Interesting he would admit this as the same GPS data is touted as the reason the bus operators should feel safe and secure when they press the emergency silent alarm. “We’ll find you fast using the GPS co-ordinates of the bus you are operating.”  The UNRELIABLE GPS co-ordinates.

All bus operators must be feeling very glad the OC Transpo G.M. feels it is so important the general public obtain accurate GPS data.  Hopefully transit control will have access to the upgraded GPS data to assist in locating a bus operator in dire need of assistance.

Well said, Alain Mercier.  Do you have room in your mouth for the other foot?

The person bought four grocery store items which were not taxed and also bought a plastic bag for 5 cents. Next to the $0.05 is the letter H.  Looking down to the bottom of the receipt there is a line which reads  13% HST  $0.01

If we ‘do the math’ we can see 13% of 5 cents is  0.0065 cents. If we round up we arrive at 0.01 ( 1 cent ) which might make sense to a computer programmer who is told to round all transactions to two decimal places, but it makes no sense with respect to this particular transaction.

Applying a 1 cent tax on a 5 cent transaction is equivalent to a 20 percent tax. However, even if the HST was 20%, how does one go about dividing 1 cent of tax between the Federal and Provincial accountants? I know what you are thinking. It will all average out in the end, but that isn’t the point of this blog.

The point is this, it doesn’t make sense to charge a 1 cent tax on a 5 cent item just because a rounding function in the cash register says 0.0065 should be converted to 1 cent. In my mind that is a hidden sales tax simply because it defies common sense.

Put in another way. Assume 100 plastic bags are sold for $5.00, then the HST would be a sensible 65 cents.  Buy the same 100 bags individually and the total HST payable will be $1.00.  How do we account for the difference between the $1.00 and 65 cents ? There is 35 cents of additional sales tax from an unknown source. The only way the 35 cents of HST would be owed is if the HST was 20%. Thus I claim to have proven there is a HIDDEN HST of 20%, at least when it comes to the sale of single plastic bags in the grocery store.

There was time when certain institutions were known to be the stronghold of correct English.  CBC radio was one of the entities which kept everyone speaking the “Queen’s English”, or the Canadian equivalent.  No more, if you listen to CBC radio you will hear new words and phrases you likely won’t understand without the context or an explanation.  Keep in mind English is a collection of words “stolen” from other languages, which explains why we have so many synonyms in our vocabulary.

Were you aware American is “officially” a language, at least in the world of MicroSoft. Check the list of available languages during a MicroSoft installation process and you will see American listed. I don’t recall seeing Canadian on the list, but perhaps it will be coming soon.  As many of us know from personal experience, there are clear differences between how a Canadian will pronounce certain words as compared to Americans (USA) and the citizens of Britain.  Noteworthy is the fact different regions within Canada, the United States, Britain and every other country around the world will speak English with a different accent and unique words.  Which leads me to ask, how far do dialect shifts need to go before someone is speaking a completely different language?  Most will agree Cajun is not French, so is hard core Newfoundland English a different language from the English spoken in British Columbia ?

Some people will claim it really doesn’t matter as long as we are understood by whomever we are in communication. I’d agree up to the point of legal contracts.  Study any legal document and you will find language so stale no one but those with formal legal training can comprehend it.  Perhaps this makes the English language found in the profession of law yet another dialect to be preserved while the evolution of English continues to accelerate around the globe.

Yet,  even within a legal context there are those who enjoy using nebulous phrases to ensure there is no clarity. Recently I heard the phrase “make whole” defined as “to return as close as possible to a state as if the damage had never happened”, yet the very person who used the phrase and offered the explanation later would state the meaning (described here) was incorrect in a legal context.  That is to say, when you and I say “make whole” it means “to return as close as possible to a state as if the damage had never happened”, but in a legal context it means something entirely different.  Just to be fair, these words did not come from the mouth of a lawyer, they came from the mouth of a highly placed official within Health Canada.

In my day to day personal life I find communication interesting and intriguing as more and more there are people, living in the same city, who don’t understand English the same way I do.  At times it feels like we are both using the same words, syntax and rules of the English language, yet we are unable to communicate.  How long will it be before a job posting will include a requirement for English with a caveat indicating the precise dialect based on geographical location, a corresponding time in history, with the addition of an age specific sub-dialect ?

