This is an updated version of a blog entry I made almost ten years ago. I was motivated to review it after I heard about Nova Scotia’s updated Traffic Safety Act.

For the record, I recognized the danger in replacing safe two-way radio dispatch technology right from the start. To reinforce my suspicion, I hit the sidewalk curb while trying to get my mobile data terminal (MDT) to respond to my finger taps. "Just tap an app!" Yeah, right. I had to buy a new tire. At least I didn't hit a pedestrian.

The first time I took my thirteen-year-old daughter for a ride in my cab with the new MDT installed, she exclaimed, "Oh daddy, is that safe?" She saw what all the geniuses at city hall were blind to. City regulators not only approved of, but mandated computerized taxi dispatch. "No. It isn't," I replied.

In a grudging acceptance of the potential danger associated with MDT technology, there were some notifications advising drivers to pull over and stop before becoming hypnotized by the digital seduction. Casual observation of drivers in any industry would reveal to any sensible observer that this advice would be almost completely ignored. Google tends to agree with me. Note: At the time MDTs were imposed on the Hamilton taxi industry, no "In-Motion Lockout" technologies had been installed. The Uber cab company has supposedly implemented some in-motion lockout features on its apps, but drivers must still take their eyes off the road.

During my very first meeting as a member of Hamilton's Taxi Advisory committee, I raised numerous objections to the newly imposed Taxi Driver Training School. One of the brokers enthusiastically endorsed the taxi driver toilet training mandate, virtue-signaling to me, "But, Hans, if it saves one life it will be worth it." I responded, "If you were really concerned about saving lives, you would not be installing those distractive devices in all of your cabs!" I knew he didn't give a rat's ass about saving lives, especially if it might cost him any money. His reaction took me by surprise. Instead of a defensive response, he covered his face with his hand and almost physically shrank in his chair, as if he was hoping no one else in that room heard what I said. He fucking well knew I was right.

Thinking back to the days when a taxi shift could include non-stop driving for an entire shift, the potential for major collisions would have gone parabolic with MDT use. Fortunately, in this context, city regulators had saturated the city with so many newly issued licenses that almost every cab sat parked for about 45 minutes of every hour. Coincidentally, the odds of serious collisions were thus seriously mitigated. There is nothing safer than a parked taxi.

In short: Safety never is a priority for politicians despite numerous declarations to the contrary.

There ends my update. My original rant follows. Stay tuned for the video I have embedded at the end.

Bring back Safe Two-Way Radio Taxicab Dispatch Technology.

The majority of collisions in Ontario are caused by distracted drivers. Don't text, read, eat or anything that distracts you. JUST DRIVE. pic.twitter.com/rkDMDQt4uo

— City of Hamilton (@cityofhamilton) March 12, 2017

In short: Using computers to dispatch taxis is IDIOTIC.

I'm old school taxi. I spent most of my "career" in this business using two-way voice radio.

You could operate your taxi without ever taking your eyes off the road.

There was a time when being a taxi driver, contrary to popular perception, actually involved a lot of skill.

I have been in the business for long enough to remember those days. The relationship between a good dispatcher, and a good driver, could be made to harmonize like good music. Then someone came up with the idea that it would be better to use computers to allocate ride-sharing requests. That was when it all started to turn into shit.

Far from being an enhancement of communication for the purposes of taxicab dispatch, the introduction of mindless computer algorithms to the task of dealing with the innately rough and tumble process of "matching riders with drivers," has been a disaster on many fronts, for both the front-line providers of ride-sharing services, and the customers.

There was a time when the two-way radio could have been regarded as a "disruptive technology" just like Uber's app.

From Wikipedia:

"The first major innovation after the invention of the taximeter occurred in the late 1940s, when two-way radios first appeared in taxicabs. Radios enabled taxicabs and dispatch offices to communicate and serve customers more efficiently than previous methods, such as using callboxes."

I saw through the scam when the taxi brokerage I was signed with in 2007 decided to migrate to a computerized dispatch system.

It was completely obvious.

1 - the brokerage would no longer have to hire skilled, experienced, knowledgeable dispatchers to verbally allocate ride-sharing requests. Instead, they could recruit lower paid call-takers to simply type addresses into a computer.

It saved money for the brokers.

It did squat for the operators. (Who were forced to pay for the useless hardware and software upgrades.)

2 - whereas, previously, the broker had to rent out parking spaces for its cabs to queue up during slow periods when trip rationing was necessitated, the computer allowed the cabs to sit anywhere. And they did. This resulted in greater aggravation to the public as the cabs started to queue up in no-stopping zones, beside parking meters, hospital ramps, and areas known to be frequented by taxi-using foreign students in my city.

It also increased the probability that any individual cab that was dispatched to a high-frequency pick-up zone would end up being "scooped" by another hungry cab that was already loitering there.

This phenomena lead to the increased probability that an individual driver who was dispatched to a high-frequency zone would simply ignore the call, knowing that the probability he had already been scooped by a loiterer was about 95%. And this led to lower service reliability.

Of course, there was that remaining 5% of the time when the caller had not been scooped up by a loiterer, and ended up having to call a second or third time before they could actually get a driver to respond. Which led to complaints about the "unreliability" of taxi service. (Which was itself exacerbated by the City's insane policy of issuing unnecessary taxi licenses, which led to an increase in the number of vacant taxis, which were thus, increasingly available to scoop other cabs rather than running their own trips. In the "old days" when most cabs were actually engaged, there was a much lower probability that a corner call, or a Tim Horton's, or a gas station customer would be scooped by a vacant taxi. This failure of government taxicab regulation fueled the popularity of app-based dispatch systems where the customer could track the progress of their cab, even if HE ended up not arriving either.)

In other words, computerization of taxicab dispatch did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to increase the efficiency of matching of riders with drivers. In fact, it led to increased confusion and a significant waste of money, time, and gasoline, along with public and customer frustration.

But it did save money for the brokers, who pay neither for the glitchy hardware and software, the wasted time, nor the gasoline wasted by their hapless operators.

Again, it did squat for the operators.

AND EVEN WORSE!

It involved the installation of distractive devices in every taxicab, which led to a higher risk of death and injury on the roads. This is indisputable. ("Three seconds. That's all it takes.")

If the phony politicians and other interest groups, like Uber-partner MADD Canada, REALLY gave a shit about SAFETY they would be calling for a total ban on ALL distractive taxi dispatch technologies and a call for the return to the minimally distractive two-way radio system of taxicab dispatch.

I've been harping on this distractive technology angle for ten years now, even before Uber existed.

I am still waiting for someone to say, "He's right, you know!"

A Stinky Road Trip Story

Offed a drifter?

Someone asked that on Facebook the other day.

