Caveat Emptor

This will not be a big shock to people who travel for both business and pleasure, but for the infrequent traveller – one who spends the family savings on a two or three week vacation once per year someplace far away from work, it may come as something that makes you go

“Huh! That is interesting / shocking / backwards / and other superlatives”.

When you stay at a hotel or motel, the more you pay, the more they make you pay.

To explain…

If you stay at a place that has a rack rate under $125/night, chances are you will get a microwave, fridge, complementary high-speed internet, free local phone calls, sometimes complimentary water, bed-time chocolates, a morning newspaper, and a buffet breakfast – all at no extra change.

Stay at a place that charges $200/night, any or all of the above will cost you from $3 - $30 per night if they are available at all.

Forget a microwave or fridge – they want you to eat at their (usually over-priced) restaurant. High speed internet can cost upwards of $30/24hour period ending at noon each day. Phone calls start as low as $1.00 for a ‘connection fee’ per call, and long distance has a premium tag of $1 to $3 PER MINUTE over and above the actual cost of the call. Water and chocolates are available at the gift shop ($0.38 for 500ml of cold bottled water at Safeway will cost $3.00 at the gift shop), your morning paper will cost $2.00 and your buffet breakfast will be billed to your room at $17.95 + 5% tax + 20% Gratuity ($22.62).

Is this not backwards?

If I choose to stay at a higher priced hotel such as Hilton, Delta, George V, Four Seasons, etc., I would

expect the rates for the lodging would include the amenities available at moderate to low priced accommodations such as Ramada, Travel Lodge, Quality Inn, Quinta, etc., as they also include these in their costs.

Before you book your next hotel stay, especially if the costs are coming out of your own pocket, check to see what you get for what you pay. Given the choice of Delta or Quality Inn, I will take Quality Inn any day of the week

Tough On Crime

One day, Canadian judges will realize that to get tough on crime, there needs to be some funds directed at the Canadian justice system that either deters others from committing the same crime, has a REAL shot at rehabilitation, or for those for whom rehabilitation is a lost cause, to keep these people away from the general population outside the walls and fences of our human warehousing we know as jails and prisons.

Start with eliminating the concept and practice of concurrent sentencing. If somebody is convicted of three counts of {name your crime}, with an 18 month sentence each, that person needs to serve 54 (4.5 years) months in federal prison, not 18 months in provincial jail. While you are at it change the automatic time off for good behavior from 10 days for every 30 sentenced, to five days for every 30. 

That way the person sentenced to 18 months would only get three months off for good behaviour instead of the existing six months – during the 54 month sentence as above, the person could earn up to nine months off for being a model prisoner and be out in 45 months.

Change the earliest time for day parole or early parole to be after the person has completed 80% of their sentence after time off for good behaviour. The 54 month sentence could see early parole in 36 months.

Get drunks off the streets. The very first conviction of driving while impaired needs to result in a minimum mandatory sentence of 729 days (two years less a day) in provincial jail. With good behaviour they would still be off the streets for a little over 20 months.  A second conviction needs to result in a minimum mandatory sentence of five years in federal prison in a different province. IF the person decided to repeat the behaviour, then they have demonstrated they are a lethal menace to the public so a minimum mandatory sentence of 25 years, for each charge is appropriate. The three-time loser would still have to serve a minimum of 16 years before they could apply for parole, but at least the public would be safe for 16 years.

Make conviction fines mean something by combining a minimum amount with a percentage of income – whichever is greater. If a person is speeding up to 39KM over the posted limit, there is a speeding ticket of $138-$196 is applied. It is the fines for excessive speed that needs to be adjusted (currently, the range is from $368–$483). For a first offence this needs to be from $3,680–$4,830 OR 5% of the driver’s gross annual income, whichever is greater to be paid within 365 days. 

A second offence this needs to be from $36,800–$48,300 OR 10% of the driver’s gross annual income, whichever is greater to be paid within 365 days.  

A third conviction demonstrates they are a lethal menace to the public so a minimum mandatory sentence of 25 years, for each charge is appropriate. The three-time loser would still have to serve 1 minimum of 16 years before they could apply for parole, but at least the public would be safe for 16 years, in addition to the minimum fine.

I have absolutely zero tolerance for drug dealers. Any conviction requires a minimum mandatory sentence of 25 years, for each charge. Period.

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime

Which Bible? (Continued)

Thanks for the comments, private and public on my original Ramblings

If you are looking for citations for my Ramblings, you are out of luck. This is not an academic exercise, but a culmination of 35 years of research (academic, mentored, and personal) and my opinions based on those 35 years of intense navel-gazing contemplation with the support of an assortment of a dozen (or more) Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic Priests/Ministers , no less than five Rabbis, three Imams, a Mahasaya and a very interesting Sikh Granthi who had more positive input on the Christian Bible than any other community religious leader noted above.

My original point was referring to a document that cannot be called THE Bible, because there are so many variations and information lost in translation from the second and third century CE Armenian (the common language of the people in the Middle East from 2000 BCE), to Greek (the common language of international commerce and philosophy of the day) to Latin (the common language of law of the day) to ancient Spanish (the most widely spoken language on the planet after the 4^th Century CE) and finally to English in the 16^th Century CE, and the variety of translations in English since 1611.

This is not to mention the dozens of political additions, subtractions, and translations from the bible from the First Council of Nicea (325CE) to the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (Concilium Oecumenicum Vaticanum Secundum) in 1965.

As an instrument of instruction for living a good life, it can be boiled down to what has been come to be known as the “Golden Rule”: Treat everybody that way you want to be treated. This is common in every one of the current spiritual instruction books on the planet – Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Islam, Jewish, etc. Everything else is filler and often poor translations from the original Armenian/Greek/Latin writings of the second and third Century CE when 90% of the Common Era history was written.

In 35 years of academic instruction, reading, and being mentored in the study of organized religions, there is nowhere in any Bible I have been able to find that rejects the celebration of birthdays, that requires spiritual leaders to abstain from marriage, that the world was going to end in 1925, that the ‘gates to heaven’ closed in 1935, that the world would end in 1975, or that the birth date of Emmanuel (Jesus) was December 25 (rather than late Spring/early Summer as indicated in actually READING the book).

The bottom lines:

Do good stuff, not bad stuff

Treat others as you want to be treated