Quote:First Call, in its

Why are you living in the past? Why didn't the pharaohs of Egypt outlaw slavery?

Just because gov'ts are cheap bastards when it comes to giving women and children the help they need doesn't make the idea a bad one.

So that makes two...

...you and them Stump.

HawkEyes writes;

There we have it; entitlement down to its genes. Give people money, some of them - we all know - for not even trying, and it's called genocide.

Someone calling themselves Name says;

Perhaps we'll get a new civic party running of a platform to retain scavenging as something to preserve and foster. A thing that's good for the city. Perhaps this will expand with the proponents promising to build state provided shanties out next to the city dump. 'Name' will vote for them.

two what?

What are you on about r/man? Me and who? What are you referring to?

Realisticman

Obviously you'll be voting for the party that makes scavenging a criminal offence.

Scavengers, bone and rag and bottle men

Are a lot closer to 'real' entrepreneurs than the guys you worship R/Man.

Most corporate kleptocrats are just thieves and conversion artists - the ones that aren't riding on daddy's coat-tails - who wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they actually had to do a day's 'real' work scavenging for their dinner.

Now there's some entitlement for you. You submit to a real change in the tax system - give up the fiddles that keep corporations strong and powerful and I'll support banning scavenging.

In the meantime, those guys and their carts are the best reminders we have of what the free-market economy 'really' amounts to.

Quote:Perhaps we'll get a

It's called recycling and it is something to preserve and foster.

Consider just how messed-up a society has to be when we're possessive about our garbage.

Where's the accolades for those thrifty binners? Isn't self-employment the goal of any entrepeneur?

Good People

Having helped some scavengers, and done some myself, I can assure you that I am convinced that some of them are thouroughly good and decent people, yet the something has to be done about the wretched state of some of Vancouver's back lanes, or alleys.

I strongly support aiding some of these people in finding gainful employment and sincerely hope that the City will find a way to realize this but I know that the co-operation of the City Works Dept. will be required.

So, Logically Then......

...which is tantamount to saying that economic prosperity can only happen on the backs of children.........?

Clarification

First of all, thanks to everyone who took the time to read and respond to this piece. Since I find myself in the unusual position of being cast as an enemy of the poor, I thought I should try to explain myself a bit better.

As one reader noted, there are children in this province who don’t have enough to eat. If even the Fraser Institute says that roughly one child in 15 does not have adequate access to such basics as food, clothing and shelter, something is very wrong. But is it useful to lump – as the LICOs do – those who can’t afford the bare necessities with everyone who spends more than half their pre-tax income on said basics? Such a definition could encourage one-size-fits-all remedies not appropriate to all cases.

And given the level of priority the provincial government seems to be giving the issue of child poverty (a Google search of government sites turned up two records from the past year that match the term), the Left may want to reexamine its lobbying tactics. It’s possible that the Fraser Institute figure would be a more effective way of mobilizing a political response to the most serious forms of poverty. By floating this idea, I am not endorsing the Fraser Institute’s policy prescriptions nor am I saying that society should be satisfied with providing people with nothing more than the barest essentials. But it should be the first goal.

Further, using child poverty as a stand-in for poverty in general can be exclusionary. What about the elderly, young adults or, for that matter, anyone who is not a parent but is struggling to make ends meet? It also removes women from the discourse on poverty.

At no point in this article do I come down against raising the minimum wage or welfare rates. Nor did I mean to deny the existence of severe poverty in BC. But an overly broad definition of poverty makes it easier for those in power to dismiss the resulting statistics as the product of ideology.

I hope that clears things up a little.

Ironizing

I don't think it's just exclusionary Rob, I think it's downright dishonest. But, a single definition of what constitutes 'poverty' is impractical and a clearer juxtaposition of the consequences of the growing inequalities between the 'top' and the 'bottom' of the income scale doesn't seem to do the trick either.

Using 'child' poverty as a metaphor does have the advantage of being:
a) readily understandable across all demographic and cultural lines, and;

b) something which seems - at least on the face of it - to be quickly and readily addressed without incurring a lot of argument and philosophical bickering.

Even Neanderthal institutions like the Fraser Institute have a hard time mounting a case 'against' adopting practical approaches to helping kids.

Solving problems once those children have turned to violence and gangs is so much tougher, isn't it?

No breakfast you say?

If an adult chooses to go to work without eating breakfast, that does not mean they cannot afford groceries. Many adults down nothing more that a cup of coffee before running out the door.

Let's say a loaf of bread costs around $2.00 and kept in the freezer it won't go moldy.

If a parent is NOT supervising their child's breakfast; is NOT putting a slice of bread into the toaster, then topping it with a bit of peanut butter; is NOT teaching their child the habit of having something to eat before running out the door; then who's fault is it that the child is GOING TO SCHOOL HUNGRY?

Living on mimimum wage? A parent needs to shop wisely. I only buy bananas when 39cents a pound, then after work, and the kids have gone to bed, I make up batches of banana loaf. The next morning we have a slice or two with peanut butter, before walking/catching the bus to school (them), work (me). Then the banana loaves go into the freezer. When the kids' friends come for a sleepover, they often ask, "Hey Mama Sandy, any banana loaf in the freezer?"

The example of eating before school/work MUST come from the parent.

Children not very important to the Campbell Government

And they don't like hearing about it either, apparently.