The phrasing threw me. It didn't make sense in context. Maybe it was written by the same guy who writes the instruction manuals for electronics made in China.

So, have I ever "offed" a drifter, you may ask?

No. But I left one stranded.

It was May, 1980.

I had first thought of making the trip from Calgary to Hamilton back on Christmas Eve, 1979, sitting alone in a rented townhouse in Calgary. It was my week off. There was no furniture anywhere, except in the living room, where I had placed a few short logs, about 30 inches long and about 10 inches in diameter. I'd picked them up from the side of the lease road on my way home from the rig I was working on near Cochrane, Alberta. Loffland Rig 89. I also had a sleeping bag and a brand-new colour TV. I had arrived. I had everything I needed.

When a friend first saw my furniture layout he snickered. "What is this? Early Pioneer?"

There were a few minor things to ponder before deciding to do the Hamilton run. My gas tank had a leak, which meant frequent gas station visits to pump a gallon or two into the sieve-like tank, and to make sure the plastic gas can I carried in the trunk was full. If you have a leaky gas tank, always be prepared.

There was also the fact that my heater had conked out. I had to constantly scrape the inside of the windshield when I drove anywhere. In my mind's eye, I saw myself stuck in a ditch beside the highway, somewhere in the middle of Saskatchewan, in the middle of the night, scraping ice from my windshield to see outside, with nothing but a sleeping bag and that furniture in the back seat, which I could burn for a campfire or build into some small structure to keep me warm. I decided that a two-thousand-mile drive across the frozen prairies, at night, without a cell phone, posed an unacceptable degree of risk. Plus there was that escalating vibration. So I aborted the plan. Until May of 1980.

Finally, I was cruising down the highway smilin', on my way back to Ontario. It was pitch dark. The road was practically empty. A song was playing on the radio.

I've been drivin' all night,
My hand's wet on the wheel.
There's a voice in my head,
That drives my heel.
It's my baby callin',
Says, "I need you here."
And it's a half past four,
And I'm shifting gear.

An RCMP cruiser pulled me over. As I sat in the back seat, they read my name over the radio... "Whiskey, Indian, Eskimo," etc. I heard the dispatcher reply, "One entry. April 1972. No convictions."

April 1972. Yeah, I remember it. It even made the local news. My old man was pissed when he heard it from the guys working in his shop, who heard it on the radio. But that's a whole other story.

The female RCMP officer was very polite and friendly. The other officer gave me a warning about my speed and let me go.

Somewhere east of Brandon, Manitoba, I stopped for a hitchhiker who was standing in the middle of nowhere. When he opened the door, I caught a whiff of something that I thought, at first, smelled like gasoline.

"Oh! That explains why he's out here in the middle of nowhere. His car broke down. Something wrong with the fuel system and he was trying to fix it."

A second later, I realized it wasn't gasoline. It was some kind of ghastly body odour. Or maybe he'd been skunked? Whatever it was, it was a quality of putridity I had theretofore not believed possible. Worse, if I may say it, than a decaying corpse.

"How far are you going?" he asked.

"Ontario," I replied.

"Great!" he said, "Me too."

Why the fuck didn't I just tell him I was going to the next gas station?

Realizing I'd made a big mistake, I drove with my head halfway out the window, my mind churning as to how I might extricate myself from this unfortunate circumstance without risking a violent confrontation.

As luck would have it, I saw a gas station up ahead. I didn't need to fill up yet, but I saw it as an opportunity to dump this fuming pile of hazardous waste. Then he said the magic words: "I'm going to buy something from the store," and exited the car.

Needless to say, I fucked right off.

In my head, I was back to:

I've been drivin' all night,
My hand's wet on the wheel...

I was cruisin' down the Trans-Canada with just one hand on the wheel. Suddenly, I noticed several deer racing in the opposite direction on the shoulder of the road. This startled me. Reflexively, I grabbed the wheel with my other hand. In doing so, I accidentally tapped the horn. It was such a light tap. It barely evinced a tweet. But one of the deer heard it and made an instant ninety-degree turn, right into the front of my car. By the way its body flopped along the road, it seemed evident to me that it had been killed instantly. Poor thing.

I like deer. They're cute. Without a cell phone — there was no service in that part of Canada at that time — nor did I know who to call, and since the carcass had landed on the shoulder of the road, I figured it would not present a hazard for other drivers.

I pulled over and checked the front of the car for damage. The hood was slightly crumpled, as was the bumper. Opening the hood, I immediately observed that the air breather/cleaner had been torn from the carburetor. I applied some taxi know-how and repaired it with some shoelaces.

Two of my headlights were completely gone and a third was hanging out by its wires. It made me think of someone's eyeball hanging out of its socket. I found one of the eyeballs, excuse me, headlights near the carcass, but not the other one.

Speaking of eyeballs hanging out...

While driving my cab west along King St. one Friday night back in the '90s, I had my scanner tuned to the police frequency. I was around King and Wellington when I heard a cop pipe up in a panicked voice asking dispatch to send an ambulance to the front of the Running Pump, ASAP. "The guy's eye is hanging right out," he cried.

A few seconds later, I drove past the Running Pump and saw a guy laying on his back, grabbing his face and wildly kicking his legs around... as if that would help. I assumed this was the guy with the vision impairment. Gross!

I later heard that he had become embroiled in an altercation with a man and a woman and that she had stomped his face with the heel of her stiletto shoe.

Just another night picking up strangers in a car.

Having completed the rudimentary repairs, I was back on the road hoping to find another gas station with a replacement headlight for the missing one. After driving about fifty miles or so, I found a gas station and, luckily, they had the part I needed. While installing this new headlight, I made a startling discovery. My front licence plate was missing and I was quite sure where I might find it. I turned around and drove back the fifty or so miles to the scene of the accident. Sure enough, my plate was sitting right there on the road.

While thinking about my encounter with the smelly guy, I came to the inescapable conclusion that the reason he was hitchhiking along the Trans-Canada Highway in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night was not due to car trouble. It was because he couldn't stand the smell when the last guy who picked him up puked in the car, so the hitcher told the driver to pull over and let him out.

It Wasn't Over

Not wishing to endure that long, boring trip across Ontario, I decided to go through the States.

The vibrations were getting worse. Their intensity would fluctuate. Sometimes it resembled a mild buzz. At other times, the whole car would shake as if it were in an earthquake. What the hell was causing it? I concluded that it was probably that new/used gas tank I had recently installed. Lazy bastards probably didn't tighten the nuts. Yes. That was it. Minutiae.

As I got closer to Duluth, Minnesota, a new sound introduced itself to my ears.

Something was flapping.

Flap flap flap it went. Flap flap flap. Flap flap flap flap flap flap FUCKING FLAP. Think of making your bicycle sound like a motorcycle with the simple artifice of hockey cards. Only at highway speed.

