A Philosophy of Drinking.

A philosophy of drinking.

Ian Cooper

The government of Ontario is proposing to allow sales of beer and wine in grocery stores.

As a consumer of cheap grog, one can only applaud anything that tends to promote competition and bring the price of all things boozey down.

It's part of my philosophy of drinking.

As stated in the linked article above, small shops would still be prohibited, and they are still lobbying for inclusion.

“The government has been under mounting pressure to abolish The Beer Store’s lucrative cartel arrangement. Controlled by three foreign-owned brewers – Molson Coors Brewing Co., AnheuserBusch InBev SA, and Sapporo Breweries Ltd. – The Beer Store has the near-exclusive right to sell most beer in the province, and to supply the most popular brands to bars and restaurants. Nearly all other private beer retail is banned.”

It would be nice to be able to buy beer, chips, dip, frozen pizza or salsa, hotdogs and hamburgers all under one roof. The other issue is of course that of competition and that monopolistic retail system, operated under the banners of the Liquor Control Board and The Beer Store.

Glean MacLarty, (Wiki.)

Critics point out that corner variety stores would have to ensure that customers are of legal age, but they’re already doing that with cigarette sales.

***

In recent years, government-run casinos have essentially wiped out the charity bingo industry. 

At one time, the only lottery tickets we could buy were the Irish Sweepstakes. The original Wintario lottery, the first one in the province, began back in 1975, when this author was an impressionable sixteen years old.

It cost a dollar and you could win a hundred thousand dollars—we used to fantasize about how many cool cars we could buy with a hundred grand. I suppose we were very young, but the point is that lotteries have proliferated. Tickets are sold at every corner store and quite frankly, when all you want is milk, bread, or to pay for your gas purchase, waiting for some knucklehead to check forty lotto tickets, collect eight bucks in winnings and then buy another fifty bucks worth, is a pain in the ass. One can only assume that the province is profiting from my inconvenience and the excesses of the middle class, all of whom seem to have enough money for nice houses, good cars, and vacations down south in winter. Yet there is that effervescent dream of hitting it big. They spend a lot of money trying to make that happen.

In my own personal analysis, the employees of the LCBO and the Beer Store fear the move to open up beer and wine sales to the private sector for sound reasons, from their point of view. Sales elsewhere will take market share. There will be less need for their stores, although the distribution system will remain intact. The LCBO and The Beer Store are unionized. For the most part, grocery stores are not. (There are some.) Walmart has a grocery store. The employees there make eleven bucks an hour as opposed to eighteen or twenty bucks an hour. 

They see it as a sneaky way to get rid of a few stores, and get rid of a few unionized employees, always demanding better wages and benefits, and willing to take collective action to protect what they perceive to be their interest.

I understand all that, but I have my interest too.

Holy, crap, would I ever like to try that one. > mixpix, (Wiki.)

With three major suppliers of beer, with the wine distribution largely going through the LCBO, the corporate interests of the suppliers will remain largely unaffected.

Employees of the present retail system stand to lose most. At the same time, philosophically, the government has a bad habit of selling us booze, smokes and gambling in various forms. Prostitution has even been legalized in small selected zones. It is controversial, and the law is nothing if not unclear. (Story actually from Quebec. – ed.)

In a secular society, for the government to regulate sin is a non-sequitur insofar as it goes beyond the simple needs of social order and public health concerns. Let’s just say that for the government (any government) to give us moral lessons is a bit much.

I have no doubt that the Province of Ontario, in some fashion, went into business with what is essentially organized crime, in bringing casinos to the province. They had the expertise after all.

In this instance, they’re doing essentially the same thing, in a back-door attack on unions.

Surely this is in the corporate interest. The real question, is it in the interest of the citizens of Ontario.

In our local Walmart, the entire front wall of a rather large building is all basically concession booths. Why the grocery stores can’t have a big cold room full of beer and a department devoted to wine, all under the auspices of the LCBO and The Beer Store, is a good question.

Who knows, maybe that’s what will happen.

You never know, ladies and gentlemen.

Then, unionized employees would now be working inside of retail spaces that for the most part are not unionized. This might have some interesting social consequences.

Especially if you’re a union supporter.

Here’s an interesting contradiction. There is no such thing as a government pub, bar, hotel or other public drinking establishment, and virtually none of the private ones are unionized.

There is food for thought here for the true philosopher of drinking.

END

Here's my romantic novella To Love Again, free from iTunes.

#Billion_Dollar_Giveaway 

 

 

The History of the World, Up Until Now.

The Death of Spartacus, Herman Vogel.

Ian Cooper

Up until now, history has always been a generally agreed-upon thing.

It is also true that history was, up until now, written by the ruling classes, usually wealthy, aristocratic males with plenty of leisure time. History was the accepted story of that class, the history of the world as they knew it and from their point of view.

From the modern perspective, the revolt of Roman slaves under Spartacus is understandable, even laudable.

From the point of view of those writing about it at the time, it was a mortal danger, to them and to the state. It was an abomination, one that was rightly crushed according to the morality of the day.

If Fox News, or any other news organization existed at that time, this would have been how it was reported: as an abomination that must be crushed. This reporting would have been seen as good journalism.

But that was then. This is now. Times have changed. There are all kinds of people with leisure time. Literacy is at an all-time high.

History will no longer be an agreed-upon thing. There are too many voices. There are too many sources of information. There’s too much money floating around, and too much power up for grabs.

Objective journalism, objective history, has gone out the window. It is no longer a question of a very small number of news and information sources, all jockeying for audience and market share based on notions of objectivity.

