Archive for the ‘Featured Posts’ Category

Posted on August 7, 2009 - by J Lane

What BC needs for leadership

There’s been some great discussion going on here and elsewhere about the HST.  I’ve seen some pretty good traffic on my posts about the HST, and getting involved to oppose the HST with excellent comments left by readers.  As many have pointed out, however, there is a greater issue at play here — trust and credibility.  Gordon Campbell and his party have lost it.

The BC Liberals, in no uncertain terms, stated during the election campaign that they would not be pursuing an HST.  Even their budget did not forecast any increase in taxes.  I understand that things can change in a year, or even six months later, but the HST was very clearly in the works during the election campaign.  I am not aware of some event that can account for the complete reversal of campaign promises in this case.

I have to admit that I didn’t vote for the Campbell government in the first place.  I am one of the 49% of eligible voters that did find their way to the polls on election day, and I cast my vote for the NDP.  It’s not that I actually support the NDP and what they stand for; in fact, during the campaign I was sick of their constant negativity and attack ads doing nothing but talking about how bad things are and everything that the Liberals were doing was leading to the destruction of British Columbia.  They didn’t appear to offer any new ideas, or solutions to many of the issues they were dragging into the spotlight.

It’s one thing to say (from the NDP web site):

“…since the election the premier has backed away from his commitments to protect vital public services like health care and education and is hiding the true state of B.C.’s finances.”

It’s another to offer a plan to actually protect or improve health care and/or education in the face of a recession.  Money is in short supply.  Revenues are down.  What can you do?  You can make cuts, but that could make the situation worse.  Ultimately, you look for the inefficiencies in the system, and fix them.  I realize that this is an extremely simplistic solution for the problem.  I’m not an economist, or an expert in this area.  There are a lot of people who are experts though, why not get them involved?

Others would argue that making cuts to eduction is the worst thing you can do.  Funding education is an investment in the future.  Funding health care is essential (read up on the current debate in the States if you doubt this statement).  What can we do to ensure the long-term viability of these (and other) essential services?

What is the answer?

Ideally, I think we need another alternative here.  I know that BC has more than just two political parties, but in reality, the only real players in the game are the Liberals and the NDP.  The green party is really just the NDP part 2 — great at splitting the vote on the left, but ultimately they’re not bringing much of anything new to the table.  There are a lot of single issue parties out there as well — they drive me nuts.  We the electorate are not going to put you in office so that you can legalize marijuana, or create a constitution for the province.  While the latter may be a long-term solution to some of our problems, we have a number of short term problems that need addressing.  Trying to cram everything into your narrow view of the world isn’t a viable option.

We’re having trouble with voter apathy because there is no party/candidate that captures the heart and the imagination of the voting public.  I almost didn’t vote because I didn’t want any of the alternatives (but that’s shortsighted).  We need somebody who is willing to stand up in this province and acknowledge that there are problems, but to offer actual solutions.  Driving the province deeply in debt to fund massive social programs isn’t the solution. Offloading costs to working people, isn’t a solution either.  It’s easy to show a profit if you’re offloading all of your operating expenses to your customers.  I’ve never understood the draw toward governments having surplus budgets — you’re not trying to make shareholders happy.

Ultimately, however, we need to stop being lied to.  If a political party promises that they are or aren’t going to do something, they need to actually do it (or not).  It’s a massive cop-out to get elected on a platform of lies.  Give us hope, but don’t give us false hope.

Posted on August 1, 2009 - by J Lane

Proposed HST in BC – reprise

The BC Government’s proposed HST will, no doubt, devastate a number of businesses and industries in BC.  The most telling indicator I read was an interview with a restaurant in Kelowna, BC saying that after the introduction of the GST, their business dropped 10%.  That was a 7% tax, this is a 12% tax (or if you will, an increase of 7%).  Best case scenario is that they can expect the same thing, another 10% drop in business during a recession when sales are already off in tourism and hospitality.

After my last post went over pretty well, I thought I’d write a quick follow up post on what you actually can do in opposition to the HST.  While it’s probably a complete waste of time writing to your MLA, send them an e-mail anyhow because if they start getting flooded with messages, they might put two and two together and realize that the HST may be impacting their chances of re-election.

