Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Miscellanious Absurdism Denoted In This World...
I know - sometimes, I have blasted such absurd situations here, and no one has quite known what to do about it...
Denouncing an absurd and aberrant state of affairs is but STEP ONE, of course...
Well, here and today, we shall do so again...
TRY again...
But in a LIGHTER FASHION! :)
As in accordance with the new leitmotif here, the LUMINOUS BLOG aka TLB PRIME has to live up to its name and be both LIGHT-HEARTED as well as a source of possible ENLIGHTENMENT...
No more angry blogs here blasting things (that deserve the rough treatment, sure, but...) - that is what the lambasting blog, lethargic blog, loquacious blog, ludicrous blog, lunacy blog and several other blogs (wait for 'em - you just wait!) are for!
(Luckily, there is no "Lacrimonious Blog"... yet!)
But, for the HERE and the NOW...
Enjoy a more LIGHT approach
(as in lighter - weighing in as a feather not as a ton of bricks!) and a more enlightening and luminescent approach too, one can dare to hope...!
FINALLY... INDEED!!!
Top court rules B.C. can sue tobacco companies
CTV.ca News Staff
In a decision that could lead to cigarette-makers coughing up billions of dollars to pay for sick smokers' health care, the country's top court has ruled that British Columbia can sue the industry.
That was 2 years ago...
Are they coughing it all up yet?
And I would be remiss if I did not underline this bit of absurdism yet again:
I am still pissed off, after all these years, that I cannot find everythign I want at ONE PLACE - this, despite the valiant efforts to make this happen by our good friends Wally (Mart) and Target (uh... Practice?) - to name but two! (sic)
What makes blood boil the most is to see two or three venues, THAT WE KNOW TO BE OWNED BY THE SAME HUGE CONGLOMERATE, have three different prices for the very same damned thing!
Heck, at one place you have to buy SIX of those to get the same unitarian price that you get at the other venue, when purchasing just a single unit!
Sure, the geniuses behind all this have at heart that ALL THREE BRANDS are successful - but when it is the same basic crappy article, isn't a little more cohesion and basic coherence A MUST HERE?!?
Are you with me, people?!?
Ahh, how I miss the times when dime stores really were a dozen - a penny saved was a penny earned - there was a very palpable, apparent and obvious intrinsic LOGIC in the pricing warfare... for any given goods too!
Well, that is about all the sententiousness talk you will get here today, folks! Sorry! Not the thing here, on TLB Prime!
For that kind of stuff, you need to go to the Saudades Blog! ;)
See you there too - in thirty!
(Thirty... seconds or days - your choice, really, not mine!
Depends also on the efficiency of your browser and internet connection!)
:)
+++
Link
Denouncing an absurd and aberrant state of affairs is but STEP ONE, of course...
Well, here and today, we shall do so again...
TRY again...
But in a LIGHTER FASHION! :)
As in accordance with the new leitmotif here, the LUMINOUS BLOG aka TLB PRIME has to live up to its name and be both LIGHT-HEARTED as well as a source of possible ENLIGHTENMENT...
No more angry blogs here blasting things (that deserve the rough treatment, sure, but...) - that is what the lambasting blog, lethargic blog, loquacious blog, ludicrous blog, lunacy blog and several other blogs (wait for 'em - you just wait!) are for!
YEAH!
See you there...! ;)
See you there...! ;)
(Luckily, there is no "Lacrimonious Blog"... yet!)
But, for the HERE and the NOW...
Enjoy a more LIGHT approach
(as in lighter - weighing in as a feather not as a ton of bricks!) and a more enlightening and luminescent approach too, one can dare to hope...!
FINALLY... INDEED!!!Top court rules B.C. can sue tobacco companies
CTV.ca News Staff
In a decision that could lead to cigarette-makers coughing up billions of dollars to pay for sick smokers' health care, the country's top court has ruled that British Columbia can sue the industry.
That was 2 years ago...
Are they coughing it all up yet?
And I would be remiss if I did not underline this bit of absurdism yet again:
I am still pissed off, after all these years, that I cannot find everythign I want at ONE PLACE - this, despite the valiant efforts to make this happen by our good friends Wally (Mart) and Target (uh... Practice?) - to name but two! (sic)
What makes blood boil the most is to see two or three venues, THAT WE KNOW TO BE OWNED BY THE SAME HUGE CONGLOMERATE, have three different prices for the very same damned thing!