Please see this column from today's Sun:
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=ff2d823d-ea1e-4fd5-ab54-535e1475ff80

Note particularly the following:

Also bad blood between the ministry and her office. She'd wanted to make a joint progress report to the committee. "That was my first position . . . . The offer was there to do a joint report and it was not taken."

It sounded like a direct attack on senior management at the ministry, particularly Leslie du Toit, the deputy minister brought in from South Africa.

Meeting with reporters after her presentation to the committee, Turpel-Lafond didn't leave much doubt. She praised line staff in the ministry. They worked hard and deserved support.

But there had been a "failure of leadership," she said. "Leadership within the ministry, particularly senior management."

As Palmer concludes, with which it's hard to disagree 'Why haven't the recommendations of the Hughes Report been implemented - exactly what the ministry promised some 18 months ago?'

Update from the globe-trotting Premier

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071128.BCCAMPBELL28/TPStory/TPNational/BritishColumbia/

Do you really think someone with Madame Justice Turpel-Lafond's character is going to put up with this kind of pusillanimous non-support for her efforts by Christiansen and the Premier?

Best place in the world.

Not if you're a child in poverty and in need of care.

Perhaps we could provide stuffed Olympic mascots under everyone's tree this Christmas.

Get real Realisticman

Hasn't there been enough tragedy for you?
The differences have been created by our government.
Do you know how many children have paid with their lives? Does the suicide rate of northern First Nation young adults mean nothing to you?
Take Campbell's love child.
Take a child the same age, on Welfare.
Take a fostered chld the same age.
Take a First Nation child the same age.
Take a child with a single parent.
Take a child with two working parents.
Compare the multitude of differences.
"Not even trying" is an exterior perception you shouldn't believe you know everything about and it is also another issue. Trying to stay close to home counts and can't even be seen.
Poverty doesn't need your approval, it needs to be eliminated.

What will?

Throwing money at the problem will not solve it. This has surely been proved. Televisions, trucks, a poor 'white man' diet, etc., have only compounded the problems. Giving money that is just sufficient for a basic existence in remote areas of the province is clearly futile. Industry, advanced education and meaningful work is not going to go there. The young men, and women, that are dying too young feel that they have no hope. The same would happen were there to be found a long lost tribe in the Andes or the Alps and governments threw money and modern conveniences at them to keep them there. It smacks of paternalism and some wierd desire to preserve an anachronistic exclusionary group.

I've been to some of these reserves and met interesting and interested young people that would love to seek a life in the modern world (one wanted to be a pilot and really could be but didn't know where to start to think about it). I gave advice and later sent a package of information along with a list of contacts and some helpful ongoing correspondence and journals.

Unfortunately, the money keeps flowing to the band council in an extremely remote araea where it's boringly easy to just stay living a meagre life and go out at weekends with friends and invariably get close to, or into, trouble. I've often wished that the young people would have been given the money instead to go to a city and try and realise their ambitions and get away from negative influences.

The whole system has to change, as it did many years ago for the 'tribes' that constituted the Europeans and others hundreds of years ago.

I don't begrudge the money sent and sending more won't help. I just think that those that imagine it's the right thing to do by sending it are very wrong and only perpetuating misery.

we're talking about CHILDREN R/man

If you're prepared to give up on children, and that's what it sounds like to me, then you're giving up on life.

The poor kids aren't all out in the boonies by a long shot and all the poor in this province aren’t native either and the MODERN WORLD is every bit as futile here in the city as it is in your so-called conception of the rural existence..."a meagre life and (going) out at weekends with friends and invariably (getting) close to, or into, trouble."

Perhaps you haven't been watching the Dennis White trial my friend. This city is no paradise - in fact quite the contrary.

Let's have some corporate kleptocrats cancel their conventions and business travel for a few years and use the money they'll save to :
a) protect the planet from the effects of their needless and selfish and irresponsible air travel, and;
b) use the money that'll be saved to set up some decent childcare and after-school facilities for the kids whose moms are struggling now...

Maybe you could even get Flaherty and Pee Wee to provide Revenue Canada receipts so you'd even benefit the god-almighty bottom line - to play a riff on Frank Lloyd Wright and the God-Almighty Joneses.

I’m just sick of excuses. Whether it’s excuses for not implementing Ted Hughes’s recommendations; for not supporting Ms Turpel-Lafond and funding her programs adequately or excuses for over-spending on empire building, or excuses for doing nothing because someone sees it as paternalism.

Blinkered

GWest

I was generally referring to native life as I've seen it on a few reserves and specifically paraphrasing the mother of the young man that I was helping to realise his ambition to become a pilot.

Radical change is required and constantly harping on gripes with the present administrations is, in my view, extremely myopic. The founadations of the problems described have existed long before any current administration or person.

If you read what I wrote and you think that I've given up then that's your view.

I read what you wrote & that's not reflective of what you wrote

And I pointed out how inaccurate and blinkered that vision of thing is, in my view.

It is something about your contibutions which really hasn't changed much in all the time I've been reading you.

You select what you want to believe in and ignore everything and anything that doesn't conform to that conception.

Of course I don't think you've given up - you probably think you're being "realistic"...I assure you, you're not. And you're not reflecting reality or the rural/urban dichotomy or the state of poverty and the situation for about a quarter of the children in this province.