[GB] We live in an axxhole society
Guest blogger: Lawrence Wong, Barrister & Solicitor
To clearly stand out a guest blogger entry, all such headlines will begin with [GB].
We live in an axxhole society dominated by people with authority over people without authority. Not a society full of criminals or religious fanatics so on the surface we are content about our society. But whenever a person without authority or power asks someone who has power or authority over him for help, the answer is often no and given in an offhandish way. This is because people with authority or power like to give you the illusion that they are here to help you when in fact they are more interested in using their authority or power to say no to you. An axxhole is someone who even though is obliged to help you will choose not to help you because of his authority over you.
“With great power comes great responsibility” applies to Spiderman. “With little power comes no responsibility” applies to our axxhole society.
A good example is the City of Vancouver that does little or nothing to clear residential streets, so in this recent snowfall people cannot walk, cannot take the bus cannot drive. And all you hear is the city saying “oh our residential streets are too narrow to plough”. But what about giving us some salt, our rescuers?
What kind of axxhole talk is this? When that head snow removal guy was giving this speech to the TV reporters you could still see the neatly parked road clearing trucks behind him. And then today in the newspaper the politicians give us the spin: “oh we are gonna develop a snowfall strategy” — which is to force people to move their vehicles when the snow is 8 cm in 8 hrs (by then no one can move their cars) or we will force homeowners to shuffle their sidewalks. Well, what about the city’s own failure to plough or salt residential streets ?
Whenever you hear people talk in this city or in this country for that matter, they tend to talk from the position of power or authority instead of obligation or responsibility. The city first of all is very much immune from lawsuits over most kinds of failures, but still they do not want to talk about their responsibility. They talk in terms of their power to make you do things.
Instead of saying or apologizing to the public for not doing a great deal in this snow fall, they come up with one valid excuse to cover all situations. If the city is operating from the position of good civil servants or obligation, the city would not talk but would go do something concrete such as salting the residential streets. They would not talk snow strategy at this time instead they would come up with solutions to overcome their own shortcomings.
Their shortcomings are their snow removal budget is only $750,000 and the guy in charge of snow removal is someone who would not be dismissed even if he put all his snow trucks them into storage in a snowstorm?
Well, if you are not an axxhole then you will see yourself as having an obligation to do things well. And if you happen to not do something well then you would not talk like an axxhole, you would not come to your own defence first.
That essentially reminds me about that tragic Polish new immigrant who was electrocuted by the RCMP at our airport. And the axxhole talk is “yes we fried the guy because we have the power to fry people if they don’t speak English”?
But axxhole is not limited to just gov’t. We also have many axxhole big and small companies that provide services to the public or their customers. And if their people do not show up to deliver the service or do not return phone calls etc you will also be given a dose of axxhole talk.
Are you an axxhole? Well, the chances are you can easily qualify as one if you have some authority that i do not have; such as not letting me speak to your supervisor and then hang up the phone.
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Disclaimer: Views expressed by guest bloggers are theirs and may not represent those of CIV.
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Nah, it is just typical Canadian foul up.
Typical Canadian mismanagement and administrative foul up
give us topics to rant about :P
About the RCMP case, it was just the Canadian version of “Rodney King” 1992 LA riot.
Typical of North America’s hypocrisy about their record on freedom, human rights abuse, racism, torture, atrocities, war crimes and other “crimes against humanity”.
btw, hkboy, glad to see you back. how was your holiday?
It was good. When should we meet for dim sum lunch? (to stimulate Local economy with our HK mingpao money)
the article reminded me that mayor Corrigan said if we spend money to purchase more snow trucks now, we won’t be able to use them for the next 10 years until next big snow season come. at that time, the snow trucks will be too old and too rusted to do cleaning. so according to mayor corrigan, no need to purchase new trucks and save money.
Ha…. I love this post. Feel so much better to read so many “axxhole” after being stuffed with all kinds of excuse.
Lawrence,
In regards to the snowfall issue, I agree that the city did not due enough during this rare winter season.
However, some of your complaints are invalid. A closer look at cities that regularly deal with snowfall will show why your complaints are invalid.
1) Most major Canadian cities do not let cars to be parked on residential streets after a major snowfall. These “Snow Routes” are divided into sections or categories and the public are informed as to what day their street will be plowed and so they do not park on their street that day. Or if they do, their car will be towed or impounded.
2) Most vancouver residential streets are to narrow to regularly plow. Even though Vancouver is a major city, some streets still lack sidewalks or even curbs. Unless the cars are moved off the streets(as mentioned above) a plow will either not be able to fit down the street or it will merely push all the snow from the middle of the street to the side where your car is parked, effectively leaving it under a mountain of snow. The city definately needs a better plan of action to tackle this issue.
3) Salting snow covered streets is useless during major snowfalls. The purpose of the salt is to provide grip and melt ice on streets with small amounts of snow. If there is a large snowfall, and the streets are just salted….the salt will disperse ineffectively and do nothing but create pockets and ruts of ice in the snow.