Tues 31 Jan, the witching hour..... fragmented muse
Kate over at Small Dead Animals is associating Rural land/house
ownership with Cons and Urban appartment dwellers as Lib/NDP/Green
voters.
Association does not denote causation.
Rural Urban, Us and Them. Your with us, or against us. Your
like us, or your not. People over there do not think like all of
us over here.
Some people over at SDA believe that taking care of an invested home
and land somehow qualifies one to be more in tune to politics that
makes one see the light in the Conservative Party versus all others.
Somehow to thee, leasing land from the government in the form of
property taxes with a mortgaged house on it does not denote a more
intricate understanding of politics. Owning rural land is a
myth. Try not paying your government lease payment and you will
of course be removed from your homestead. Perhaps one acquires
the wisdom of Conservative based politics through osmosis while one
attends to the needs of their leased land. After all, the Cons
talk alot about the grass-roots. Appartment dwellers according to
SDA do not benefit from this as I can only speculate. I spend
most of my life 5 stories up above the land, does this mean that I am
so far removed from the Cons that I would never vote Con ......
nope. I have voted Con in the past.
Kate says that houseing is affordable in rural areas. Yup, way
out rural in Northern Ontario far from doctors, specialists, grocery
stores, dentists, banks, post offices, etc. Ya have to be healthy
with quite a reliable car with a huge gas budget to live Rural where it
can be afforded in Ontario, very Northern Ontario that is.
I could have easily afforded a house when my wife and I were living in
MooseJaw. A nice 2 bedroom bungalow on a smallish lot for 40,000
dollars and paid cash. We said forget that and moved to an
appartment in Niagara Falls instead. The fireworks every Friday
night at 10pm as well as holidays. Concerts in the Park.
New Years. The festival of Lights. Or just plain walking
around the tourist district eating ice cream watching all the tourists
and of course the Falls. The vast Public Gardens with its
incredable abundance of vegatation and watching the young ones getting
married or their pictures taken there. Oh yea, the same 2 bedroom
bungalow in Niagara Falls is three times the amount than in
MooseJaw. Forget that.
After almost 5 years in the Falls we moved to Kitchener where the same
house sold for 4 times as much. Forget that. A 2 bedroom
appartment with utilities included in the rent is far less than a
mortgage, utilities, upkeep, property taxes, labour for upkeep.
The library 200 meters away, the outdoor skating rink in front of City
Hall, the outdoor chess tables downtown, the busker festival, and the
best part - better and more varied produce at the many different
grocery stores. (even have one right across the road
kitty-corner) Needless to say, I only use a tank of gas per month
:)
Hmmmmm, mortgage broke and can't afford nothing - to vote Con.
Or, appartment dweller and can afford what I want and travel a little
for the most part - and vote Fiberal.
Kate and her commentors do not speak for me, nor can she/they assume my
vote intentions just based on where I live and what I live in.
I have lived in appartments and houses from coast to coast to
coast (6 months in Alert on the Arctic ocean coast 454 miles from
the North Pole for six months) and Kate and her commentors could never
speak for me or my Urban friends.
Anyway, I would rather work on something constructive than mow lawn,
home maintenance, outdoor gardening, snow shovelling, paying of utility
bills, wondering if heating bills are going to go ballistic and how bad
the municipality is going to screw me over this year for my land lease
property tax. blahh. Like I said, I would rather use my
time a little more constructively than perform brain dead meanial
house-ownership tasks. I will leave the, "keeping up with the
Joneses" to someone else". :)
Perhaps Kate and her commentators just think that us Urban appartment
dwellers just work, and when not working just sit in front of a
TV. I don't know, maybe they think we should be out shovelling
snow or mowing lawn like they do.
The last para reminds me of the way it use to be Russia between
neighbours. Two neighbours, each have a cow. One day, one
of the neighbours gets another cow. The neighbour that only has
just the one cow calls in the police and demand that they remove one of
the neighbours cows. The moral. All one had to do was work
a little more and get the extra cow, but nooooooo, he had to have the
extra neighbours cow removed to even the score. Myself, I would
rather work on something based in wisdom than shovel snow, and be
mortgage broke.
a thousand different heads, a thousand different ways and means
cheers :) majere
roger m roeder kitchener ontario