Example:  the successful candidate will speak fluent Canadian English of the Capital Region dialect as spoken by those between the age of 25 and 35 bounded by the years 2000 and 2010.

I expect many Ontario tax payers simply schedule an appointment, pay the fee and then renew their vehicle registration, apply the new plate sticker and go about their lives without giving the matter too much thought. However, if you choose to ask a few questions of the people operating the equipment at the garage where the test is being performed, you might gather information which leads you to conclude the entire program is simply another creative method for the Province of Ontario to take your money.

In theory the Ontario urban air quality is being preserved because vehicles failing the test will have to be repaired before they can be re-registered.  The testing location I spoke to indicated 85% of the vehicles they test scores a pass. Those which fail need only invest a maximum of $450 in repairs before they score a conditional pass.  If the cause of the FAIL is connected to a single problem which would cost more than $450 to resolve, the repair need not be made to score a conditional pass.

The equipment needed to perform the tests costs in excess of $100,000 Cdn.  Test equipment upgrade and repair costs can add a few thousand dollars each year.  For example, starting the fall of 2011 light vehicle testing will done via the On Board Diagnostic interface.  The testing computer will “talk” to the vehicle computer. This will cause a FAIL for any vehicle with an active ‘check engine light’ regardless of whether or not the emissions from the tail pipe are acceptable regarding the emissions specifications.

The cost of a light duty vehicle test is $35 plus GST  (soon to be HST).  Half of the fee goes directly to the Province of Ontario, the remaining half is kept by the testing centre to offset their initial investment and maintenance costs. Assuming a testing centre performed 8 tests every business day for 3 years, they would pay for their investment, but that doesn’t include the salary of a qualified technician who must be employed to operate the test equipment and a number of other related operating costs.  In short, the companies operating the test equipment are not earning their living performing emission testing.

The testing centre I visited informed me they only got into the testing business to add value to their existing customers.  Without the testing equipment they would have to send their customers to other service centres for emissions tests which could result in a loss of customer retention.

Given 85% of the vehicles pass the test and the other 15% must pay $450 in repair costs to score a conditional pass, is the vehicle emissions testing a practical value or a public relations campaign ?

Clearly there was a great deal I did not know about the relationship between the USA and the USSR.  I also didn’t understand there were political and economic forces which encouraged warfare.  Back in those days a large number of jobs were tied directly to supporting wars around the world.  I later became aware some wars were acceptable and some were not.  Then again, that does depend upon your point of view, where you live, who you support, your cultural origins, it gets very complicated.  Sometimes it seems the only common denominator is we all bleed.

In my pre-teen years I recall thinking world peace was possible.  The war in the middle east was always in the news. There was always some new effort which was to bring about peace in the middle east.  That conflict has been going on my whole life.  There was also the conflict in Ireland, which finally did come to an end.  Then there were countless wars in countries I never heard of until they appeared in a news story.  Today the tally of the conflicts actively being fought around the globe exceeds thirty, yet I still think world peace is a real possibility.

I expect everyone would like to live in a world without war, however I know at least one young woman (age 16) who believes world peace is impossible. Initially I found that very alarming, but perhaps it is the exception which proves the rule.  Then again, perhaps there is a large segment of the population who believes world peace is unobtainable and the secret to living a life without war is to live in the “right” country.

I firmly believe the secret to world peace lies within our collective ability to detach ourselves from material desires.  The bottom line of each and every conflict is the desire to own or control material property.  I find it peculiar to know there are people living off the land in remote areas.  People who have lived this way for centuries.  They appear very happy and healthy and own virtually nothing.  On the other hand we have people living in the wealthiest parts of the world who are very unhappy, who struggle every day to get enough to eat.  How is it we have created a society where so few have so much more than they need while so many have so little.  I feel the solution to world peace lies within a lifestyle with a much lower attachment to property and possessions.  What do you think?

I expect I was hungry at the time and was too buy making a cheese sandwich to give it more thought. After all, it passed the taste test, especially with a side order of pickles.  Time passed and I collected random bits of information connected to food and at some point the data transformed into information.  What started out as interesting eventually became alarming. A pattern became very clear and today there is almost a steady stream of reports which all support the claim the processed food we all love to eat is responsible for a wide variety of health problems.  In other words, process foods may taste great, but they do NOT promote great health.

