Hi there and welcome to my blog. This is the portal page and where I will post whatever interesting is happening in my life or, anything that has piqued my interest or, what ever happens to piss me off on a given day. A kind of diary. On the bar below and on right side of the page there are some links to things that interest me as well.
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I am watching the World Cup and feeling lazy today but I thought readers might be interested in this story which I found in the Montreal Gazette.
A Twitter that account claims to be that of British Petroleum's public relations department appeared on line, but the messages are a little bit, well, odd for a battling a massive oil spill.
"Please do NOT take or clean any oil you find on the beach. That is the property of British Petroleum and we WILL sue" reads one "tweet" from the account BPGlobalPR.
"If we had a dollar for every complaint about this oil spill, it wouldn't compare to our current fortune. Oil is a lucrative industry!" says another.
"Proud to announce that BP will be sponsoring the New Orleans Blues Festival this summer w/special tribute to Muddy Waters," reads a third.
The fake account was created on May 19 by an unknown Twitter user and has quickly attracted nearly 20,000 followers - four times more than the real BP Twitter account BP-America.
Other messages on BPGlobalPR:
"The good news: Mermaids are real. The bad news: They are now extinct."
"The ocean looks just a bit slimmer today. Dressing it in black really did the trick!"
"Thousands of people are attacked by sea creatures every year. We at BP are dedicated to bringing that number down. You're welcome!"
Toby Odone, a BP spokesman, told Advertising Age that the company is aware of the fake account, but has apparently not taken any steps to have it removed.
"I'm not aware of whether BP has made any calls to have it taken down or addressed," Odone told Ad Age. "People are entitled to their views on what we're doing and we have to live with those.
The so-called private member’s bill to scrap the long gun registry issue will probably come to a vote sometime this month. I say "so-called" because this bill is in every way but in name a government bill. Put forward by Morden Manitoba's own Candice Heppner this bill is top of the Harper agenda. They have pulled out all the stops to get it passed.
It looks like the Liberals will insist that party's Mps vote against the bill but chances are it will pass to primarily because NDP leader Jack Layton refuses to "whip" his members into defeating the bill. How ironic is that?
This whole debate has been kind theatre of the absurd from day one. It has been hard for me to figure out what the whole issue is all about. Why are these guys so passionate about shutting down the registry anyway? The police chief's support it. The police associations support it. The RCMP supports it. Most reasonable Canadians support it.
The registry was put into place by the Liberals
I know, I know. Liberal legislation bad, Conservative legislation good.
The registry is too complicated for the shooters to understand and it is expensive.
If that is true isn't it the government's responsibility to cut through the red tape and make the process more streamlines and cheaper to use? How do we manage to issue drivers licences, marriage licences, and dog licences without bogging the system down?
The registry is ineffective because so many gun owners has so far refused to register their weapons
The only reason that people have refused is that the government have put an long gun registry amnesty program into place, refusing to prosecute anyone acting in defiance of the law.
The registry interferes with my right to bear arms.
Sorry Bubba, you have been watching too much American television. No such wild west Doc Holiday spirit here in Canada
A Leger poll taken in Quebec tells us that almost 75% of Quebecois want to keep the registry. Two thirds of Conservative voters want to keep it. In the 18 to 25 age group a stunning 85% want to keep the long gun registry.
So there you have it. It has been a phony argument from day one. It would be entertaining if is wasn't so chilling. The debate, if we can call it that has unleashed a kind of underbelly of Canadian society we usually don't see.
We saw Yorkton's own, MP Garry Breitkreuz refer to the Canadian Chiefs of Police Association as a cult because of their opposition to scrapping the registry and suggested that Liberals beat up Iggy because of his stand supporting the regiustry. Breitkreuz's communications staffer, Brant Scott, who wrote that release has now moved on and has landed a job heading up the new Canadian Shooting Sports Association's Communications Office in Ottawa.
That is the same group that anonymously hatched a poll asking questions like, "As a legal firearms owner, who are you more afraid of? Police of Criminals?". They then promoted to poll asking their members to respond. A majority, 58.85% said they were more afraid of the police. I don't know about you but all this makes me a bit nervous.
In addition, Stockwell Day quietly stacked the Firearms Advisory Committee almost entirely with pro-gun advocates including one who argued that more guns in the hands of students would have save lives in the Virginia Tech massacre in which 32 people were killed. Another described the gun used in the Dawson College shootings as a fun gun to shoot.
Did I mention that the members of the group's names have never been released by the government except once by accident in a letter by Breitkreuz. (Not the sharpest tool in the shed) Those names are secret Gary.
So hold on to your hats. It ain't over yet. Sometime in June this whole issue will come up for a vote. MPs have a choice. Let them know how you feel and let's put this whole issue behind us.