There are now millions of sources of information. People routinely set up information and disinformation sites and sources, with an avowed political or social agenda firmly and foremost in mind. They don’t agree with the facts, they don’t agree with history, or the interpretation, and so they give their own. They make it up and spew it out there.

They are, like William Randolph Hearst, the man who invented the news in a sense, (one could almost say he invented the modern world), going straight for the lowest common denominator, and that is sensationalism. It is also pandering of the worst kind.

In the future, there will be openly and unashamed right-wing historians who will write that the Presidency of Barack Obama was a disaster. Open and unashamed left-wing historians will write that it was the greatest presidency in all of history. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between.

(For the purpose of this article, my own opinion is irrelevant. That is not a claim of disinterestedness.)

There will be no objective, middle of the road historians of the future. Objectivity is an affront to both sides, in a dispute where the stakes are so high. History has value. History is money in the bank, for the eventual 'winners.'

To be in the middle is to be a target, or to quickly become irrelevant when news, when history, is no longer that but merely preaching to the converted; and telling them what they want to hear.

There is no such thing as a fact anymore, for the dispute will rage on forever. The only things that will become historical fact, is when the issue dies a natural death, as all issues eventually do. When no one cares to argue any more—what’s left are the facts.

What’s really strange is that the common man is so often neither left nor right, but just trying to survive, trying not to get involved, trying not to get sucked into the vortex that is modern disinformation politics. Some of them are interested. They just want to know what the truth is, and of course we will never know now, will we?

The majority is silent. It is my hope that the majority is not easily swayed and that they are withholding judgement.

Perhaps they are merely confused and have the grace and the wit to see that—and thus, being reasonable-minded men and women, they hold their tongues. Until they get further information, information that they can actually trust, ladies and gentlemen.

Trust can also be misplaced.

Here’s a funny thing. The people that watch Fox News know that much of the reporting is flawed. It’s skewed. It presents a point of view, using false and misleading information, ‘creative editing’ and presentation, and they know that, and they still keep watching.

The attitude is, we know it is bullshit, but it is bullshit that represents our point of view. It normalizes and validates our own bullshit attitudes, our own bullshit prejudices. The fact that it is so ignoble, so obnoxious, so ignorant, is reason for glee.

The way to make Fox News go away would be for the audience to get up and walk away.

That’s not going to happen when a large proportion of the viewers are angry, frightened bigots and pseudo-religious zealots, who just want the real world to go away.

History marches on regardless, whether we agree with it or not.

“Why is America so crazy for religion?”

“Because in the absence of a civilization, what else is there?” > Gore Vidal, in Empire.

Let us hope that we become a little more civilized as times goes on.

Otherwise, I think we are doomed.

END

Selling off Canada for short-term gains.

Photo by David Samuel. (Wiki.)



     The incredible rise in foreign ownership in this country is a kind of economic suicide.   

     In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s foreign ownership reached over one-third of our industries, and foreign share of income generated reached 37.6 percent. Pierre Trudeau promulgated the Foreign Investment Review Act of 1975; and it began dropping, to a low of 21.4 percent. Official Statistics Canada figures show that by 2000, it was back up to the old levels again. This was because Brian Mulroney scrapped the Act; replacing it with Investment Canada, a body in charge of rubber-stamping foreign acquisitions.

      As of 2008 we are proceeding rapidly to record levels of foreign ownership of our industries, resources, high-tech companies, and many other businesses including banking, communications, and insurance. Between 1985 and 2007 more than 10,500-plus companies had been taken over. Investment Canada monitored an incredible $834.86 billion, of which a paltry 2.3 percent was for new business investment. Essentially it was open season on takeovers by foreign corporate predators.

      Foreign ownership is predominantly American, and many of our most prominent politicians, business leaders, and journalists encourage more direct investment into all facets of the Canadian economy. The Canadian Council of Chief Executives is constantly whining about the lack of foreign investment in this country. But in 2006, foreign investment in this nation amounted to an impressive $78.3 billion, while foreign

investment in all of the huge Chinese market amounted to only $83 billion. In all of India it was only $8.8 billion, Russia $31 billion, in Mexico and Brazil less than $21 billion. So don’t believe everything the right-wingers tell you. They have an interest, and it is not the public interest or the interest of working families in this country. According to BMO Capital Markets, “One area that often suffers is research, technology, design and development.”

     A ‘secret’ 2006 Industry Canada document proposed that Ottawa should encourage even more foreign takeovers of Canadian industries. Many key pages of the document, prepared under the aegis of that paradigm of integrity Maxime Bernier, were heavily censored.

     The Harper government’s enthusiasm for selling off that portion of our resources and industry that isn’t already foreign owned or dominated should not be underestimated. Jim Flaherty and David Emerson were in Beijing not too long ago, encouraging the Red Chinese to come in and buy up whatever the Americans don’t already own. Investment Canada has not, since 1985, turned down one foreign takeover! A former Finance official says, “Foreign takeovers will result in less tax at both the federal and provincial levels.”

     He also says, “Private equity will load up debt in Canada, rendering the operation basically non-taxable, interest crossing the border will be free of withholding tax.”

     Year after year, Canadians have expressed their concern in poll after poll about foreign ownership and even 66 percent of Conservatives said they wanted limits to foreign ownership and takeovers. Thank God Mr. Harper is listening! Not.

     He’s real good friends with the bankers.

###

    

Harper government ready to smooth way for more foreign takovers.(CTV News.)

Harper approves Nexen, Progress takeovers. (Globe and Mail.)

Canada should reject Chiese state-owned takeovers. (Huffingtong Post Business.)