I think a better solution would have been to make everyone wear those oh-so-sexy white "granny panties". Let the guys (who are the problem) get THEIR knickers in a knot for a change!

Stump
I've been trying to contact you - send me an email at

I may have some information you might be interested in.

I like this article. On a completely practical note, how are these woman firefighters to go about wearing a sanitary nampkin in boxer shorts? Last time I checked, it doesn't really work. Are they now expected to double up on undergarments when it's that time of the month?

Surely not! IS this an editorial slip or just Shannon getting revved up to rant?

Maybe she actually believes we've only endured two centuries of religious manipulation, who knows?

Or maybe she'll just make the change without acknowledging the error - that wouldn't be a big surprise for those who follow Shannon's peregrinations, would it?

What a sly devil!

What was the code phrase the jacobins used to mutter before La Révolution to identify each other? I've been trying to remember it ever since Gwest, Alcibiades et. al. started posting their e-mails along with crytic statements like "I may have some information you might be interested in." For some reason I get a visual image of a flasher in toque and trenchcoat waiting in a doorway for passers-by.

You could always reply and find out, now couldn't you, nightbloom?

That would be too easy - I like mysteries, don't you?

Somehow though, I think the reality would be a bit of a disappointment for someone who is so deeply versed in trenchcoat subversion!

Things have gotten so boring around here lately we've taken to playing online chess while we wait for something more interesting than a laundry list of stories from the last 6 months here at Tyee.

Now, don't sell yourself short, Gwest.

Oh, I'm not!

I'll take your word for it then, Jacques.

Actually, I'm more of a Maigret type nightbloom - I just plod along.

The Clouseau character was invented by a guy from Nebraska.

Boxers vs jocks or panties, I presume. :-)

Obviously another slow news day around the old "Feisty One".:-) Georgia Straight Online.

I'm sufficiently well endowed that only boxers will do anyway. And need to keep that old sperm count up to do the job of all these "professional journalist" and other castratos.

shera said

The answer to this problem, is that wonder of wonders, that miracle fixer of all things, now, how to hold ones sanitary napkin in place while in boxer shorts---------DUCT TAPE-------- now quit your whining and go help Garf pull on his hose!!

I'll let garf know woody. If I ever stop laughing. The gray hairs aren't quite done yet are they?

I especially like the way you riffed on Shannon's references to Possum Lodge.

Very sophisticated!

Duct tape!

Now why the hell didn't I think of that. It's the solution to our problem with the nightblossom as well. Mmbf rmph. :-) lol.

Nightbloom - G West: why not exchange e-mail addresses and do your silly stuff in private?
There was a time i sort of respected your opinions, but wasting my time with your pranks turn me off.

About the tread:
Many occupations have been "invaded" by females over the last few decades.
In almost every case some long standing habits have bit the dust.

What makes the difference with firefighters may well be that they spend so much more time together, idle time at that?
Perhaps if they were kept busy, there would be fewer incidents to worry about?

What happened with the idea of merging them with the police?
Instead of fighting one another they might just turn out to be more usefull.

Silly stuff, alive, compared with the latest 'big story' gambit here at Tyee, I'd say we were paragons of virtue.

Even the most dedicated revolutionary has to have a chuckle from time to time. NO?

How about some on-line chess for firefighters too.

Merge the police and the firefighters?

Did you even think about that for a couple seconds, alive?

We're not talking about gas jockeys or retail cashiers. Police and firefighters are totally different professions, with totally different skill sets. Might as well merge the nurses and the teachers.

You do have a point about idleness though. And I'm willing to be that as many as 80 or 90% of calls prove to have to fire.

I think the point here is the banal measures which leadership will go in order to appear to be addressing an issue they aren't motivated to address in any meaningful way.

...prove to have NO fire, that is...

Except in their shorts, at least in Richmond, if Shannon Rupp's analysis is correct.

the message from "upstairs" is, anyone caught not wearing full service uniform, will suffer instant dismissal; does this mean that we ALL participate in "short arms inspection"?

Haven't heard that expression much outside the military. Had no idea it was a part of the regime in the Richmond fire halls!!

What do ya think? Is Rupp, Rudd, Ruff, or "what'ername" wearing boxers, jocks or panties.

We know what the bloomer wears.

Suck it up Alive. There's the time for silliness too. (I used to like you as well.)

