Kings 2050, there they go again!

Brian Sanderson

Once again, the foul stench of municipal politics drags me to the keyboard. Bureaucratic bowels have turned out another turd, Kings 2050: "an exciting partnership initiative intended to guide the long-term sustainable development of Kings County", they say...

Population

Right up front we are told that:
With increasing global populations and living standards, the world simply cannot sustain the current pace of resource consumption and environmental degradation.

Certainly, global population is increasing, at about 80 million people each year. Living standards, on the other hand, are not increasing. In North America, the income for the typical person is no better today than it was 30 years ago, relative to the cost of living. Globally, we have more poor people than ever before. Hardly surprising, it's not easy to create 80 million above-average incomes every year in a world where 7 billion people are already competing desperately for ever diminishing resources.

So what are they planning to do? Well, nothing about global population. Not even anything about Canadian population. Let's face it, every politician in Canada is dead set to increase population. Long ago, the Canadian people voted with their loins, reducing birth rates to replacement or lower.... Yet our undemocratic politician's insist on driving population ever upward!

So, if they are not going to address population, what is the plan?

Improving their standard of living by diminishing yours

Were you at the 2010 Forum for the Federal Candidates? I was there. I recall Councillor Irving rising to plead that a little bit of that Federal Gas Tax be distributed to municipalities, to fill a few pot holes. You know, the way that Mr Irving said it, it made sense. In the fullness of time, the blue bird of political happiness has come home to roost on the municipalities. They got their little slice of Gas-Tax pie, along with a directive:
"To develop a Climate Change Action Plan, as required by the Federal Gas Tax Funding Agreement."
Once again, we see taxation being diverted to employ countless administrative idiots to endlessly blather about the trivially obvious. Listen, you assorted dickheads, oceanic water level is rising about 1 foot a century. The local land is subsiding about 1 foot a century. No need to talk about it, just top up a few commercially important dykes by a foot, before 2050... And start moving up the hill.

The administrators are only looking after their own interests. They have been put in charge of setting the terms of reference. And the terms of reference are to blow the budget on talk feasts and reports full of gabble-garbage. And when it's all gone, perhaps Mr Irving will find them another pot to plunder! These self-serving goons are already targeting your pocket with a suggestion to "update taxation and user fees policies". That's code for robbing the rest of us blind!

Hell bells, just fire all the talking-head twit-wits and hire real people who do real stuff.

Collaborating to plunder the Gas Tax

Three words repeatedly jump off that page as I casually scan Kings 2050: cooperation, collaboration and coordination. The three C's. They sound good. But one "C" is missing. There is no "consolidation" in their dirty little document, except one, where it pertains to consolidating parcels of land.

Obviously, consolidation to cut bureaucracy does not suite the administrative classes. Consolidation just wouldn't do, would it? Cooperation, collaboration and coordination are three excellent make-work projects for the administrative class.

Deliverables

The "deliverables" are just a bunch of plans. Plans plans plans. Make a plan, review a plan, change a plan, plan to plan again. I tried to play my kazoo and all I got was another bloody plan. Enough said.

OK, I lied. I see that the Town of Wolfville plans to do twice as much planning as any of the other Towns. I guess that's because we have twice as many talking-head administrators on the payroll? It couldn't be because of a lack of prior planning, could it? Plans, an economic foundation for the County?

And they'll all CCC while they PPP. (Cooperate, Collaborate and Coordinate while they Plan to Pick our Pockets.) Sing it to a Beach Boys tune...