Be humble

The government of P.E.I. will do whatever is necessary to ensure the safety of government pensions, says Provincial Treasurer Wes Sheridan.

Provincial Treasurer Wes Sheridan said the losses are more a problem for the government than for pensioners.(CBC)

The provincial public service pension fund holds about $1 billion, and is the promise of financial security for about 10,000 people, counting retirees and civil servants currently paying into the fund: teachers, nurses, office workers, mechanics and MLAs.

But the total value of that fund has dropped significantly in the last two months. Sheridan told CBC News Monday it lost $110 million in September and another $50 million in October. But those losses are more a problem for the government than for pensioners, he said.

Just another little bump in the road, folks.  Don’t worry

But while the current outlook is bleak, Sheridan said the money managers have positioned the fund to benefit when the stock markets finally turn around.

Same money managers that failed to see this coming?

Source

This afternoon the wind was howling and the rain was beating down, and my Rogers Portable Internet Wireless account was performing poorly.  I called the support number and was immediately speaking with Glen - nice young guy who spoke perfect English.

Walked me though the usual (sigh) - I know, Glen, you have a script.  He told me that he could ‘see’ my radio on his system and it was performing fine.  “Just a minute, Glen”, I said, as I reached over and unplugged the radio.  “Can you see it now - is there any difference”, I innocently asked.  He indicated he could see it and it was performing perfectly.

I asked for a supervisor.  Name not provided, but still spoke perfect English.  I inquired as to how Glen could see a radio that was turned off and wondered allowed if the new province wide broadband <chortle> would contain the same magic.  (Oh wait, it is invisible, does not work and is yesterday’s technology).  Opps.  Supervisor sighed deeply as he clicked away at his keyboard.  Suggested I plug my radio back in.  Oh my - works fine.

Just another day with an ISP.

....loves Christmas.  She enjoys shopping for me, the pups and the decorating thing.  It is fun and I enjoy her enjoying the season.  We are fortunate (at least for now), in that we both have good jobs and we can afford indulging ourselves on occasion.  That presents a certain problem, in that we are at a loss to select the perfect present at Christmas.  Generally if I need or want a bauble for my bikes, I buy it.  If she needs something for her Canine passion, she buys it.  The challenge is to avoid buying something for the sake of buying.  The result is that around the first of November, we start pestering each other for suggestions of ‘really want’. 

This morning I was again reminded.  (sigh)..OK, this would be nice.  Fortunately, remembering the advise of my friend Ron, who made a similar suggestion to his spouse, I turned away and did not make eye contact for fear of being turned to stone.

Please note my social responsibility.  This bike is Euro 3 compliant.

I am much relieved.  Despite a huge increase in the Provincial deficit, a $110,000,000 unfunded pension liability and a world wide melt down of economies, we are assured by The Honourable Wes Sheridan, Minister of Finance, that we are just encountering a bump in the road.  All is well and we should not fret - spending on services etc shall continue.  I am much relieved.

One must wonder what Saint Catherine of Central Bedeque is thinking.

I am from the telephone company, I am here to help you.  Good for Rob - right on target. 

Smoke, mirrors, bullshit and old technology.  Gotta love it.  Bend over and grab our collective ankles.  Here comes the Beck Aliant team.

She arrived at 6 months of age.  Shy, timid and not sure of herself with people.  She was the ultimate pack dog.  Happy and content with her own kind and had yet to learn about the people part of her pack.

3 months later she is a happy well adjusted member of the larger pack.  She adores her people and has grown into a beautiful 8 month old example of the German Shepherd female.  Pictured below at her first win in the confirmation ring.

I am frequently asked if there is value to staying with one insurance company over a period of years, despite the fact the insurer may not have the lowest premium.  My answer is always, ‘yes’, but that it is very hard to quantify.

The past few years have presented the insurance buyer with many choices and premiums have seldom been lower.  Many are paying less than they did 10 years ago.  Supply has exceeded demand and the insurance companies have been chasing your business. In insurance jargon, this is known as a soft market.

An important fact to keep in mind is that all licensed insurance companies in Canada are regulated.  There are certain things that they must do and certain financial security requirements that they must meet.  In an overwhelmingly simplification  the insurers must have assets that are in line with a ratio that is somehow related to the risk they have accepted by insuring people like you.   It is a very complicated formula, but (in Canada) is a reasonably sound one.

Just as an example (an inaccurate one, but one which shows the concept), assume an insurance company has accepted risk totalling $500,000,000.  Regulation may require them to maintain liquid assets of (say) $5,000,000.  Regulation also imposes rules as to where investments may be placed by the insurer, with the hopes that this will minimize the fluctuation in required ratio adjustments and minimize risk to the financial solvency of the insurer.

Now lets imagine that even the most reliable and sound investments diminish in value!  Oh, yeah, I know that has happened.  Regulation will force insurers to either deposit additional capital (oh sure) or reduce risk.  How do they reduce risk you may wonder - easy - they reduce the amount of insurance they write.

Yesterday the President of a large insurer called our office.  It has started and this insurer (one for whom I have a very high regard) will be allocating their reduced capacity to accept risk to those who have been supportive of them in the past.  Rationing of capacity to write insurance by imposition of the need to maintain financial solvency.  What a great concept - and to bad no one was watching AIG in the US.

...and so it starts.  Diminished capacity to write your insurance and higher prices.  In insurance jargon a hard market.

This is one of those times that the value of being with one insurer over a period of time will have value.  The long term profitable client will be the one that the insurance company will want to keep. 

Those of you have moved to the 1-800 insurers, the bank insurers such as Primmum, RBC and others, or are with a mono-insurer system like Co-Op and Johnsons - let me know how you get along.  I suspect you may be in for a rough ride.

Not to be viewed with liquid in mouth…

This and this and this.

In 1926 three brothers, Adriano, Marcello and Bruno Ducati, founded Societa Scientifica Radio Brevetti Ducati in Bologna to produce tubes, condensers and other radio components, becoming successful enough by 1935 to construct a new factory in the Borgo Panigale area of the city. During the war, although the Ducati factory was a repeated target for Allied bombing, production was maintained.

Meanwhile, at the small Turinese firm SIATA (Societa Italiana per Applicazioni Tecniche Auto-Aviatorie), Aldo Farinelli began developing a small pushrod engine for mounting on bicycles. Barely a month after the official liberation of Italy in 1944, SIATA announced its intention to sell this engine, nicknamed ‘Cucciolo’ (Italian for “little puppy”, in reference to the distinctive exhaust sound) to the public. The first Cucciolos were available alone, to be mounted on standard bicycles, by the buyer; however, businessmen, soon bought the little engines in quantity, and offered complete motorized-bicycle units for sale

In 1950 (after more than 200,000 Cucciolos had been sold), in collaboration with SIATA, the Ducati firm finally offered its own Cucciolo-based motorcycle. This first Ducati motorcycle was a 60 cc bike weighing 98 pounds with a top speed of 40 mph (64 km/h) had a 15 mm carburetor giving just under 200 mpg.

In the 1960s, Ducati earned its place in motorcycling history by producing the then fastest 250 cc road bike available, the Mach 1. In the 1970s Ducati began producing large-displacement L-twin (i.e. a 90° V-twin) motorcycles and in 1973 released an L-twin with the trademarked desmodromic valve design.

If you have been around motorcycles a while, the name Ducati is known to you.  You have probably seen one and heard one.  It was probably going impossibly fast and I expect a wistful sigh may have escaped your lips.

What is it about these vehicles.  Your brain should be thinking:

The Cucciolo

...but your emotion is thinking:

I guess it just is....

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.