Heck, at one place you have to buy SIX of those to get the same unitarian price that you get at the other venue, when purchasing just a single unit!
Sure, the geniuses behind all this have at heart that ALL THREE BRANDS are successful - but when it is the same basic crappy article, isn't a little more cohesion and basic coherence A MUST HERE?!?
Are you with me, people?!?
Ahh, how I miss the times when dime stores really were a dozen - a penny saved was a penny earned - there was a very palpable, apparent and obvious intrinsic LOGIC in the pricing warfare... for any given goods too!
Well, that is about all the sententiousness talk you will get here today, folks! Sorry! Not the thing here, on TLB Prime!
For that kind of stuff, you need to go to the Saudades Blog! ;)
See you there too - in thirty!
(Thirty... seconds or days - your choice, really, not mine!
Depends also on the efficiency of your browser and internet connection!)
:)
+++
Labels: humor, luminous cartoons, Send-Up
Link
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Top court rules B.C. can sue tobacco companies
CTV.ca News Staff
(October 4th, 2005)
In a decision that could lead to cigarette-makers coughing up billions of dollars to pay for sick smokers' health care, the country's top court has ruled that British Columbia can sue the industry.
"They upheld the constitutionality of the British Columbia legislation," CTV Ottawa bureau chief Robert Fife reported from the Supreme Court.
"This is a landmark ruling that could serve as a prototype for other provinces to sue the big tobacco companies."
The unanimous 9-0 judgment -- delayed, at the request of Rothmans, Benson & Hedges, until after the stock markets closed -- gives the go-ahead for B.C. to seek damages for smoking-related health-care costs dating back 50 years.
At issue was a 1998 British Columbia law, the Tobacco Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act. Under the terms of that legislation, the province can not only pursue retroactive damages, but can also recover the costs of future illnesses linked to "tobacco-related wrongs."
The law spells out tough new ground rules that would curtail some traditional defences used in civil suits and puts the burden of proof on the companies on some key legal points. It also makes it easier to prove a cause-and-effect link between smoking and disease.
Before the provincial government could seek to file suit against the tobacco companies however, members of the Canadian tobacco industry and the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers' Council claimed the law exceeded provincial jurisdiction.
But anti-tobacco activists see the B.C. law as a model for the country, and hope that the nod from the country's top court will clear the way for other provinces to follow suit.
In the 1990s, a similar case in Florida led to most American states enacting legislation in the same vein. Those laws pressured U.S. cigarette manufacturers to agree to a $245 billion US settlement. To be spent over a 25-year-period, the money is specifically targeted to the treatment of patients with cancer, emphysema and other smoking-related illnesses.
Canadian companies have said they won't pursue a similar agreement, saying their relatively smaller industry would be bankrupted by a settlement of that size.
The B.C. suit doesn't just name Canadian companies though, it also targets nine foreign firms, including industry heavyweights British American Tobacco and Philip Morris.
Although no one has yet pinned down the cost of analogous claims in Canada, the federal Health Department has estimated the annual cost of treating tobacco-related disease in Canada at $4 billion.
Some estimates pin the potential claims in B.C. alone at more than $10 billion. If other provinces follow suit as expected, the total could climb to hundreds of billions of dollars.
Talking to reporters following the high court ruling, federal Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said Ottawa has no plans to follow British Columbia's example.
"That's not an issue that I have given any thought to," Dosanjh insisted, explaining his department's continuing focus on cessation, control and prevention.
When asked whether putting tobacco companies out of business would accomplish all three of his goals, the health minister said that's not an option.
"I don't think that one views these kinds of issues as cash cows," he said. "It is never the intention of any government to bankrupt any companies."
Watching reaction on Bay Street, RobTV's Linda Sims says B.C. will have to fight a pitched legal battle if it wants any cash from the companies.
"The tobacco companies have never given an inch on any type of culpability or repsonsibility without huge litigation," Sims told CTV from the Toronto Stock Exchange.
"It could be a decade of lawsuits before anything is decided."
Canadian Cancer Society lawyer Rob Cunningham says it is "very important to hold the industry accountable for decades of wrongful behaviour."