Like many people, I ate the foods which created the most appealing taste sensations. Long ago I would have adopted a diet consisting of nothing but double chocolate chip cookies IF it was able to provide complete nutrition.  The trouble with the double chocolate chip cookie diet is the absurdly high calorie content with an equally absurdly low nutrition index.  Thus I might eat a handful of cookies after eating something else I considered nutritious.  I was young and active, so I burned off the calories as fast as I consumed them.

As time passed I continued to accumulate information related to processed food, all of it was filed away in a mental folder.  I recall I was still consuming a lot of fast food, but I felt my choices were improving.  I made a point of getting extra vegetable toppings on my grilled chicken burger and eventually switched to grilled chicken salads. Unfortunately I was no longer young and my personal mass was increasing. Years passed, and while a strict exercise program brought the body mass under control for a while, I eventually began becoming more massive.

About a year ago I noticed I could no longer wear certain clothing comfortably and this triggered a renewed look at what I was eating.  I began looking at the calorie and nutrition content of everything I was eating.  I quickly removed everything from my diet which was high calorie and low nutrition.  The five C ‘s left my diet immediately: cookies, cake, chips, candy and carbonated soft drinks. The primary ingredient in most of these being sugar or fructose, both of which appear implicated in a wide range of health issues.

I recently added a sixth C to my list of foods I no longer eat. Cheese.  Why?  Originally it became an unwelcome food due to it’s ability to obstruct my digestive process, but recent news confirms it serves no useful place on my menu. Perhaps cheese made without pasteurization would be nutritious, however I just heard about a study where only pasteurized cows milk was fed to a group of calves and all of them died. When I searched for this study online I found the tale of two calves. From what I understand,  it is a scientifically documented fact that calves fed on pasteurized milk from their own mother cow usually die within six weeks.  Why do they die?  The process of pasteurization damages the milk making the nutrient value inaccessible.   It reminded me of Olestra, the fat substitute that adds no fat, calories, or cholesterol to products because the human body cannot process it.

I have also been reading material from an e-distribution sent out by Dr. Mercola. I find the content very interesting and the reader is frequently reminded to eat as much fresh unprocessed food as possible.  Why? Because processed food is tied to the majority of what ails the North American population.  There is a very simple explanation behind why we eat so much junk food.  At the bottom is someone’s desire to make money selling food.  The easiest way to sell a food product is to make it taste great and have a long shelf life.  Unfortunately virtually every food product meeting those two criteria are not healthy to eat.  Many of us have gotten out of the habit of considering the nutritional value of the food we eat.  (Some of us never learned to consider the nutritional content of the food we eat.)

Most of us have no idea how many calories we consume in a day and how many we need.  Ask someone what their daily calorie requirement is and they are very likely to respond with a value between 2500 and 3000  calories.  In actual fact, the sedentary life style of most North Americans requires something like 2000 calories a day.  Your personal requirements will vary, but after closely tracking my calorie consumption I found I needed less than 2000 calories a day to maintain 70 kg (155 lbs) while getting 45 minutes of vigorous exercise every day.

About a year ago I tipped the scales at 85 kg (187 lbs), yet by simply knowing how many calories I was consuming and ensuring everything I ate was high in nutrients and low in calories I shed 15 kg (32 lbs) of pure fat from my body.     After all, we are what we eat.

I say this as the cost of idling is a convincing argument to stop the engine when parked.  An average 3 litre engine will burn 300 ml every 10 minutes of idling. A 5 litre engine will burn more than 500 ml in 10 minutes. That would be about 30 cents and 50 cents every ten minutes, assuming the cost of fuel is $1.00 / litre.

Fun fact. Idling longer than 10 seconds uses more fuel than needed to restart the engine. The same applies to CO2 emissions.  Are you thinking about the extra wear and tear caused by restarting the engine?  As long as the engine remains shut down for 60 seconds you will save enough money to offset the maintenance cost for your starter and battery. If you are travelling familiar routes and are stopped at a 2 minute red light, you might want to consider shutting down your engine while parked at the light.  How many lights do you sit parked at for more than a minute on your way to and from work?

Okay, I admit, shutting down your engine in traffic is a hard core conservation technique, but when your car, truck, SUV or motorhome is parked, please consider shutting off the engine.  After all, idling gets you no where and does significant damage to our air quality.

How many news jobs will the project create ?

What trades and professions will get the new jobs ?

How many trains will be put into service when the new LRT opens ?

How long will the project take to complete ?