That aside, there’s a couple of other routes you can go to make your voice heard:

1. Facebook is providing a home to a number of groups opposing the HST.  The largest has over 10,000 members.  Go join.  The first group I got involved with has over 400 members (don’t know how many overlap).  Personally, I’m going to try to stay active in both.
2. Former Premier Bill Vander Zalm is coming out of retirement to lead the charge in opposition to this issue.  I’ve only lived in BC for a couple of years now, but honestly, Vander Zalm seems to have his head on straight and knows what he’s talking about.  He’s building a list of people interested in the cause.  To join, drop an e-mail to chris@chrisdelaney.com (I think this is our best bet so far)
3. The BC NDP has started a petition to stop the HST.  Sign it, even if you don’t support/didn’t vote for the NDP.  This is an issue that affects us all, forget your party loyalties for a moment.

British Columbians should feel betrayed by the Campbell Government.  They are on the record as having said “there will be no HST” prior to the election.  This tax will affect us all.  It is not a matter of just combining the PST and the GST and nothing else will change.  There is more to it than that, get informed and make your voice heard.

Posted on July 31, 2009 - by J Lane

BC’s HST and writing to politicians

This is going to be a bit of a long post, you’ve been warned.

The other day, I actually wrote to my MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly) to express my concern over the Government’s proposed HST.  His response was a great reminder of why I never bother to write to politicians – it was a copy and paste of the Government’s press releases and talking points.  I’m going to post the e-mail I sent, and then look at the Minister’s response.  Here’s my message:

Hon. Minister Coell,

As a voter in your riding, a small business owner, and a father of  two, I must admit that I am extremely concerned and disappointed by  the announcement of the HST in British Columbia.  Despite the  attempted spin by your government that it is a positive thing, and  that it will save businesses money, I believe the exact opposite is true.

I develop web sites for clients in British Columbia and in other parts of Canada.  While I was previously required to charge GST of my clients, I am now unclear as to whether I will now have to charge
clients HST instead.  If the answer is yes, I can foresee a significant loss of business with those clients residing outside of  British Columbia; a sudden increase by 7% in my rates is ridiculous  (unless of course your government would like to see me absorb that  cost by lowering my rates).  Conversely, requiring me to only charge  HST of clients within BC adds additional administrative overhead.  I  can’t really see how it saves me money, regardless.

As a consumer, I’m appalled that previously non-taxable items (non PST  taxable items) will now be included in the HST.  I work part-time in the tourism industry on Mayne Island, and I can tell you that in that
area, we are feeling the pinch of the recession.  Numbers are  definitely off from last year.  I can’t imagine what logic concludes that by raising taxes on things like restaurant meals travel and  tourism will recover.  I have talked with other islanders who are considering vacationing outside the province, because it is less  expensive than being here.

I think that most disappointing is the HST on used home sales.  While  the real estate market is recovering in major centers such as  Vancouver and Victoria, rural locations are still in a slump.  I do  not have access to exact figures, but my feeling is that home sales on  Mayne Island over the last 12 months could easily be counted on two hands.  Inflating prices by 7% is not going to help that.

Minister Coell, I must admit that I am not a major supporter of the  Liberal Party in BC.  I have often criticized your government’s  handling of the ferry system, as well as your failure to assist us  with keeping the Miner’s Bay dock accessible to vehicle traffic (I  dread the day that an ambulance is hung up there and is unable to  deliver their patient for medical evacuation because of a misplaced  key).  I must admit, however, that during the last provincial election  that I thoroughly researched all political parties and candidates  within this riding.  I was extremely tempted to vote for you  personally because I received the impression that you are one of the
diamonds in the rough that is the Liberal Party.

Regardless, I wanted to voice my concerns to you, in hopes that the  Liberal government will re-think this potentially disastrous move.

I think I’ve got some valid points there.  Most importantly for my own situation: will I have to start charging my customers HST instead of the GST I currently charge?  I think the answer is yes, but I honestly just don’t know.

The response I received (with my own reaction in red):

Dear Mr. Lane,

Thank you for your email regarding the proposed harmonized sales tax (HST) .  I appreciate your concern, this is a significant tax change in British Columbia.  However, it is one that our government believes will benefit consumers and businesses alike.