I mean take this curent "Feisty One", as Rugg would have us be, for silliness, for example. :-)

How serious should we really take this?

Not too damned much, I'd say.

Don't get your panties all in a knot.

Actually we should merge the fire dept with the ambulance service (EHS). The fire dept is basically already competing with them to justify there existence right now. This is mostly due, I believe, to years of sprinkler and other fire prevention measures having the desired effect of greatly reducing fires. By no means am I saying we don't need fire fighters but I don't see the need for huge hook and ladder trucks to attend every motor vehicle accident so the dept. can look busy. No matter how minor the fender bender if you call for police or an ambulance you get fire trucks as well, adding to the confusion and generally getting in the way (the huge trucks I mean). EHS and the fire fighters should cross train and operate out of the same halls, the fire trucks go to fires (duh) and the ambulances and smaller rescue vehicles take care of the rest. The days of traditional fire halls is ending and the employees working there better wake up to the new reality of women in the work place and a public that wants more from them than shiny trucks, arrogance and calenders.

Interesting observation baloo. I dunno if it's the case everywhere but, where I live it seems as if the fire department and at least two ambulances respond to every medical call to 911.

To minister to one frail grandfather having heart problems I've sometimes had as many as 4 firemen (medics) and 4 ambulance personnel getting into each other's road in his small apartment.

What the hell IS up with that. They must be dispatched from the same source - couldn't they be a little more discriminating.

You may have a point - and a way to bring the old boy firemen into a more professional, empathetic and cohesive kind of integrated emergency services. Perhaps at a cheaper cost to boot.

Good idea! On the face of it at least.

Did you even think about that for a couple seconds, alive?

Actually that idea was bandied around a few years ago, particularily in the states.
I asked a simple question: what happened to that idea?
It obviously had some merits or it would not have been discussed forlong.

so,Nigthbloom: do you have a need to make dumb comments, when something is new or different to you?

There is a very simple resolve to this male versus female, can’t along problem, simply put all the female fire fighters on the opposite shifts of the males, problem solved, next problem please

If my memory serves, at least in smaller municipalities years ago, like Esquimalt over on the island, the police and firefighters were one and the same. The rapid growth of populations and communities led to the specialization division into cops and firemen. Which has been the tendency throughout society.

Years ago, before I got my high school at age 30 something, I worked as a "Nursing Orderly" with a six week course. And in the Veteran's Hospital in which I first worked, except for injections and meds, we "orderlies" did everything on male patients. And I mean "everything", from a nursing point of view. I even worked in the operating theatres as scrub, and did all the assisting of doctors in the performance of TUPRS (Trans Urethral Prostate Resections) etc.

The rise of the female nurse though put the end to all that. All that work is now done by 3-5 year grad nurses, and the world and medical care system would collapse if they weren't there. Nurses are even crowding in on the turf of doctors, whose positions they have eyed covetously since I worked in hospitals. :-)

Which is not really to put down nurses, who deserve their pay and prestige, and I don't begrudge 'em it.

The point being, it wasn't always that way, everything changes, and extreme specialization is the way of highly urbanized capitalist society. Everybody trying to protect their job and create situations that can't do without them. It's called creating states of dependency, by me. :-)

I even understand it. Capitalism is a highly competitive social and economic system. We all have to cover our asses.

No, I'm not making fun of you bloomer. :-)

Alive - there's nothing dumb about my comments. The notion of merging two distict public service providers like police forces and firefighters can't be rationalized in any way that I can see. Your supposition that it must have merit simply because it was discussed briefly somewhere in the States before being discarded doesn't enhance the argument. It's a no-brainer that these are two distinct 'professions'. The fact that firefighters have less to do now in the post-industrial era of glass & concrete is another issue in entirely.

Again, the solutions have to show a bit of reasoning. Woody's simplistic assertion that all three or four women at a given firestation get one shift (presumably the graveyard shift, no doubt) and all the men the other shift in a bit at gender segregation is just silly.

Nightbloom: was that not a dumb comment?

Just because it does not immediately fit into your way of thinking, is not grounds to dismiss it as if I had not even thought it out and found it worth mentioning!

The idea originally was to find a way to make these departments more effecient; there is a lot of "downtime" that, we the taxpayers are footing.

Any solution to get more value for our taxes mut override the reluctance of the firefighters to make ANY kind of changes!

The fiasco at 9-11 proved that the two departments do not communicate or even try to work together!