After an hour or so of this new aggravation, merging with the mild and brain-rattling extreme vibrations of those loose gas tank bolts — creating a true symphony — I decided to pull over and do a quick inspection. I saw the problem immediately. The right rear tire had deep bald spots. And they were deep. A half an inch or so deep. "Oh! I know what that is!" The tire was a retread. The outer layer of tread had been bonded to the original used tire that had worn all of its original tread off. I also noticed one or two pieces of tread were still attached to the "tire" at one side. Bingo! That's the fucking flapper!

Facing reality, as I was occasionally known to do, I decided to buy a new/used tire. Probably a retread.

I drove to Duluth. I recall it was a Sunday and everything was closed. So I found a cheap motel. The next day was Monday, May 26, 1980. Memorial Day.

Having solved my flapping tire problem, for the moment, I was back on the road. On the road again. What a great feeling.

On the road again
Goin' places that I've never been
Seein' things that I may never see again
And I can't wait to get on the road again
Everybody sing

But then, there was still that vibration. Not a good vibration.

Two and a half hours later, I arrived in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Things were going well. Except for that vibration.

The light I had been waiting for turned green, so I took my foot off the brake and stepped on the gas. The car didn't move. Vroom! Vroom! Vroom! proved itself to be no more efficacious than prayer. The car would not move. It's amazing how easy it is to face reality when you really have no other fucking choice. I called a tow truck, somehow. Probably found a phone booth somewhere, in a part of town where some lunatic had not ripped the telephone book off and taken it home with him for study purposes. I guess no garages were open in Eau Claire that Memorial Day, because I had to find another cheap motel and spend more of my diminishing supply of cash on something that was worth so much less to me than a case of beer and a pack of Camels.

The next day I learned the source of the problem at a garage. My driveshaft had fallen off. Who ever heard of a driveshaft falling off? Well, it does happen. The front U-joint was worn out. He replaced it. I paid him more of my beer money. And I was back on the road. It wasn't until decades later that it suddenly hit me. What if that driveshaft had fallen off when I was doing 70 MPH down the highway? The car could have flipped over. I could have spent the night in a hospital, or a mortuary, instead of a cheap motel.

The rest of my trip back to Hamilton was uneventful. Other than the fact that every time I stopped to fill up, or buy something to eat, the car wouldn't start. Booster cables wouldn't work. Nothing would work. I would have to wait until the engine cooled down to ambient temperature before it would grace me with a start.

And on it went.

I finally parked that car at my old man's farm in Castorville. I never drove it again.

There is a happy ending to my story.

In 1981 I bought a brand-new used 1972 BUICK SKYLARK for another $350 and drove it all over the place for eight months, before the engine cracked in the winter because of the hole in the radiator, which I had filled with water because — why waste money on rad coolant when it all leaks out? It was worth it.

An Obvious Grifter

I am glad I stopped supporting Tim Horton's

Two years ago, I bought at least one Tim medium coffee daily. Whenever I got in my car and drove somewhere, my first stop was always a Tim Horton's.

Then it hit me. I wasn't even enjoying it. I was simply going through the motions of a mindless ritual. I also performed a rough calculation. At ~$2.00 per day, I was giving Horton's about $730 per year. That's a significant portion of my annual income. When I drove a cab at least five days per week, I would usually buy about three Tim coffees per shift. That's $6 per shift, $30 per week, and $1,560 per year, not counting those I bought in my hypnotic state when not driving a cab. Once I put some numbers around my irrational coffee habit, it was easy to stop the habit dead. Now I barely purchase one Tim coffee per month; usually in unique circumstances - like the odd reunion with some of my high school buds. As an added bonus, I no longer have to endure the aggravation of waiting in a line, either in the drive-thru or in-store, as some knob-head ahead of me takes half an hour to decide what they want, or to mess with their app-based payment systems, or to gossip with the server. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the diversity angle where sometimes you need to state your order to three different staffers due to language barriers. One time, the language barrier was so severe they had to put me on the phone with some official from the United Nations. (Just kidding, though that might also explain some of the delays in the lineups.)

All in all, I am glad I stopped supporting Tim Horton's.

DEI in Transportation Could Be Deadly

In reference to the language issue, it reminded me how the rapid demographic changes in the Hamilton taxi business, beginning in the 1990s impacted the formerly smooth two-way radio dispatch system. By the time the zeroes arrived, radio dispatch communication became nearly impossible. This paved the way for the adoption of distractive and dangerous computerized dispatch systems.

Diversity was definitely not a strength.

It's a good thing, in a way, that the volume of business per cab had declined so significantly over the years to the point where the cabs were moving only about 10% of the time. If it had been busy, like it used to be, with all the cabs in motion, there would have been multiple crashes caused by drivers fiddling with their computer screens instead of having their eyes on the road.

AI Reviews of Confessions of a Hamilton Cab Driver

META AI

**Confessions of a Hamilton Cab Driver** by Hans Wienhold is exactly what the title promises — and a lot more than that.

### The Premise

It's the story of one man's adventures in the Hamilton taxi business spanning the years from 1977 to 2018. Wienhold frames it with disarming modesty:

> "There is nothing particularly unique about my story. Every cab driver has his own. Not every cab driver gets around to writing a book about it."

Over 255 pages, published May 2023, he drove thousands of customers to their destinations, most happily satisfied if not downright euphoric, and now he finally tells what happened in between dispatch and drop-off. It's also available in French and German.

### What Makes It Work

This isn't a nostalgic love letter to the open road. It's a working driver's manual for survival.

Wienhold gives away many of the trade secrets used by smart drivers to avoid "dead calls" (no customer to pick up) or "pukers" (mainly to be found at closing time, on bar calls). Chapter titles like "Groceries," "My first dead trip," and "Hookers" tell you he is not romanticizing.

The best anecdotes come when the job collides with real life. Road Warrior News, in its review of the book, singled out this one:

> For the last few years of his life, my father was a resident in a nursing home... the social worker turned to me and said, "You're a taxi driver. Can't you get him a hooker?"

That dry, unshockable timing is the book's engine.

He is upfront about the ethics too:

> "Some will find my tactics in the trade disagreeable. Others will nod their heads knowingly. Politicians and their regulatory staffers will be outraged."
> "Too bad for them. I already quit."

### Style and Voice

If you have followed Wienhold's Taxi News columns you know the voice. As that Road Warrior review put it: "The most essential gift for a good writer," Ernest Hemingway famously noted, "is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector" — and Wienhold is in a class of his own as a Bullshit Detective.

