General Goverment Idiocy

Bonjourno, fellow blogophiles, how's it hanging?
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I got a lot of ground to cover, so bear with me.
First up is a movement which isn't directly from the upper idiots-er- echelons of government, but as usual they are involved... Apparently one of the local school boards has decided bottled water is now BAD. Their reasoning goes something like this: All the water bottles are piling up in trash cans all around the schools, and they take up too much room and kind of make a mess. Therefore, instead of putting up some recycling bins or maybe increasing the numbers of them, we ban the bottled water. This scant months after they also banned pop from schools on the premise that it is junk food... So kids cannot bring bottled water or canned or bottled pop to school. Also banned are glass bottles for much the same reason as plastic ones, which disqualifies most juices. However, it is considered against their policy to send a kid to school without a packaged drink and expect them to drink from the water fountains... So, pretty much all that's left are cartons of milk (which are expected to remain cold and fresh in a sweaty gym bag) or juice boxes which contain primarily water (not regulated for any level of filtration), refined sugar, artificial flavours and colours, and a single drop of some sort of fruit juice so they can put "Made with Real Juice!" on the label.
To recap: You must send a drink with your child to school. Failure to do so is child abuse and against school policy. You cannot send water, pop or juice in a bottle or can of any kind. Your choices therefore are sour milk or unfiltered water mixed with industrial chamicals. This may be detrimental to your child's health, but at least we won't have to put out an extra blue box.
The way the upper levels of government are involved is this: One of the arguments against bottled water is that recycling facilities cannot handle the volume. Currently Ontario throws 40% of their recycling in the trash because of this, but you aren't supposed to because it's bad for the environment when someone other than the government does not recycle. Of course, instead of giving car companies tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to build factories & create jobs which they will cancel in a few months (while still taking the money) the government could use this cash to build extra recycling plants and finally handle all of the volume. This would create lasting jobs and pay for itself with the extra raw materials created (currently there is a massive demand for recycled raw material which is not being fulfilled). This would of course be good for the environment, solve several problems in a long term way, and pay for itself. Which of course brings us back to a core fact of my blogging career: the government does not want to solve any problems- instead it wants to appear to fight against them whilst never solving them, thus preserving the problem for use later. More political points to be made that way.
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Stephen Harper was voted in with a platform which included a law which prevents the ruling party from calling an election on an early date selected for political advantage. Apparently now, he says, the rule does not apply because he left himself a loophole so he can ignore it. I don't know about you, but when I voted for greater accountability in government I didn't mean 'except when you can get away with screwing over the voters'... maybe I was the only one.
Of course, now the Dion and Layton are jumping on the bandwagon; the only thing the three parties agree on is that it isn't actully the fault of their party (it's one or both of the others) but that somehow Canadians want another election, to create another weaselly minority government with another mediocre-at-best prime minister at the top.
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Another one for Harper: Remember not too long ago when Harper was telling us that Arctic Sovereignty was an issue? Apparently it isn't any more. When asked about it recently he maintained there isn't a problem, and that the only reason people think there is is because they listen to scholars and the media. Errrrrrr... Who the hell else are we supposed to listen to, Stevie? Livestock? Cashiers? You? Oh, right, you gave us the idea in the first place... but that doesn't count.
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As a last little dig, apparently Weiner Boy McGuinty is not at fault for not inspecting the tainted Maple Leaf meat everyone is afraid of now. I mean, I know it's his job to hire the guys involved and send them on over, at least indirectly, but he's to busy hiding from the media so they don't catch him saying something else stupid. Thanks, Dalton!
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Well, I gotta go pick up the Smurfs from school, I'll fill you in on them next blog. Say bye bye to Starfleet Command for me, and I'll see you on Hollywood Squares!
Later,
The Purgatorial Lexiphage