rod boyle

I should have been a Psychiatrist...

Looking for a job, any job that isn't seasonal, that isn't restaurant related, because, all things told, restaurants are a pretty precarious business to be in at this moment. And while the pub's reopened all the safety measures easily double the work load, for half the customers, an abysmal amount of take out...

Time to find something else...

So, checking the local jobs I come across a posting for Psychiatrist. $350-450,000 per year. Holy Fuck.

And it dawns on me, too late, that I seriously made the wrong career choice. I mean, look at my friends and acquaintances - all of them crazy, every one of them. And I'm always prescribing mushrooms, MDMA, Acid...If I'd a done for a profession what I already do as a hobby I'd be rich. Damn Damn Damn.

Details: Category: Ideas & Questions; Created: 05 June 2020

Looking Smugly South

I've written about this before in "Disarm the Police". As we watch the abysmal and shocking footage of the riots and protests further south try not to get too smug.

In 2016 Calgary Police managed to shoot and kill 10 of it's citizens. This, in a city of 1.239 million people. These numbers - it should be noted, are for "the greater economic region" and include outlying cities like Airdrie, Cochrane, Okotoks and Strathmore, none of which are policed by the Calgary Police Force. Scale these numbers up to a country of 35,151,728 and you could approximate that 284 people were shot and killed by police throughout Canada. Scale this up to reflect the difference between population sizes between the US and Canada (10 fold) and if the US was policed by Canadian Cops you could anticipate that they would kill 2840 people per year. Compare this to the UK for the same year - one person was killed by the police. 1. One.

In the USA the police manage to shoot only around 12-1400 of it's people per year. Perhaps, then, we do have some reason to be smug. Our police are easily twice as violent. Maybe even more so.

Note that Statistics Canada only tracks police shootings in incidents that result in charges/convictions against officers. Meaning it's very hard to find good and reliable information about Police brutality and violence in Canada. Our politicians aren't interested. Under Harper, Canada's slightly more educated "Trump", this was to be expected, but we have good reason both to ask for and expect better information from the Liberals.

Now compare the rates of Violent Crime. The US, 3 times greater than Canada, per Capita, with Gun Violence, Violent Crimes and Murder.

And, for a comparison as to Crime rates US VS Canada: https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/United-States/Crime.

I've linked to this before, once more for good measure: https://killercopscanada.wordpress.com/.

No one polices the police in Canada. And it shows.