His official bio leans into it: "Welfare Recipient at Senior's Welfare; Self-Employed; and also, a Climate Scientist at BS Detective Services." The author bio on Amazon is even better: "I am an unemployed taxi driver living in Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada. Over the course of my working years, I have had forty-five different jobs across a range of industries from sheet metal worker and carpenter, to oil well drilling, bar security, tax preparation, lab technician, taxi driver, and finally, a best smelling author."

The prose is plainspoken, first-person, conversational — no literary pretension, just a guy who has spent 40 years listening in the rearview mirror and has a good memory.

### Hamilton as a Character

While the stories are derived from the way the taxi business operated in Hamilton, Ontario in those times, Wienhold is confident that any taxi driver, just about anywhere in the world will be able to relate to them. He's right, but the Hamilton specificity is what makes it valuable as local history.

You get the one-way streets, the steel-town bar rushes, the pre-Uber era when cash flowed freely and part-time drivers could pick up a shift or two as they needed the money, and then the arrival of Uber — which Wienhold famously parodied in his "Travis meets Travis" video () — and the regulatory collapse that followed.

It's a small slice of Hamilton history from the front seat.

### Verdict

**Rating: 4.5 / 5 — and Amazon readers seem to agree, currently sitting at 4.6 out of 5 stars**

It's funny, occasionally politically incorrect, deeply practical, and unexpectedly tender. It's not polished memoir in the MFA sense. That's the point. It reads like a cab driver finally got tired of people asking "what's the craziest thing you've seen?" and decided to write it all down at once.

**Who should read it:**

- Any current or former taxi / Uber / Lyft driver in Ontario

- Hamiltonians who want to understand how their city actually moved for 40 years

- Anyone who likes true, unvarnished working-class memoirs — think Studs Terkel meets a Steel City dispatch radio

If you drove cab in this town, you will nod your head knowingly. If you didn't, you will never look at a "No Vacancy" light on Barton Street the same way again.

Review from Google Gemini

Published in May 2023, **"Confessions of a Hamilton Cab Driver"** by Hans Wienhold offers a raw, unfiltered memoir chronicling over four decades behind the wheel in Hamilton, Ontario. Covering his time driving from 1977 through 2018, Wienhold blends local street-level history with a distinct, libertarian-leaning critique of municipal governance and regulation.

---

### Core Themes & Content

* **Four Decades of Hamilton History:** Wienhold documents the changing urban landscape of Hamilton—from the bustling, blue-collar nightlife of the late 1970s and 1980s around spots like Augusta Street to the modern, tech-disrupted era.

* **The Behind-the-Scenes Taxi Ecosystem:** The book strips away the romanticism of cab driving, laying bare the day-to-day realities: navigating dispatch systems, dealing with late-night bar crowds, handling erratic passengers, and managing the delicate economics of being an independent driver.

* **Critique of Bureaucracy & Regulations:** A recurring focal point is Wienhold’s fierce resistance to local policy. He details his frustrations with municipal taxi licensing (such as the "equity plate system"), smoking bans, and city hall enforcement, arguing that over-regulation consistently hurt drivers and consumers alike.

* **The Uber Era:** The closing eras of his career tackle the arrival of rideshare apps, offering an insider perspective on how Uber disrupted traditional cab brokerages and municipal taxi structures.

---

### Key Strengths

* **Authentic Local Flavor:** Wienhold writes with an unvarnished, direct, and often abrasive voice that reflects decades of working late-night shifts on gritty city streets.

* **Unique Historical Lens:** For readers interested in Hamilton’s local history, the memoir provides a rare, low-level view of the city’s social evolution that official histories rarely capture.

* **Sharp Wit and Cynicism:** Wienhold styles himself as a "bullshit detective," filling the narrative with pragmatic, stubborn humor and colorful anecdotes from his daily interactions.

---

### Considerations for Readers

* **Opinionated Stance:** The book is as much a political treatise as it is a collection of cabbie stories. Readers looking purely for lighthearted fare may find the strong anti-regulatory, anti-establishment commentary polarizing.

* **Episodic Structure:** Because it collects decades of individual experiences, the narrative functions more as a series of standalone vignettes and essays rather than a tight, continuous narrative arc.

---

### Verdict

**Confessions of a Hamilton Cab Driver** is a compelling read for locals, history buffs, and anyone curious about the taxi industry. It delivers an unedited slice of Hamilton life, served with a heavy dose of working-class cynicism and independent spirit.

---

Get your copy here.

Censorship at The Hamilton Spectator

Update: September 30, 2026.

In the runnup to Canada's National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, A.K.A. "Orange Shirt Day," the Spectator pumped out some propaganda reinforcing the divisive and dishonest native genocide narrative with gusto. It pumped out an opinion piece titled, "Orange Shirt Day: Why ‘Every child matters’ still needs to be said." I posted a few comments to that propagandistic rant and every one of them were censored by the Spectator behind-the-curtain commissars. It did not suprise me. I post comments fully expecting them to be censored, but in so doing they provide me with documentary evidence of their sleazy manipulation of information and opinion they present to the public.

Here are some screenshots:

The piece appeared in the September 29, 2026 edition of the Spectator, As of 4:30 p.m. of September 30, it it is evident that the Spectator commissar(s) only permitted four comments to see the light of day.

This is how the Spectator abuses its readers.

---

I used to send a lot of letters to the editors of papers like the Hamilton Spectator and the Toronto Sun. One out of ten might get published. The mainstream press had a solid choke hold on the kinds of opinions they would allow their subscribers to see.

Along came the internet. I couldn't wait to get on. Google tells me the Hamilton-Wentworth Freenet came online on April 28, 1995. I jumped right on it with my XT compatible clone computer and its 2400 baud modem. It was a fascinating experience. I remember downloading a bitmap of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from the Library of Congress. It must have taken two hours to download. I printed it on my dot matrix printer and framed it. From a distance it looks just like an ordinary black and white photograph. I still have it. A visitor once asked me if that was a picture of my grandfather.

(Note: Click on the images if they appear blurry. A clearer view will pop up.)

The browser was called "Lynx." It was all text-based. I had a monochrome monitor with green text.

While exploring the Lynx browser I tripped across a menu item labelled [View Source.] When I clicked(?) on it, I got my first view of HTML markup language. It looked easy enough so I proceeded to learn it. At the same time, I realized I had discovered a way to circumvent the Junk News oligopoly and publish my "Letters to the Editor" online. What I did not realize at the time was that I was seeing the genesis of Alternative News. And I was participating in it.

It was obvious from the start that the Junk News industry was seriously threatened by this new technology. Then they spent the next thirty years trying to put the genie back in the bottle. Without much success. Fast forward to today and we see the Junk News industry in Canada cannot survive without government subsidies.

I call it Junk News because it is analogous to Junk Food. Junk food for the mind.

