Tuesday, March 13, 2007

They've Got The Clap!

...or at least the French Pox (syphilis), right up the wazoo, as it were, in Alberta, especially around tar-sands towns like Fort McMurray . From The Globe:

People have a lot more expendable income. There is more drug- and alcohol-abuse going on. And there is more exchange of sex for a variety of things such as drugs and alcohol.

Ohhh, you naughty prairie monkeys! Given that late-stage syph can lead to dementia, some Western phenomenon become much easier to explain (although the whole idea of Ezra having sex seems pretty implausible, not to mention kind of gross).

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Off your meds again eh ??

Utterly pathetic writing, childish in extremis.

Boorish. Useless. Very reflective of the author, spoken like a fine downtown, big city liberal that most Canadians despise.

bigcitylib said...

That you, Ezra?

JimBobby said...

Whooee! Well BigCityFeller, the rest o' Canada's finally wakin' up t' the Fort MacMurray social troublems that Green Party leader Earth Mother Lizzie May was talkin' about way last year. Last June, Lizzie gave a speech in Winnipeg as part of her Tar Sands Lecture Tour. Clearing the Air on Climate Change

Lizzie warned everybuddy about drugs an' prostitution an' sexually transmitted crotchrot. Here's a little bit o' what she blathered --

"So where are we in terms of what it means? Before I get to the ecological impacts, I want to cover some of the social ones, because they get missed. Believe it or not I have friends in Fort McMurray, and it is really appalling what's happened to the community. In 1971 it had a population of less than 7,000 people, by 1981 it was over 30,000. Today there are 70,000 people living in Fort McMurray. They lack adequate infrastructure of every kind. They don't have adequate sewage, they don't have adequate housing. As a matter of fact 20% of that 70,000 population has no fixed address. A lot of the people working there are in work camps. Thousands and thousands of working age guys who take big salaries are in these work camps.

So of course there's a huge crime problem, there's the use of drugs, there's assault, there's HIV/AIDS, there's prostitution. One of the doctors I've talked to in Fort McMurray said that every kind of high impact, high stress, high risk behaviour you can imagine happens in those work camps. And they have an acute lack of workers. They want more people to come, there's no place to put them, there's no infrastructure."

So, BCL, the GPC's been ahead o' the curve on about every important issue -- Afghanistan, climate change, legal pot-smokin', electoral reform, emissions cap an' trade, carbon tax, disease prevention though cleaner air, energy use reduction -- you name it an' the Greenies is out in front an' the Grits an' Dips an' Cons is stealin' GPC policies left an' right an' confirmin' t' everybuddy that the Greens got the right ideas.

Voters is catchin' on, too, an' the Greens is pollin' at 13% or 14%. That maybe don't sound like much but when you consider it more than doubled over the past year, it ain't nothin' t' sneeze at. No other party's growin' like that. Maybe it's time fer BigCityLib t' quit followin' yesterday's men an' throw in with tomorrow's leaders an' become BigCityGreen.

JB

Ti-Guy said...

Utterly pathetic writing, childish in extremis.

Boorish. Useless. Very reflective of the author, spoken like a fine downtown, big city liberal that most Canadians despise.


Don't you love it when humourless miseries use in extremis and then, in the very next paragraph, make the jarring error "big city liberal that most Canadians despise?"

That anonymous is syphilitic. No doubt whatsoever. The Conservative Party of Canada needs to be targeted with a safe-sex campaign.

Anonymous said...

What? In the family values province? Na, couldn't be so.

My, my, my. You see, money isn't everything.

Anonymous said...

Yep, when that many out of work easterners get together, there's bound to be some clap.

Anonymous said...

Funny - the "easterners" are not riddled with this problem - they got it when they moved west.

Ti-Guy said...

Well, to be fair...all those Easterners moved to Alberta because they were abysmal failures back East. Too stupid to practice safe-sex, apparently.

You should have seen all the drunken losers crowding the boarding lounge last time I flew to Edmonton. I'm suprised I didn't get clap just by being in their proximity...

Anonymous said...

Well, even if they didn't practise safe sex - they still got it out west.

Maybe there aren't any condoms out there.

Anonymous said...

With the eastern out of work losers came the clap-carrying eastern hookers to service them, following the money trail. It will be nice when the boom eases and they can all clap their way back home.

Ti-Guy said...

You gotta admit though...syph would go a long way to explain rightwing trolling, which is overwhelmingly Albertan...

Anonymous said...

I seem to remember thousands of workers housed in great big work camps in northern Quebec, building all those Quebec Hydro dams and such, years ago; riots, sex, clap, drugs, booze, you know, all the ususal suspects during "boom times". Don't be so parochial in your criticisms. What would be your suggestion, endless Ei-ei-oooh for these people, guvmint dole? We ain't perfection, so get off your smarmy high horses, people are working, paying taxes and the smart ones will actually get something, like a future out of it, without being supported by all those central Canadian taxpayers sending money to NFLD, NB, PQ, PEI, NS for them to sit on their duffs.

Anonymous said...

I would guess that it is all those bigcity liberals from the GTA and other liberal strongholds...(oh scratch that, it should read the GTA, the only Liberal stronghold and HQ of the Liberal party of Toranna)that are importing their liberal lifestyle to Alberta. As usuual bigcity liberal is full of clap!

Anonymous said...

The Census is just in. And the results? Alberta is being populated at the highest rate in the country at 10 percent increase. Where are they coming from? B.C. and, you guessed it, Ontario.

Alberta's gift to Ontario = surplus after surplus. Ontario's gift to Alberta = clap.

JimBobby said...

"We ain't perfection, so get off your smarmy high horses, people are working, paying taxes and the smart ones will actually get something, like a future out of it, without being supported by all those central Canadian taxpayers sending money to NFLD, NB, PQ, PEI, NS for them to sit on their duffs."

That's fairly contemptuous and generalizing stuff about our fellow Canadians in NFLD, NB, PQ, PEI and NS.

Albertans and Ontarians are not the only Canadians who work and pay taxes.

I think the real point is that boom economies can have extremely negative effects. In the case of the tar sands, the effects are environmental as well as social. Alberta is a rich province thanks to the oil industry. Yet, the workers in this highly profittable and highly subsidized industry are living in high risk.

A wealthy province and the wealthy industry should be doing a better job of looking after the workers who are essential to the economic well-being of the province. These social problems do not stay tightly contained within the work camps. Alberta's cities and towns and long-time residents are affected, too.

The big money boys who run the oil companies ain't sufferin' any on accounta how bad their workers got it when it comes t' stuff like doctor shortages and STD's. They're makin' so much dough, that diseased workers are expendable.

The oil companies cannot be depended upon to make improvements. It's up to Alberta and Canada. If Albertans and Canadians don't step up and demand their residents be better served, the conclusion could be drawn that we care more about oil wealth than we do about the welfare of people.

When Earth Mother Lizzie May talked about this problem in 2006, she was advocatin' fer the health and well-being of Canadians.

All this finger-pointin' regional rivalry horseshit don't do a dang thing t' solve a real problem. We're all Canadians an' I ain't happy about any group or region that's got these sorta problems.

JimBobby