I have been able to locate a variety of reports related to the technology options available for use in an LRT.  I have been unsuccessful in locating answers to any of the above questions.  I think the politicians who want to move forward with the LRT project should be promoting the distribution of practical information a tax paying citizen would find useful.  Do you agree ?

The bus stop sign is NOT the specific location the bus MUST stop to pick you up. The bus stop sign is a guideline.  The actual placement of the front door when the bus stops will be a function of:

a) passenger mobility  (a customer in a wheel chair knows the position of the bus will be determined by the best location to deploy the ramp)

b) passenger safety  (the bus should always stop in a location of optimal safety for the customer)

c) bus access to a clear and open space  (parked cars will cause the stop point to change as will scaffolding, telephone poles and support cables positioned on the edge of the roadway)

d)  obstruction to passing traffic (to ensure my bus obstructs traffic as little as possible, I’ll stop the bus ahead or behind the bus stop sign as necessary)

e) whether or not other buses are attempting to stop at the same bus stop (we tend to make space for each other as best we can, thus we cannot all line up our front door at the same bus stop sign)

Exiting an OC Transpo bus:

At any time you may ask the bus operator to allow you to exit the bus at a location which does not have a bus stop sign. (Bus stop signs can go missing.)  The bus operator will determine if it is a safe place to allow you to exit the bus. If the bus operator determines your request stop location is not safe, they will determine the closest safe place to your requested stop and allow you to exit the bus.

Passenger Safety is always the number one priority.  From time to time, hopefully very rarely, a bus operator may have to allow a passenger to board a bus from an unconventional location to preserve the safety of a customer.  I’m not going to describe this one in detail, as I don’t want to encourage inappropriate customer behaviour, however you might see a bus operator encourage a passenger to board a bus in a strange location IF allowing the customer to linger placed their safety in jeopardy.

Any questions?

I believe there is a relationship between power tripping and happiness. The drivers who are happy have a very low, perhaps non-existent, power tripping attitude.  The more disgruntled the driver the more likely they are to engage in power tripping behaviour.

Did you know bus operators at OC Transpo are not empowered to prevent you from riding the bus regardless of whether or not you have paid the fare?  A bus operators responsibility ends after they remind you of the fare.  Thus if you step onto the bus and walk past the driver without showing a bus pass, a transfer or putting a ticket or cash in the fare box, the only thing you should hear from the driver is: “Are you aware the fare is $3.25? “  You can say nothing and keep walking and the driver is supposed to let you ride the bus unmolested. 

Note:  If you make a habit of not paying your fare the driver may request assistance from a Supervisor or Transit Law. When boarding a 40 foot bus you can technically ride free of charge at any time.  Don’t expect to receive a transfer when you don’t pay the fare. This means you shouldn’t ride a 60 foot bus without paying the fare as proof of payment is required  in the event Fare Inspectors board the bus.

There are a long list of policies and rules bus operators are expected to know and apply.  The application of any rule or policy comes with a degree of bus operator discretion.  For example, a person with an expired bus pass could be reminded they should pay a fare, but the driver might know the customer well enough to offer them a transfer to ensure they make their way home without incident as they board a 60 foot bus.

Enter the disgruntled dissatisfied bus operator.  I’ve talked with more than a few customers and they have all noticed the dissatisfied bus operators tend to be somewhat less customer service oriented than the happier bus operators.  The happy bus operators will wait a little longer at the platform when you are running for the bus.  Maybe they move the bus ahead on the platform to meet you half way. They greet you pleasantly even after you have arrived “late” and they open the door for the third or fourth time, just for you.

The dissatisfied power tripping bus operator (DPTBO) closes the doors and pulls away as you run up to the doors.  The DPTBO kicks you off the bus if you don’t have a valid transfer or don’t pay your fare, and they probably don’t greet you and respond to your hello.  You’ll rarely have a legitimate opportunity to thank a DPTBO as they rarely make an extra effort to serve their customers.  Legendary DPTBO don’t even open the front doors in the winter as they don’t want to loose the heat in the area around the driver’s seat.

A power tripping attitude can show up in any occupation. I generally consider it an indication the person needs to find a new job.  The world would be a much better place to live if the unhappy people acknowledged their level of dissatisfaction and set about finding a position where they felt thrilled to go to work every day.

I’ve long thought G. W. Bush started a war due to job dissatisfaction. He was just power tripping on a global scale.