So, rethink your position, bring some solutions instead of belittling me

Nay. It's not about bending mandates of public service providers for the sake of opportunistic dollar savings. Sure, we need to improve horizontal management and coordination. But we have to look at the very different roles these organizations play.

The police (and in extremis, the military) wield the state's molopoly on legitimate coercive power. They play an essential role in upholding civil society and public order (as well as security of person and protection of basic property rights). Yeah I know all police forces have a corrupt element within them, but let's leave that aside for the moment.

The minor management detail that fire departments as they currently exist are underemployed should in no way necessitate a warping of roles and mandates. I would actually make more sense to meld paramedic and firefighting services than it would police and firefighting, but even that's a stretch.

The bottom line isn't about finding economies, it's about the proper roles of public agencies.

Oh I don't think so. Coercive power has quite a few other 'legitimate' operators nightbloom.

I don't think police and firemen do belong together - but that doesn't mean that the services and the service providers, for that matter, couldn't be organized in better ways.

I'm afraid Alive does have a point about the 'character' of your objection.

Earlier, I thought Alive was being a little too insensitive to the need for a laugh now and then around here. Someone else pointed that out without the kind of off hand dismissiveness that you used.

I can understand why he/she was upset with what you wrote.

I agree that the proper role for civic agencies needs to be considered. I've long been a supporter of getting rid of much of the hierarchical nature and militaristic traditions that so hamper good work among our police forces.

I guess, from the example of the Richmond fire halls, that firemen and women need a good dose of the same emetic I'd prescribe for the cops; and, between you and me - the military.

This is ground we've covered before. However, here at Tyee, that's nothing new.

The bottom line, in its usual context, btw, is always about economies.

I was the one who was called dumb (or rather my statement). So let's not get all thin-skinned here, boyz, just because nightbloom nips back atcha. Anyways, Alcibiades, it usually becomes pointless as soon as you opportunistically insert yourself into a bilateral exchange. If you inserted yourself with a modicum of even-handedness I might regard it differently, but this has been an ongoing pattern on your part. Butt out.

Not sure who else has the monopoly on excercising the use of legitimate coercive force or violence (I used the word "power" but you know exactly what I was referring to). The point is that the purpose of the public sector is not to be economical at all costs. Its Number One mandate is to execute effectively and responsibly the functions of the state (at all levels of government). If economies can be made along the way without damaging this essential priority, then all the better.

But simply saving money is not justification in itself to cavalierly enact peculiar experiments with the nature and mandate of one of the central agencies of state power (at all three levels of government). It's hard enough to train qualified, effective, professional, educated and ethical police officers without also asking them to learn how to fight housefires and respond to gas leaks. As I said, why not merge public school teachers and nurses then.

So no, the bottom line isn't just about economies - it's about effectiveness. The public sphere often requires redundancies in order to accomplish effectiveness. It's priority is the public good. On a fundamental level, failure to accept this places the taxpaying public at risk. I fail to see how our streets would be safer or our property less susceptible to fires by merging these service providers. That's what these organization exist for, separately.

...and lest the irony be lost, I'm actually presenting the textbook liberal-Left defence of continuted investment in public infrastructure and services in the face of chronic downsizing and gutting of the public sector...

Unfortunately, the purpose of the public sector has been hijacked, as you well know, by elites who aren't regulated or restrained much by the heralded 'rule of law'.

I don't think I ever said I disagreed with your post about police and fire services. My main point - as someone earlier pointed out to alive - was to lighten up.

The current deal in the three main plutonomies of the west (US/Canada/UK) is that taxpayers keep paying (and buying) so the corporate and government elites at the top of the pyramid can further distance themselves from the great unwashed.

That's what today's economic data continue, alas to show.

That they guys with their finger on the roulette wheel would want to continue to enforce their authority through the connivance and complacency of a militaristic order that traditionally craps on its lowest status members (in this case women) is nothing new.

This is, as someone else wrote - I'm sorry to have to admit it was Shannon Rupp - a power game.

Sometimes it’s a question of downsizing and marginalizing – sometimes it’s just a matter of pointing out who is the boss.

should be 'the' guys - not they, sorry.

This story reminded me of a earlier time in the military . Women were just starting to arrive and everyone was going nuts. Do they need their own washrooms? Can they be in certain trades and on and on. Can they date men military folks?