At around the same time, the Spectator operated a community Bulletin Board Service. (BBS) They called it "Compuspec," later "Speclink." There were several forums on there and the political debates between the wokerattie and the truly conscious were fierce. In those days, free speech seemed sacred and I was never once censored by the administrators.

My, how things have changed.

My Hamilton Spectator subscription autorenews on September 30, 2026. I have set a reminder on my calendar to cancel my subscription well before they charge my credit card. Why should I pay for such a purveyor of woke propaganda, and an abusive one at that, when I can find the same crud elsewhere for free?

Especially irksome is the Spectator's abusive treatment of its subscribers via its practice of censoring any subscriber comments their man behind the curtain doesn't like.

In today's (Sept 12, 2026) edition they published a report about a guy from Stoney Creek who has been arrested for alleged wilful promotion of hatred, advocating genocide and wilful promotion of antisemitism on X. As is all too typical of government-funded media these days, they almost always omit any description of the offending content. Given that so-called "Hate speech," etc. these days can be just about anything anyone claims to be offended by, it is more important than ever that the reading public be informed of the offending content in order to decide for themselves whether said content qualifies as "Hate speech."

Knowing it's a coin toss, I nevertheless opted to post the first comment to the report.

As usual, there is no description of the offensive tweet. Why are these essential details always kept from public view?

That comment was graciously accepted by the Spec commissars behind the curtain. It sparked some debate. There was the expected contingent of subscribers who defended the decision to keep the offensive tweet hidden from view. Of course, I engaged with some of them. This is when the Spectator's censorship abuse shifted into high gear.

There was more,

And this one:

The message the Hamilton Spectator is sending me is, "Don't bother commenting. Your opinions are not wanted here." Either that, or get used to self-censoring. "Oskee Wee Wee" and Auntie Annie's bake sale is acceptable. Elbows Up! too.

Note that my comments did not attempt to incite hatred of any identity group, did not contain any incitement to genocide, nor even the mildest profanity, yet it still ran afoul of the Spectator's so-called "Community Guidelines."

Now the Spectator is a private company, leaving aside the implications of any bribes it receives from the federal government. It can censor anyone it wants to censor for good reasons, bad reasons, or no reason at all. However, given the sleazy practices I have described here, the reliablity of a platform that purports adhere to the following claim,

Conversations within the Spectator’s news and information platforms offer an opportunity for readers to engage in healthy dialogue, share their thoughts on specific topics and help us foster engagement and transparency with our readership. Conversations, added to select Spectator articles, allow our community of registered users to share thoughtful ideas with other readers and our newsroom.

Conversations are a space to converse about news and information, and the issues they highlight, as well as discuss questions highlighted by the Spectator newsroom. We ask that readers stay on topic with the intended purpose of the Conversations. Feel free to discuss ideas but avoid personal attacks. Universal human rights are not up for debate on our sites.

appears highly disingenous.

Subscribers who find their comments routinely censored by the Spectator commissars will find The Spectator's claim that "the Spectator’s news and information platforms offer an opportunity for readers to engage in healthy dialogue, share their thoughts on specific topics and help us foster engagement and transparency with our readership" laughable.

Of course, any chicken dancers browsing the same comment sections will remain blissfully ignorant of the degree of manipulation being foisted upon them in the background. I doubt chicken dancer opinions are ever censored.

Knowing they conduct themselves in a manner that is not perceptible by the average reader, and thus, deceptive, do you really think it's worth paying for a Spec subscription?

I don't.

They can block me out on their own platform, but they can't hide their nefarious activities as long alternative platforms exist.

Update, September 14, 2026 in This Report: They did it again.

---

Other examples of Spectator censorship.

On Hamilton's proposal to mandate air conditioning in rental units.

On Hamilton Dive Bars.

On Hamilton's woke transportation fantasies.

On the LRT

---

AI Reviews of Confessions of a Hamilton Cab Driver

Before the arrival of European Colonists Bullshit

You just can't escape the bullshit. As part of an effort on my part to take a break from monitoring the cesspool of politics, I allocate the later hours of the evenings to watching movies and TV series. But, no matter where you turn, you find your nose being rubbed in woke bullshit.

For example, the very first line in the opening shot of the movie "The Bygone," on Amazon Prime says "Before the arrival of European colonists, sexual violence was virtually nonexistent on North American soil."

Some of the reading I have recently done to better acquaint myself with the Native peoples of North America contradicts that assertion. For example, one question I asked Brave was, "did Matonabbee murder his wife?" The answer it returned was,

---

"Yes, historical accounts indicate that Matonabbee murdered one of his spouses. According to explorer Samuel Hearne, Matonabbee killed a wife who had cast doubt on his ability to satisfy his many other wives, an act Hearne described as stemming from Matonabbee's jealousy which sometimes took him "beyond the bounds of humanity."

While Hearne generally portrayed Matonabbee in positive terms, he acknowledged this specific incident of domestic violence. Matonabbee was a prominent Chipewyan leader and fur trade intermediary who later died by suicide in 1782 after the destruction of Fort Prince of Wales."

---

Where do these script writers get the balls to spew such unmitigated horseshit? Can I ask that question in Canada without fear of arrest and possible jail time?

Then I asked Meta AI, "Is it true that Before the arrival of European colonists, sexual violence was virtually nonexistent on North American soil?"

Meta AI answers,

---

No, that is not true.

Sexual violence has existed in every region of the world throughout human history, including in North America before 1492. The claim that it was "virtually nonexistent" contradicts both the anthropological record and the internal legal norms of Indigenous societies themselves.

---

There seems to be absolutely no escape from woke bullshit these days.

"Credentialled" Scientists

This summer may have been the coldest on record at the North Pole. Temperatures never got above freezing, despite continuous sunlight for months. The Arctic melting scam is dying in real time.https://t.co/YzVgxDhIlL https://t.co/6CGFDJxMWt pic.twitter.com/qcU221SIan

— Tony Heller 🇺🇸 🇯🇵 (@TonyClimate) September 4, 2026

Oh bollocks. It was a link to an X post by Tony Heller. Debunked as pseudoscience by whom? The scamsters that compiled that debunked list of 11,000 "scientists" who signed the same "Emergency Declaration" I signed back in 2019?

I have been following Heller's work for about a decade now. He has done excellent work exposing the AGW fraud time and time again, from alleged rising sea levels, to "wild" fires, to the fraudulent tampering with temperature data and every other slick trick used by these high priests of the climate scam to keep the chicken dancers scared and the government cash flowing.

If you want to talk about "debunked" climate claims, just google, "list global warming predictions that were proved wrong" and check out the results.

