Monday Morning Soapbox Moment

This is going to stray from the normal humor-injected ramblings that take place here on iBlog and venture more into the "angry man who doesn't understand the world" area.

You've been warned...

With my wife working in the medical field and being around constant shortages of care, budget cuts and finger-wagging about overtime, we've spent a lot of time discussing the allocation of finances a great deal and d'you know what?

We're screwed.

Hospitals can't find enough nurses to staff floors because they're all stressed, tired of working above capacity and having no help.

Schools have more and more students with fewer and fewer teachers, classrooms growing to the size of poorly attended university lectures.

But we've got a bunch of helicopters at the ready should anyone ever invade Canada!

While I understand both Canada and the United States' actions in propping up the automotive industry with billion dollar bailout loans, what kind of message does that send to nurses who spend every day trying to save lives or teachers who try to educate overstuffed classrooms of children?

Sorry, there is no money to better equip and staff your hospital, but we can dump a load of money into the car industry because they bring in a whack of cash each year. Saving lives is great, but if you could start producing a profit too, that would be even better.

We can't provide housing and care for the homeless, but millions can be spent in and around Vancouver so that for three weeks this coming winter, everyone can look and see the ridiculously expensive new buildings and roads and venues cost money that surely could have been better used elsewhere.

Yeah - that makes perfect sense, especially when you couple it with the recent push to get the homeless off the street.

The push isn't "let's find them places to live, help them get back on their feet and doing better" either. This is a "find anywhere you can to keep them out of sight until we give you the signal" type initiative to present the false image that Vancouver is a glorious place without the same problems that every major metropolitan area is plagued with.

There are millions of dollars to give the city a faux-shine, but not a dime for after-school programs to help keep kids active and off the streets.

Maybe we could start giving those kids rides in all the army vehicles we seem to build and produce each and every year?

Or we could just take a better look at where we're spending our money.

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