Any that was in a time that the men were issues underwear. The women were allowed to buy their own. If the sexes mixed, well that's between them. Did we hang around their barracks to check out their undies? Get real.

The first Flight surgeon I ran into who was a woman asked me if she could check out what was wrong . Of course.Seems some guys were a bit nervous shedding their shorts for the Doctor.

My God if she didn't know what a male looked like by then? One other dumb thing we had up till I left in 1972.

Women couldn't do the Atlantic on the Herc. Why? well there were a number of urinals and one toilet. The fact that the toilet was shrouded by a big plastic curtain didn't cut any ice with the brains. Females could fly with us on Continental flights.

If a woman MD hadn't been on board when the Herc crashed outside of Alert, more would have died. Women hold up more than half the sky according to the old expression. But if they work with a bunch of characters who keep trying to exclude them its time to drop the hammer on those jerks. If women can operate in war zones and manage to keep their lives separate to their job, why not in some fire hall in Richmond?

The public sector has been hijacked by a lot of interests, not just the traditional elites. The big threat to the public sector over the last two decades has been a populist threat as much as a corporate one. The people have become successfully convinced that their enemy is their government (in all its forms). Who has been clamouring for reduction and consolidation of services and service-providing agencies? Who cheered on and voted for the hospital closures?

The whole concept of disinterest has disappeared, and broad-brush binary us/them assumptions can no longer be applied to the whole system from end to end. It's very heterogenous, with tradition elites dominating some areas (for example, foreign policy) and a schizoid assortment of ideological interests (tied to "corporate" membership bodies/constituencies from unions to religious congregatons) dominating or wielding decisive influence in others (education, health policy, etc.).

Just follow the money.

When Gary Bettman has more sensible things to say about fairness, redistribution, equity and level playing field competition our culture (and our society) is in very bad shape.

Keep dancing nightbloom; it's getting crowded on the head of that pin.

Excellent piece, above DPL.

And I gotta disagree with some of my friends here... I think this is a good article for what it reveals on a small scale about the way the world largely works. How we care so little ..well, hardly a damn usually, for what actually works ...for what is truly effective. And so in this I am in agreement with nightbloom.

This very simple thing we don't get. Effectiveness. What works....and what doesn't.

Then comes the really difficult part...admitting when things aren't working.

Which is just about the history of the world..and the present dire world situation we now find ourselves in.

And gawd, ;-) I even agree with Rupp here:

Fire the jerks for this kind of behavior... whether they be men jerks... or whether they be women jerks.

By the way, did you see Chantal Hebert on the National last night? Pretty succinct summing up of the leadership race, and, she made Andrew Coyne look like an idiot without even trying. She thinks, I believe, that Ignatieff has it - baring any screw ups at the convention next month.

She’s a smart cookie all right – and I don’t think she was dressed all that badly either – but then I don’t have your fashion sense. The dog of the group was Gordon Gibson.

Lynn
That bit above was meant for nightbloom - should have made that clear - your piece jumped into the line of fire while I was typing - sorry!

Just to say, as I pointed out above - grudgingly I'll admit [relative to Shannon Rupp] - that I agree with yours, and DPL's, analysis.

nightbloom had made, the other day, some snide remarks about Chantal Hebert's choice of clothing...

I'm still hoping for Dion myself.

...no problem, Alci. I fear Chantal Hebert is probably right about Ignatieff...she's a great analyst...has her own kind of style. ;-) I watched Dion on Politics with Don Newman yesterday...still like his directness...but yeah, Hebert's probably right about the leadership race.

How this got around to the Liberal leadership I'm too lazy to read the whole forum to find out. But my two bits is that the left's own preferences for which Grit they want to see at the helm don't matter as much as which one of them can get rid of the Tories. And I frankly don't know which one - especially since the Globe seems to be endorsing Ignatieff as he might be easier for Harper to meet at the polls; I would have thought they'd prefer Rae on that count.

Dion? Another Quebecker? Sigh. Thing is it appears that Quebeckers support Ignatieff more than they do Dion. Go figure. None of these guys are going to win seats in Alberta, short of some of the Tory cabinet getting caught up in a kiddie-porn scandal or outed as Satanists.

I still think they should have recruited Bill Clinton....

I think the Tyee should implement a new policy: all Tyee reporters must wear boxers.

Any volunteers to start the program, Shannon?