Monday 16 March 2015

Protect and Serve the NPD




It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
                                                                                     Mark Twain



 
Clearly - there are mental-health issues in Nelson - just like anywhere else - but the Nelson Police Department (NPD) turning this issue into a mental-health crisis to manipulate the public emotionally - via gullible local news-media - for funding-approval of largely in-house benefit - has been inappropriate at best.

It has made the NPD appear frenzied and out-of-control. Certainly not inspiring trust in its ability to handle a real crisis - should it ever arise.

This includes the Nelson Police Board - guided by then Mayor/Board Chair John Dooley - in giving shape to the NPD's bizarre Provisional Budget 2015, presented to Council in Oct. 2014.

Eventually the NPD had to run out of manufactured reasons for gaining a very substantial increase in its definitive 2015 Budget - not once supported with a clearly documented local need - and went silent on said crisis after Feb. 16 - one month ago. Mental-health crisis? What mental-health crisis!

This sudden silence raises more questions than previous consistently loud, disjointed and self-righteous fear-mongering by the NPD: presenting itself in emergency-mode, with no time left for policing after forever having to drive mentals to the hospital and back. This only fixable with lots of money: to get more cops. To join the complimentary taxi-service?

In the meantime - what with your ever so overworked and misunderstood neighborhood-cop turned overtly entitled and hostile: prominent among questions must be that of confidence in the NPD's cash 'n carry willingness/intention to work for the common good.

I - and many others - totally support Council and Mayor Kozak in following the NPD's mental-health trajectory since Oct. 2014: including obtaining data from the hospital on the number and frequency of people baby-sat there by cops since last October.







 




While this taxi/baby-sitting service of mentals to/at the hospital has become the institutionalized-for-one-purpose-only cornerstone of the NPD's attempt to squeeze the Nelson tax-payer for more money: we have yet to see the NPD's never volunteered real-time numbers substantiating these hospital-run claims as well. A comparison might be interesting!
Day-by-day - with dates!
Just as we have yet to see these hordes on Baker before/when the cops round 'em up. Provided some toing-and-froing is actually going on: what are the criteria? Who decides? 

So far - since Oct. 2014 - NPD-generated info on the so-called mental-health crisis in all its permutations has been completely anecdotal.
Not once challenged anywhere but on this blog.

Reasons for the need of additional cops - given in the Provisional Budget - curiously do not include this crisis and huffing-and-puffing up the hill to the hospital because of it. Reasons then: a) mostly pulled straight from a book and b) written by an author with research-methods questioned by many policing-experts: are nowhere - literally - and insulting to those the cops ostensibly are here to protect and serve.




 But there you have it - or them: our Police Department and our Police Board.


 Low on crime and high on themselves.




Thursday 12 March 2015

Organic Matter(s)



The move to officially lock-in the term organic - as reported by Bill Metcalfe, Nelson Star, 10 Mar, 2015 - is long-overdue sensible: but the situation is more complex than reported - multi-layered. And the closer we peel towards this organic onion's center - the more teary we may get with Victoria's health-is-wealth-what-not.













Official Layers: 1 and 2
There are several organic certifiers in BC - there also are several certifiers certifying would-be certifiers. And although these certifiers of certifiers have to follow certain rules within the process - there may be variations in approach. This could conceivably lead to certifiers of growers/producers certifying differently from each other.

Store Layers: 3, 4 and 5
The Kootenay Coop Country Store has several ways of identifying dry bulk. All along the same aisle.
1.
Commercially grown/produced dry bulk is kept in orange bins - otherwise left unidentified.
2.
Organic dry bulk is kept in green bins - labelled as that. Only. Usually.
3.
Certified organic dry bulk - also in green bins - is labelled as such. The grower/producer/place of origin may be mentioned. May be. Mostly isn't.

None of the dry bulk labeled Certified Organic identifies which certifier certified this product.

 












The Onion's Center
The Coop carries dulse-flakes. For those unfamiliar with dulse: it's a sea-weed/vegetable growing attached to rocks mostly in the coastal Pacific, like up along our side. Close to the shore, to about 20 meters deep, much of it exposed at low-tide, then gathered.
Even the lesser informed probably know that - particularly closer to urban centers - the water is not the cleanest and sloshes about a lot. We also know that nuclear fall-out from Fukushima has reached the continental shelf of British Columbia (Health Canada). Pronounced negligible and absolutely no health-risk now of course they would while nuclear pollution will hit BC's beaches eventually. Eventually!

But - big BUT! - at the Coop dulse has been sold for ages labeled Certified Organic. No producer, no place of origin, no certifier. This begs the question: how could anyone possibly officially sanely certify the coastal Pacific - or any part of it or the whole thing - as organic! Fukushima or not. Organic as what we have come to envision/expect it to be! At the Coop $3.89 per gram. In a green bin. While in orange bins immediately to the right there is bull-kelp and arame. Both sea-veg as well.

 












I talked about this with the guy in charge of it all a long time ago - nothing. And when marketing-manager Jocelyn Carver now says Because organic food is priced higher there is obviously a strong profit motive for business to use the word "organic" misleadingly in order to charge more - I say yeah!

I don't question whether this dulse was actually certified as organic - I question the certification construct from the top down. And I do question why nobody at the Coop ever said I mean really we need to pull that label and kick some serious certified ass us being Nelson's sacred cow and all!


Organic money for everybody!




Even though this issue was brought to the attention of the Coop's Board one week ago: the dulse is still labeled Certified Organic - as is its price.




Sarah  Stanley