The Spectator’s Ethicist, Rachel Haliburton, provides convincing — and sometimes counter-intuitive — arguments as to why making the rich pay their fair share of taxes benefits us all. (Read Reason #1, Reason #2 and Reason #3. And for proof the Ethicist is in tune with the current Zeitgeist, read about US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’sRead More

Editor’s Note: Mayor Cecil Clarke’s contention that discussing council remuneration in camera (and treating elected officials as “personnel”) is a longstanding CBRM practice sent me scuttling to the “CBRM Mayor and Council” clippings file at the McConnell library, to research some of the remuneration (and related) issues council has dealt withRead More

Editor’s Note: In keeping with my chosen mode of journalism — slow — I’m starting a new feature called Cold Takes in which I’ll revisit a person, place, thing or issue that was at some point the subject of multiple media “hot takes” but has since vanished from the headlines. The idea struckRead More

What to do this week This week we need to have a talk. Yes, it’s advice I find hard to follow myself, but just between you and me, we’re going to have to suck it up. It’s for our own good. The advice? Don’t take on more than you canRead More

Deep Dives The banner across the top of this morning’s Cape Breton Post gave me pause, I’ll admit it: The SaltWire Deep Dives: Looking at the Doctor Shortage in Atlantic Canada. Today: Where are all the doctors? “Deep dives?” I thought. “That’s my thing.” I was nervous, but I hadRead More

I have to start by quoting myself. This is what I wrote about Chris Skidmore’s RV Park proposal for Big Pond back in February 2018 CBRM planning staff seem really keen on this Big Pond RV Park idea. I don’t know how else to interpret the time and effort planningRead More

While writing last week about the CBRM Regional Enterprise Network or CBRM REN it suddenly struck me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I didn’t really know what a Regional Enterprise Network was, so I decided I’d better educate myself. I began by looking up the existing CapeRead More

Welcome to 2019! As I write, I’ve already used up 19 days of a brand new year, and by the time anyone reads this, there will be 342 days left in which to accomplish anything, whether of real value or not. Glancing back at the topics that grabbed my interestRead More

I have been thinking about the call center industry a lot lately, thanks largely to our local Chamber of Commerce Newsletter daily newspaper which will keep printing headlines like the one last week proclaiming that workers receiving their first paychecks from the Sydney Call Centre were “on cloud nine.” Don’t misunderstandRead More

What to do this week Looking at some of the better seed catalogs can be a bit confusing for the uninitiated. A well-written catalog is full of useful technical information, but that’s not much use if you don’t know what any of it means. This week, we’ll take a tourRead More