More than 130 countries world-wide, including 29 of 30 of the OECD countries, have implemented value-added taxes. Value added taxes?  I don’t think any type of tax adds value to a purchase. In Canada 4 provinces have adopted the tax and Ontario recently announced that they would be implementing a federally administered HST. If I wanted to live in Ontario, I’d move there.  That aside, I don’t disagree with the PST — I think that sales taxes are better than income taxes given the choice.  The problem is that there is no uniformity in their application across Canada. With BC, six of Canada’s 10 provinces will have a similar sales tax by July 1, 2010.  BC will have the lowest HST in Canada at 12 per cent while all other provinces with an HST have a rate of 13 percent. Except for say, Alberta, that has an HST at 0%.  But we’ll pretend they don’t exist, that’s okay.

Adopting a HST eliminates taxes on productivity replacing them with taxes on consumption. This is great news!  I missed the press release saying that I would no longer have to pay provincial income tax!  Send me the link! This measure will reduce taxes on business investment by as much as 40 per cent or $1.9 billion annually. Sounds good, but how?  A sales tax that is charged to consumers at the point of purchase reduces taxes on business investment? It will dramatically reduce business administration costs by $150 million annually.  Again, how?  Personally, I’ll have to start adding an additional tax on to all of my invoices.  Unless I don’t have to charge HST on clients outside BC… then I’ve got 2 tax rates.  I can clearly see how that will decrease my administration costs by having to complete two separate returns! It will save the BC government $30 million in administrative costs annually – money that can be used to provide programs to residents of BC.  I think this is the first line of truth in the entire message.  Well, half truth.  I’m sure that the $30 million saved will not actually lead to any sort of noticeable improvement in programs. It will inject $1.6 billion in federal funds into the BC economy. Is this what’s referred to as a “kick back”?  Ignorant me.

For the average consumer harmonization will have little impact with respect to the purchase of goods and services currently subject to PST however, it will mean paying tax on goods and services currently exempt from PST. Well yes, I am capable of doing the math that 5% plus 7% is 12%.  My concerns were with those exempt items you brush over.  I can see how a $28,000 increase in price on a $400,000 “used” home (average price for Vancouver) would have little impact on consumers. Even with this increase BC would continue to have the second lowest overall tax burden for individuals and families as a result of the personal income tax cuts introduced since 2001. (Ah yes, and it’s done amazing things for our child poverty rate.  No wait.) The HST is being designed to protect low income earners in British Columbia.  Assuming that those low income earners don’t need their hair cut, to purchase affordable housing, or to eat in a restaurant. A refundable BC. Income Tax Credit will be paid with the current GST credit to offset the impact of the tax on those with low income.  That’s good news, but that could easily be done with the current PST.

If you have further question I would like to direct you to the Ministry of Finance website on the subject at www.fin.gov.bc.ca/scp/hst/. Thanks, but I think you’ve pretty much copied and pasted the contents here.  Who should I contact to have my specific questions actually answered?

Thank you once again for taking the time to make me aware of your concerns.

Murray Coell, MLA
Saanich North and the Islands
Toll Free:  (866) 655-5711
Phone (250) 655-5711
www.murraycoellmla.bc.ca

I know that Mr. Coell is a busy guy, and that it was just a staffer that replied to this message.  I’m not delusional.  It would have been nice if they even attempted to answer my questions/explain things better.

Update: I wrote a second post with some links to your options for opposing the HST.  Check it out if you want to get involved!

Posted on July 7, 2009 - by J Lane

CFFTP not returning a directory listing

In my Googling, I couldn’t find anything about it, so I thought I’d post something here.  It might seem painfully obvious to most ColdFusion developers, but my brain has been dealing with a head cold, and I just couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.

I’m not sure if it’s true of all servers/situations, but I was running into a problem with CFFTP recently.  I could connect to an FTP server fine, and get a directory listing of the root folder, but subfolders weren’t returning anything.  There wasn’t an error returned, it just returned nothing.

Turns out what I was doing wrong was that you actually need to change into the working directory before listing it’s contents.  In retrospect, yeah, it makes sense, but it was something that confused me for an hour or so.