I am sick and tired of climate saps invoking the "credentialled" scientists mantra in defence of the global planned economy agenda. Ezra Levant did an excellent exposé of that fake "Scientists Warning" back in 2019. It was pants-pissing funny. Some examples of the "scientist" signatories:

- a "Relationships advisor,"
- a vocational school teacher,
- a lawyer,
- a light bulb manufacturer,
- a family physician,
- a physiology teacher,
- a running instructor,
- a kid's author,
- and an expert in reincarnation
- and more ridiculous examples of "scientists."

When I came across the page inviting signatories I immediately saw through the mountain of bullshit, (See Ezra's report,) so I decided to sign the list myself just to see if it would be included in the list of "scientists." It was. And thanks to Ezra's exposé, the creators of that list ended up with a whole lot of chicken dancer egg on their faces. The Hamilton Spectator interviewed me about it. I insisted the interview be conducted via email rather than on the phone since I was already familiar with their sleazy quoting tactics and I wanted to keep a record of the correspondence in case they applied their usual slimy spin on my words.

When their report was published online, they must have been half asleep because they gave it the heading, "Retired Hamilton cabbie gets himself on list of fake scientists declaring climate emergency." What a laugh that was. They corrected that headline for the paper edition. I believe it was due to my insistence on an email interview that the report was about as fair and accurate as can be expected from the Spectator for the most part.

Note from the Spec report,

"Three undergraduate students were among the five scientists from McMaster to sign the declaration. One student studies ecology and the other two are in physics. Spokesperson Gord Arbeau refused to say whether the three students are employed by McMaster as scientists or whether the university considers them scientists."

Not climate scientists.

Also from the Spec report,

"Given the sheer number of people endorsing this important declaration, an administrative error unfortunately saw the inclusion of a small number of invalid names," reads a statement on the website, where the list was originally accessible."

Administrative error? Of course it was exactly the kind of "administrative error" anyone with half a brain might expect when they launch a campaign that allows anyone to sign up. Only a naive sap would buy that crap.

Finally, from the same report,

"The final two signatories from McMaster are working scientists. Sebastian Irazuzta is a an environmental biologist and PhD candidate. Daniel Traylor is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of kinesiology."

Kinesiology.

Not climate scientists.

They are individuals who have been firmly indoctrinated into climate cultism. These days, any alleged expert in just about any field can be counted upon to dutifully blame everything from disfunction in Indigenous communities, to the proliferation of potholes, to ingrown toenails and post nasal drip on "climate change." Five hundred years ago these same personality types would be blaming every negative event on the displeasure of their God(s). Probably the same people who advised people to inhale the fumes from public latrines to protect them from the Black Plague. It would make great comedy if not for its deadly serious consequences.

So, again, who but a sap swallows this climate scam horseshit hook, line, and sinker? Instead of slurping up the slop you are being fed by politicians and popular corporate media, and regurgitating it on social media, I suggest you learn how to think for yourself.

https://youtu.be/Vs3ZPGLPiss

Retired Hamilton cabbie gets himself on list of fake scientists declaring climate emergency

Who is This?

Who does remind you of?

Popping the Stand - An Oil Rig Story

On the second rig I ever worked on, I had gained a certain amount of experience, about eight months worth, and had moved up two steps on the promotional ladder, to motorman. One day a new guy was hired. I was already able to take one look at a new hire and predict whether he would last three days. But this guy was hard to gauge. One of the roughnecks directed the new guy to the change shack - where you change into your work clothes, not where you get coins for the coke machine. He came to work wearing denim jeans and jacket. He told the roughneck he didn't need to change. (And he had his own Coke.) Gossip travels fast on the rigs. That roughneck promptly reported the exchange to the rest of the crew. We had a good laugh at that.

Then the guy made the mistake of commenting to one of the cooks as they watched us perform the operation seen in this video. He told her, "They'll never get me up there doing that." Again, gossip travels fast on the rigs. She told one of the roughnecks, and he told Art, the driller. When Art heard that, he said, "Oh yeah? Well, we'll get him up here for the next connection."

A short while later, we had to "Trip out," I.E. pull all of the pipe out of the hole to change the bit. Art dragged the new guy in his denims up to "the floor" to participate. The holes in the drillbit were plugged, which meant the drilling mud remained in the pipe. Thus, each 18 meter stand was full of drilling mud, about 29 gallons worth, and 18 meters worth of pressure from a column of dense mud. It created a circumstance resembling an elephant with explosive diarrhea.

There were three ways to separate the pipes when they were full of mud. There was a tool called a "mud can" that could be wrapped around the tool joint - the point where two pipes were threaded together. It shunted the unwanted mud off via a hose into the sump. The problem with this approach was it was time-consuming and there was very little tolerance on the rigs for time-consuming activities.

My two co-workers were from rural Ontario. They were decent guys and we worked well together up on the floor. They only had a couple of months in, but they had passed the interview process and we synced well together on the floor. A well-sycned crew and driller is like an orchestra, believe it or not. I can still see the mischieveous grins on their faces as New Guy came up to the floor in his country and western duds. As rotten and miserable as rig work was in those days, we all sensed we were going to have a bit of fun that night, albeit at someone else's expense. At least the guy didn't lose an arm or leg.

A slightly faster method would involve the driller gently separating the two pipes so that most of the mud would just trickle down around the lower pipe, through the rig floor and into the cellar, to be cleaned up by one of the roughnecks later. This was the technique that was used most of the time.

But Art was in a hurry. The three of us with experience donned our yellow slickers in preparation for what we knew was going to be a messy job. The new guy didn't see any need to.

Art decided to use the fastest method, called "Popping the stand." Once the pipes were unscrewed, he would jerk the upper stand loose. If you ever saw the movie "Perfect Storm" with George Cluny, you know what came next, only, this wasn't seawater, it was thick grey drilling mud. About thirty gallons worth in each pop.

That poor new guy in his denim jean outfit was covered in mud from head to toe. Maybe he changed his clothes when he got home.

Art was a real screamer with zero patience which wasn't uncommon in Alberta rig culture in the late 1970s. He wouldn't bother you as long as you did your job, but if not, he was Gunnery Sergeant Lawrence Hartman from Full Metal Jacket. And he could be cruel at times. Maybe that was necessary.

"You fuck up on an oil rig and I goddamn guarantee you a trip out of the lease... in an ambulance! Out here, assholes, you keep your shit wired tight at all times!"

Paraphrasing Sgt. Barnes in "Platoon."

As we unscrewed one of the connections, a narrow stream of mud came squirting out aimed directly at Art in his nice clean orange coveralls. He immediately ordered the new recruit to stand in front of the mud stream, preventing it from soiling Art's coveralls. What the heck, he was already covered in mud, anyway. Art looked at the rest of us with a sly smirk on his face as if to say, "I finally found something this guy is good for."

