions weren't there until someone borrowed, possibly from the Mafia, the concept of "protecting" the workers from those greedy employers. Naturally, the workers were required to pay for their protection.  

While the alleged greed of the people who created the jobs eventually created the need for unions, let us not forget that it was car maker Henry Ford who was first to develop the assembly line for cars, who was also the first to recognize that if he paid his assembly line workers a fair wage, they, too, would be able to buy his cars.

It is unlikely that there were any politicians or union bosses involved in Ford's decision.

But getting back to Oshawa, the decision for GM to quit and move on was no doubt made by people who crunched the numbers and found an advantage in moving their operation somewhere else. They found a place where, after the vehicles were built and workers paid, there would be enough money left over for the people who bought GM shares. 

That is how industry is able to survive to create more jobs. Job #1 is to make products of a quality and at a cost that will allow them to survive market place competition. 

Job #2 is to hire people with enough skills and a work ethic to do the jobs properly.

Job #3 is to make sure the shareholders see enough profit in their shares to keep investing and stay in the game.

Those are the priorities. Anything else would result in the company going under sooner rather than later. And if the company goes under, all the jobs go with it.

It is entirely possible that far from being the assembly line workers' over-all great benefactor, the union actually contributed to the company's exit from Oshawa. It could be they bargained too hard, making it easy for the employer to leave and go where people want jobs with fewer strings attached.

The time for union posturing is over. When GM exits, there will be no more pay checks to deduct union fees from and no more taxes deducted at the source. Union leaders and politicians trying to make political hay on lost jobs will have to find something more productive to whine about. 

Andrea Horwath will have to go back and re-focus her attention for the CTV and CBC cameras on that terrible Doug Ford. 

Smoke 'n Mirrors:

CBC quoted some Liberal commentator who said that PC leader Andrew Scheer's address regarding young Trudeau's carbon tax at a gathering in Alberta was just smoke and mirrors.

Scheer is quoted to have said if he is elected, Trudeau's punitive carbon tax would be toast. 

Does that sound like smoke and mirrors? Not to me. Sounds like a statement of positive intent. And a welcome one. Someone has to end that ill-advised lunacy.

Scheer's speech included the idea that the PCs have a plan that will facilitate industry's efforts to reduce emissions. If historic records are accurate, all they need to do is tell the technical types what needs to be done, then shut up and get out of the way. 

Industry has demonstrated its ability to curb emissions over the last century. Anybody over 30 years old will remember the stench of hydrocarbons in vehicle exhausts emitting a shimmering haze in the heat of city streets crowded with traffic.

Old guys like me remember the reek of horse emissions in country lanes and city roadways. Those emissions were covered up with the less pungent smell of cigarettes, pipe tobacco, cigars and less-frequent baths. 

What emissions the Ottawa administration intends to cover with the stench of wacky tobaccy remains to be seen. Could be the smell of indiscriminate taxation.

Away back at the approach of the 20th Century, one New York politician is reported to have predicted that soon they will be unable to rid urban centres of dead horse carcasses. He calculated that by the turn of the century (the 20th) major US metropolitan centres will be at least 200 feet deep in horse dung.

It did not come to pass. That problem was solved not by politicians imposing more taxes, but by industry engineers. Most prominent among those were people like Henry Ford, who replaced horses with the Model T, an affordable automobile. 

Ford was no saint. He did that because, unlike the Ottawa Liberals looking to squeeze more taxes out of the working poor, he was looking to make an honest buck by improving their life style.

He did that handily and, in doing so, helped create another type of emissions--hydrocarbons. Over time, engineers solved that one with more precise ignition control, fuel injection, closed loop fuel systems and catalytic converters.

Now, the new car motors are running so clean, their exhausts are probably cleaner than the air they suck in for combustion. 

Hopefully, we will have to put up with young Trudeau's wild schemes to save the planet by merciless taxation of the working class only until next fall's election.

The Christmas Concert:

Drama, including song, was a required component of teaching in the country schools of the 20th Century. Each student's dramatic potential was put on display during the annual Christmas Concert.

It was all very exciting for the children. Some of the plays were quite entertaining and the carolling quite pleasant to hear. We all looked to be picked for starring roles. Having attended a recent showing of Gone With the Wind, the potential to become a future Clark Gable or a Vivian Leigh was easy for each of us to imagine.

Every country school house had a collection of 2X12-inch planks to be assembled for the stage and the correct number of sawhorses to hold them up high enough for the audience to view. Drapery was mostly bedsheets hung on wires strung wall-to-wall. They were contributed by local ladies. The audience consisted mostly of the children's families.

Santa arrived with a suitable degree of hoopla and ringing of bells at the conclusion of each concert. He carried a bag full of goodies and another with a toy or book, supplied by the school board, for each child. 

Santa was instructed to ask each child, "..and have you been a good boy/girl this year?" before handing over the loot.

Now, fast-forward a few years to when, having struck out as a threat to Clark Gable in the drama field, I began teaching school. The responsibility for producing something on Dec. 21 or thereabouts for the school district families to view and be entertained was now mine. This was a big deal for someone just out of Normal School, but I enjoyed it and did not too badly.

Round about my third year of teaching, the school board decided to stage the concert in the local meeting hall, which happened to be more central to the school district than the school itself. The hall belonged to a local church, but by then the members of the various congregations were no longer fighting, so it was okay.