<cfftp connection="myConnection" action="changeDir" directory="/some/sub/folder/">
<cfftp connection="myConnection" action="listDir" directory="/some/sub/folder/">

Seems silly to me that it works this way, especially because you have to specify complete paths in all CFFTP operations.  It would be one thing if I just had to specify the complete path in the changeDir operation, and then listDir would just assume I mean the current working directory (the directory attribute would be optional), but it doesn’t work like that.  Same deal for getFile and putFile operations… have to specify the complete path.

Not the end of the world, just mildly annoying.

Posted on June 28, 2009 - by J Lane

WestJet Twitter free flight contest

I’m a big fan of Westjet, but their terms and conditions on their Twitter follower contest were at worst recycled from a past promotion, and at best written by a lawyer who has no idea what Twitter is.

WestJet is running a contest where if you follow them on Twitter, you’ll be entered to win a free round-trip flight to anywhere in Canada, from anywhere in Canada.

I’m a bit of a geek, and I’ve recently taken an interest in actually reading through the terms and conditions for various things.  I’m a geek, but I’m not a lawyer so legally everything I write here might actually be wrong.  There were, however, some things that I thought were interesting in the terms and conditions of this promotion:

Last line under #3 reads:

If you’re already following @WestJet then you’re already automatically entered into each of the daily draws. Maximum one entry per person/follower.

Okay, cool so they’re not going to penalize their current followers.  Good on them.  The only part I thought was weird was is you combine this with #7:

By entering this contest, twitter followers (“Entrants”) agree to be bound by these Contest rules (the “Rules”), which are subject to change without notice, and all decisions of the Sponsor which are final. By entering, Entrants grant the Sponsor and their affiliates the right, but not the obligation, to use their photograph, filmed or recorded image, name and city of residence in all publicity campaigns related to the Contest without further notice or compensation.

What if I happened to follow @Westjet because of my undying love for them, and was completely unaware of the contest they’re running.  I’d be entered into the contest automatically and in turn automatically agree to be bound by contest rules?  This seems a bit slimy to me — essentially automatically being entered into a contract by using a 3rd party service?  I’m going to go put on my Facebook profile that by friending me, you automatically agree to pay me $100.

Okay, so I’m totally playing devil’s advocate on this.  Personally, I’m a huge fan of Westjet — I think that if all airlines operated like them, the world would be a better place.  That said, this seems like a case of them re-using terms and conditions of a past contest with only slightly changing the wording, and not thinking through what they’re saying.  Why do people have to agree to contest rules upon entry, and not upon winning?

Here’s another great clause:

All entries become the property of the Sponsor and will not be returned. Sponsor assumes no responsibility for lost, stolen, or damaged entries. Entries are subject to verification and will be declared invalid if they are illegible, mechanically reproduced, mutilated, forged, falsified, altered or tampered with in any way.  The Sponsor is not responsible for typographical or other errors in the offer or administration of this Contest, including but not limited to, errors in advertising, the Rules, the selection and announcement of winner, or the distribution of any Prize.

Isn’t an entry my following them on Twitter?  That becomes their property?  How?  Do I need to get their permission to unfollow them?  Geez, I hope my twitter account isn’t mechanically reproduced, mutilated or rendered illegible.  In the digital world, that seems a bit contradictory though — it should be mechanically reproduced (backed up) so that it doesn’t become mutilated (suffer a hardware or software failure).  Good to know that I can’t hold Westjet accountable if my Twitter account gets hacked or hijacked though.

Oh, and lastly, under #9:

No correspondence will be entered into except with the selected Entrants.

I guess that Westjet won’t be tweeting much.  Because, of course, that would be communicating with all of the entrants (their followers).  At least they’ll have a nice, high follower count.  Westjet, do you need a little intro to what Twitter does?

Posted on June 19, 2009 - by J Lane

Delusion stopped

I used to be delusional and actually believed that I’d have the time (and the desire) to build a theme for my personal blog from scratch.  Not sure where on earth I got that idea from, but after putting it off for a while, I’ve finally buckled and just bought a nice theme for it.

This is Papercut from WooThemes.  They’ve got a great promo going on right now where if you buy one theme, you get three others for free.  I took advantage.

I guess you can consider this a mini-review too, because so far I’m really impressed.  The theme is really good quality, and super easy to configure.  I haven’t changed a lot in the code — most tweaks I’ve been able to handle from within the “Paper Cut Options” administration page that shows up.  I’m looking forward to playing with the other themes I picked up too.