It was around that time I started to understand why rig job interviews were so short and sweet.

Driller: "You got any experience?"

Applicant: "Yes, I worked roughneck and motors."

Driller: "Go change your clothes." Meaning you're hired.

The real part of the interview lasted over the next three days. If you were still there on Day 4, you passed.

That new guy? He failed the interview. That was the last time we saw him. He fired himself.

The Paradox of Higher Education Part II

This is part II of my recent essay, The "Higher Education" Paradox.

Here is a definition of astronomy from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary.

astronomy

noun

as·tron·o·my

plural astronomies

Simple Definition

: the study of objects and matter outside the earth's atmosphere and of their physical and chemical properties

The Merriam-Webster entry goes on to explain the difference between astronomy and astrology.

Did you know?

The Difference Between Astronomy and Astrology

Some may find it easy to confuse astronomy and astrology. At one time, these two words actually were synonymous (that is, astronomy once meant what astrology means today), but they have since moved apart from each other. In current use, astronomy is concerned with “the study of objects and matter outside the earth's atmosphere,” while astrology is the purported divination of how stars and planets influence our lives. Put bluntly, astronomy is a science, and astrology is not.

When I was in Grade 11 at Westmount High School, one of the courses I took was physics. Due to the time of day, perhaps, second period in the morning, or the monotonous drone of the teacher, my routine was the same every single day. I would sit down in my spot at the lab bench, put my head down, and sleep for the next forty-five minutes. One day, the teacher interupted my studies to ask me if I was okay. I told him I was fine and went back to sleep. I was always partially awake during lab exercises because I had to stand and perform certain motions. Thanks to those exercises, I managed to pick up a thing or two pertaining to the science of physics. But not much.

I dropped out of Grade 13 at HCI after not quite completing the first semester and started working for a living. A short while later, I borrowed a copy of Isaac Asimov's book, "The Universe." I loved it. While reading it, I realized that some of the physics I had picked up osmotically in Grade 11 helped me to understand some of the concepts Asimov described, like the Doppler Effect, and why it had led astronomers to conclude that the universe was expanding.

That experience helped me realize that there was some value in education and motivated me to take another stab at Grade 13 with a focus on math and science. I got my diploma.

A few years later, I studied chemistry at Mohawk College.

The point I am trying to make is that I have a certain understanding of what science is and how it works.

Here is an example of "Indigenous Astronomy." This is not what I think of when I think of "astronomy." And when this is promoted as a form of astronomy, it's an example of what I call government-funded BULLSHIT.

Imagine you are a young student who has been taught "astronomy" in this woman's class. The odds are high that you will have a very different understanding of "astronomy" from mine. If this type of pedagogy continues to spread in Canada's so-called "education" system, God help us all.

Related

Kathleen Stock: The scandal of Jason Arday

This Latest Hate Hoax Proves That Academia Is A Fraud With No Standards | Ep. 1823

Update:

The "Higher Education" Paradox

One thing I have noticed over the years is that too many of the supposedly "Educated" people I have met, read, or watched online, rarely know what they are talking about. Or maybe I am the idiot. So I have been told in many of my encounters, in person, and on social media. Censors at the Hamilton Spectator seem to consider my level of idiocy so profound that they consider it a violation of their "Community Standards" and delete about half of my comments on their "news" and opinion articles.

I met an old high school acquaintance one night in the early 1980s at the Winking Judge pub. It was around the time Canada was still reeling from the double-digit inflation of the print and spend effects of the first Trudeau administration. Catching up, he revealed that he had graduated from university, I think it was McMaster, with a degree in economics and was now employed in that capacity with the Ontario government.

Since inflation was a hot topic at that time, I described the Monetarist Theory of Inflation to him. His response surprised the hell out of me.

"Hmmm, I've never heard of that! It kind of makes sense."

I didn't say anything but I was thinking, "You have a university degree in economics but you have never heard of the Monetarist Theory of Inflation. WTF kind of education is that?"

My second thought was, "It figures you got a government job."

Over the next forty plus years I have had many similar such encounters.

Another personal observation of the degradation in the value of academic credentials occurred while I was attending the Chemical Engineering Technician program at Mohawk college.

In September, 1981, there were over forty students in the class. Some had to stand in the classrooms for lack of seats. That problem started to rectify almost immediately. Within a few months, many had dropped out and there was plenty of seating. How much government money had been pissed away by that, I do no know. By the time graduation rolled around, two years later, there were only a few of us left. I can't remember exactly how many, but it was something like 11 or 14.

Among the graduates were two guys who took three years to complete the two-year program. One of my lab partners also graduated. I've never known anyone to work as hard as he did, yet learn nothing. As the last semester wound down, I observed him and another struggling student at the front of the class asking the teacher to explain acid/base reactions. That was something we were supposed to have learned in the first semester.

Already well advanced in my libertarian/conservative thinking, I noted the event as just one more example of the failure of government-engineered programs to achieve their purported goals, indeed they usually accomplish the exact opposite, and to accomplish this at the cost of massive missallocation of human resources and capital. And I was a little ticked off. These guys would have the same credential as me, but neither were competent. What would the value of a Mohawk College Chemical Technician's Diploma have if that Chemical Engineering Technician "Graduate" were hired on that basis, only to blow up or release a deadly gas into the employer's lab?

One of those guys got a job working on an assembly line, which is what he wanted to do all along. He entered the college course under pressure from his parents. Two years of his life were wasted in addition to the tax dollars wasted on his "education." Well, he did learn what a graduated cylinder is, and what a gas is. But was it worth all of those subsidies?

As an example of the danger he represented, I will describe what happened in the lab one day. After forty-plus years, the details are a little foggy, but the salient point is still fresh. We were doing something involving orlon fibres. Part of the procedure involved collecting 5 mL of hydrazine sulphate solution in a graduated cylinder. My lab partner could barely read. He had slightly adapted to this learning deficit by reading the lab instructions out loud. As he read his procedure notes aloud, he would use a different word every time he encountered the word, "Orlon." It came out variously as "Orion," Olean," and "Oreo," etc. Made me think of cookies. Then it struck me. I told him one of the reasons he was having such difficulty with this program was that he could not read. I suggested he consider taking a remedial reading course. He was insulted. He indignantly informed me that he had won awards for literature at this high school. Yeah. Even in the early 1980s, Ontario schools were graduating students who could not read, and colleges like Mohawk were accepting them. This signaled a potential problem, I thought, especially in the vacinity of hazardous materials.

The quality of his high school's history department was no better than their literature department. One time, I asked him if he knew who Adolf Hitler was. Without hesitation, he replied, "Of course, everybody knows that. Hitler was an Australian who defected to the Nazis." Maybe he read it wrong?