The concert progressed swimmingly right through to the end. At this point I learned that the role of Santa Claus was going to be undertaken by the school board chairman, a shortish, stoutish, likeable guy who, as was his style, first got properly primed for the occasion.

They dressed him in the red suit, fur trim and all, and pulled the rubber Santa mask, then the height of make-up technology, over his head, taking care to align the rather smallish eye holes and mouth with somewhat limited success. Cast complete with whiskers and pointy hat, the mask muffled his merry Ho! Ho! Hos. Gripping the school bell in one hand, the gunny sack of goodies slung over his shoulder, he lurched forward. 

But not very far. He missed the end of the stage and went crashing to the floor with bells and boxes flying all over the place.

Huffing and puffing, he was helped to nearly vertical again by an over-size elf and a couple of trustees. They located the bell and re-aimed him at the stage full of kids, who were by now clumped into a tight, quivering mass as far back and out of reach as they could go without tumbling off the other end of the stage.

The vision of Santa, advancing somewhat unsteadily toward them, a-huffing and a- puffing mightily, was less than reassuring.  The collapse of Santa's head every time he huffed and ballooning to alarming size as he puffed was probably not quite what they expected. 

But they were not about to bolt for the exits. Their anticipation of what was in those bags kept them rooted to the spot. Only the beginners jumped off and ran to their mothers. 

They were coaxed back on stage in time to be asked, "And were you a good boy/girl this year?" and be handed a paper bag full of fruit, nuts and candy. The equally jolly elf was still able to read names on tags. He handed out brightly wrapped presents from the other sack.

When the two sacks were emptied and the school board people succeeded in guiding the pair off stage and safely out the back door, performers and audience bundled up and went home. It was time to relax and move on.

It was all over for the year. Clutching my bag of goodies, I got in my '50 Pontiac bustle-back sedan and drove home for the holidays.

Paris Discord?

Thousands of rioting Parisians now tend to view swiftly rising carbon taxes as a greater threat than Global Warming and Climate Change.

So, is it time to re-name the much ballyhooed Paris Accord the Paris Discord?

It hasn't deteriorated to that stage in Canada yet, but Justin Trudeau seems determined for it to happen here.

"Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!!"

Fear mongering:

Is climate change for real?

Of course. As far as we know, there is no natural mechanism for this planet's climate to remain exactly the same all the time. Variations are normal. They have been recorded in detail over the last couple of thousand years, but no one panicked over it before the age of cell phones and hyper-communication.

Is the human infestation of planet Earth to blame for it? That's a perfectly ridiculous supposition. Only science sponsored by the propaganda arm of the United Nations or tax-hungry politicians would support this.

We pave over thousands of square miles of city scape, destroying natural runoff and soil absorption and scream climate change when a normal weather system dumps normal quantities of rain on it, causing flash floods that are hyped to apocalyptic proportions by the sensation-mongering media.

When we look at what's happening in the streets of Paris and other European capitals right now, it is possible for us to marvel at how smart the US electorate was to have elected leaders unlikely to be herded like sheep.

Hopefully, that is why they elected Donald Trump, who did not subscribe to the Paris Accord like the alleged 190-or-so "leaders" according to the media. 

Or maybe they were just lucky. Only time will tell.

Gas Price:

Canadians who still believe that the carbon taxes are no big deal are invited to have a look at our gas prices here in Ontario. 

Today I did a fill-up at $1.05 per litre. That hasn't happened here since before the McGinty Liberals took charge 15 years ago. Gas prices were pushing $1.40 before our electorate here reduced Kathleen Wynn's Cap-and-Trade majority to non-party status a few months ago.

We should also pay attention to what is happening in Europe this week. They are fighting in the streets of Paris with Riot police trying to push back angry motorists no longer as concerned with climate change as with increasingly unaffordable gas prices. 

That is a direct result of the carbon taxes that have been adopted by the progressives across the pond who have bought the UN-sponsored propaganda to the effect that they are guilty of causing global warming and climate change.

Since Justin Trudeau appears to pay no attention to what is happening, let us hope that the electorate is more aware.

GM's Commitment?

So GM is shutting down its factories in Oshawa, ON with the view of converting to a new future of private transportation.

Let's hope that future has not been determined by media hype and coffee-counter science, the forces most likely responsible for the global warming and climate change theories.

GM spokespeople talk of self-driving vehicles and electric cars. That probably needs a bit of revised thinking.

Electric vehicles will need a phased-in infrastructure to equip homes with suitable voltages. So the key word here is phased-in. No crash conversion.

Self-driving vehicles will also need to be phased in, because most people will feel a self-driving vehicle is just not worth the bother. Why not just take public transit?

I'm an old fossil from a past generation. Modern vehicles are already a let down for me. No longer is it possible to match one's driving skills with a clutch and a neat, nicely-synchronized manual four-on-the-floor to play coherent highway tunes on a responsive vehicle.

It is to be hoped that the decision makers at GM, Ford and the other auto manufacturers take the time to factor in the influence of media hype and publicity-hungry science before making any solid commitments.

There is also the question of electronic efficiency. Naturally, all the electronic people promote their stuff as gospel, but how good is it actually? There is always the thought that much of it only adds new layers of complexity to problems that would have been better left to human evolution instead of being committed to technology.