Back to the hydrazine sulphate. When he read those words, he said, "Hydrogen Sulfide" (H2S.) H2S is a deadly gas. While working on an oil rig outside of High River, Alberta, we hit H2S. I was not on shift at the time. The night crew hit the H2S. They were lucky the driller ignored the consultant's command to crack open the drill pipe before ordering a roughneck to test for the gas, or the whole crew might have died. They completed their work wearing supplied-air respirators (SARs). When I woke up that morning, the smell of rotten eggs permeated the camp.There were no SARs in the lab at Mohawk. I don't know which college that consultant attended.

So my lab partner picked up a 10 mL graduated cylinder and started ambling toward the fume hood where a canister of deadly H2S was waiting. I did not immediately warn him. I wanted to see how far he would go. To his credit, he stopped about halfway to the fume hood, scratched his head, and walked back to me. He said, "How am I supposed to collect 5 mL of hydrogen sulfide? It's a gas." I explained to him that the recipe did not call for H2S, and reminded him again about the advisability of a remedial reading course.

Six Months Later

I received a call from the Mohawk placement office in late September, 1983. The guy on the phone asked me if I would be interested in working in a research lab in Kingston, Ontario. He sounded almost frantic. We're counting on you to get this job. It will give Mohawk a foot in the door for future graduates. The first two guys we sent up failed the technical interviews miserably. I asked for the names of the two failed candidates. They were the two who took three years to complete the two year course. I knew they were the wrong choice because, in class, whenever they answered a question, they got the answer wrong almost 100% of the time. I was thinking, "Well, duh!" Not that the technical questions were difficult. I recall a question about gas laws, like "what happens to the volume of a gas if its temperature is increased?"

Speaking of science, when my youngest son was in Grade 8, I asked him what his favourite subject was. He said, "Science." Then I asked him what he was learning in science class. I was expecting a list of basic scientific concepts like precipitation, evaporation, freezing, sublimation, and so on; the kind of stuff I learned in public school. Instead, his answer stunned me. "Global Warming." (This is how they baste their chickens for future votes.)

Another time, I was with my daughter, who would have been in about Grade 6 at the time when we heard the name "Al Gore" mentioned on the radio. I asked her if she knew who Al Gore was. Her answer blew me away, too. "Yes. We saw his movie in school."

These kids were not being taught science. They were being propagandized. At public expense. More tax dollars were being pissed away to make con artists like Al Gore rich.

One thing I noticed an social media during the Covid mass hysteria event was the number of people who would confidently urge sceptics to "Believe in the science." This was when it occurred to me, based on the insights my kids gave me, that the word "Science" had different meanings to different people. And that a lot of naive young minds exposed to climate scam propaganda in "Science" classes walked away believing that the word "Science" was nothing more than a series of declarations made by their woke teachers and so-called "Scientists." And that many, perhaps most of them had never actually been exposed to any real science. (See Retired Hamilton cabbie gets himself on list of fake scientists declaring climate emergency. Get the "list of fake scientists" part. They fixed that in the paper edition.)

Finally, which political parties attract support from the cohorts with supposedly "Higher Educations?"

I asked Brave.

First, the Americans.

Which party do better educated Americans vote for?

Americans with college degrees now predominantly vote for the Democratic Party, marking a significant reversal from the mid-20th century when higher education correlated with Republican support. This "diploma divide" has widened since roughly 2000, with college-educated voters drifting toward Democrats while those without four-year degrees have shifted toward the Republicans.

Current polling data highlights this split:

Bachelor’s degree or higher: The Democratic Party holds a 13-point advantage (55% Democratic vs. 42% Republican).

Postgraduate degrees: The Democratic lead is even starker, with 61% identifying as or leaning Democratic compared to 37% Republican.

Without a bachelor’s degree: The Republican Party holds a 6-point advantage (51% Republican vs. 45% Democratic).

This realignment is driven by cultural and social factors, as college-educated Americans tend to be more liberal on issues like social values and environmental policy, while non-college voters increasingly prioritize populist economic messages associated with the GOP. (Duh!)

What about Canadians?

Which party do better educated Canadians vote for?

Better educated Canadians in Canada tend to vote for left-leaning parties, specifically the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party (NDP), while support for the Conservative Party has increasingly concentrated among less educated voters since the 1990s.

Liberal and NDP Support: University-educated voters are significantly more likely to support the Liberals and NDP, a trend attributed to their socially liberal positions and focus on issues like climate change and social equity.

Conservative Decline: The Conservative Party has seen a substantial decline in support from higher-educated demographics, with the party becoming increasingly reliant on voters with lower education levels.

Economic vs. Cultural Divide: While higher education correlates with left-leaning voting, higher income remains a stronger predictor of right-leaning support; however, the "diploma divide" has become a dominant factor, with educated voters prioritizing cultural and social values over pure economic self-interest.

Recent Trends: Despite the general trend, some recent polling indicates a shift among young, less economically secure voters toward the Conservatives, though this group does not necessarily represent the highest education levels.

"Highest education levels." Like the "economist" who had never heard of the Monetarist Theory of Inflation?

Need I say more? The higher the "Education" the greater the odds that they are dumber than two buckets of shit. They are not "Better educated." They are more thoroughly brainwashed.

I knew how this would evolve as a result of my visit to the McMaster University Bookstore, circa 1982. I browsed the polisci and economics sections to find some free-market oriented books. What I saw was that most of the available books consisted of left wing horseshit, Marxism, etc. As the result says, "University-educated voters are significantly more likely to support the Liberals and NDP, a trend attributed to their socially liberal positions and focus on issues like climate change and social equity." There's no mystery here because they have been marinated in commie ideology since Kindergarten.

Conclusion.

This phenomenon is not just endemic to Canada and the USA. It prevails across all of Western Civilization from Europe to Australia and New Zealand. The new word is wokery, but it goes back a lot further. The worm really started to turn in the 1960s. The weak and congenitally useless are now in charge. Just look at your elected representatives. And it has been accelerating.

Second Conclusion

Western civilization is fucked. It will take 1,000 years to extricate ourselves from this muck, if we ever do. I don't want to travel on this ship of fools but I don't think I have much choice.

Marshal McLuhan said, "To make an invisible environment visible, we must step outside it," and "Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment."

When it comes to chicken dancer thinking, I have always been an outsider, a part of the lunatic fringe. I have been observing the evolution of chicken dancer "thinking" from the outside for fifty years. Ayn Rand was right. What I see leaves me with no sense of optimism. I hope I am wrong.

Now on to what inspired this rant. It's well worth a read.

On the rot in higher education

Part II

And then there is the matter of Jason Arday.

More on Jason Arday