"We know that each year in Canada ... there's $4 billion in direct health care costs because of tobacco," he told CTV's Canada AM early Thursday.
"The claims of the B.C. government ... include misleading advertising, denying the health effects, concealing their research and targeting children," Cunningham added.
===
CTV.ca News Staff
(October 4th, 2005)
In a decision that could lead to cigarette-makers coughing up billions of dollars to pay for sick smokers' health care, the country's top court has ruled that British Columbia can sue the industry.
"They upheld the constitutionality of the British Columbia legislation," CTV Ottawa bureau chief Robert Fife reported from the Supreme Court.
"This is a landmark ruling that could serve as a prototype for other provinces to sue the big tobacco companies."
The unanimous 9-0 judgment -- delayed, at the request of Rothmans, Benson & Hedges, until after the stock markets closed -- gives the go-ahead for B.C. to seek damages for smoking-related health-care costs dating back 50 years.
At issue was a 1998 British Columbia law, the Tobacco Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act. Under the terms of that legislation, the province can not only pursue retroactive damages, but can also recover the costs of future illnesses linked to "tobacco-related wrongs."
The law spells out tough new ground rules that would curtail some traditional defences used in civil suits and puts the burden of proof on the companies on some key legal points. It also makes it easier to prove a cause-and-effect link between smoking and disease.
Before the provincial government could seek to file suit against the tobacco companies however, members of the Canadian tobacco industry and the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers' Council claimed the law exceeded provincial jurisdiction.
But anti-tobacco activists see the B.C. law as a model for the country, and hope that the nod from the country's top court will clear the way for other provinces to follow suit.
In the 1990s, a similar case in Florida led to most American states enacting legislation in the same vein. Those laws pressured U.S. cigarette manufacturers to agree to a $245 billion US settlement. To be spent over a 25-year-period, the money is specifically targeted to the treatment of patients with cancer, emphysema and other smoking-related illnesses.
Canadian companies have said they won't pursue a similar agreement, saying their relatively smaller industry would be bankrupted by a settlement of that size.
The B.C. suit doesn't just name Canadian companies though, it also targets nine foreign firms, including industry heavyweights British American Tobacco and Philip Morris.
Although no one has yet pinned down the cost of analogous claims in Canada, the federal Health Department has estimated the annual cost of treating tobacco-related disease in Canada at $4 billion.
Some estimates pin the potential claims in B.C. alone at more than $10 billion. If other provinces follow suit as expected, the total could climb to hundreds of billions of dollars.
Talking to reporters following the high court ruling, federal Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said Ottawa has no plans to follow British Columbia's example.
"That's not an issue that I have given any thought to," Dosanjh insisted, explaining his department's continuing focus on cessation, control and prevention.
When asked whether putting tobacco companies out of business would accomplish all three of his goals, the health minister said that's not an option.
"I don't think that one views these kinds of issues as cash cows," he said. "It is never the intention of any government to bankrupt any companies."
Watching reaction on Bay Street, RobTV's Linda Sims says B.C. will have to fight a pitched legal battle if it wants any cash from the companies.
"The tobacco companies have never given an inch on any type of culpability or repsonsibility without huge litigation," Sims told CTV from the Toronto Stock Exchange.
"It could be a decade of lawsuits before anything is decided."
Canadian Cancer Society lawyer Rob Cunningham says it is "very important to hold the industry accountable for decades of wrongful behaviour."
"We know that each year in Canada ... there's $4 billion in direct health care costs because of tobacco," he told CTV's Canada AM early Thursday.
"The claims of the B.C. government ... include misleading advertising, denying the health effects, concealing their research and targeting children," Cunningham added.
===
*Cough*
*Cough*
NOT holding my breath here...
Although...
Maybe I should?!?
(I mean - man alive! It is getting to be impossible to even walk by any bar, restaurant or shopping mall - with all these damn smokers indulging in their hateful habit and crime against
a) themselves
b) humanity
c) the environment
outside, by the entrance or exit... Looking more in need of uregent assistance than any beggar I have ever seen, oftentimes!!!
But I digress...)
+++
Post a Comment
*Cough*
NOT holding my breath here...
Although...
Maybe I should?!?
(I mean - man alive! It is getting to be impossible to even walk by any bar, restaurant or shopping mall - with all these damn smokers indulging in their hateful habit and crime against
a) themselves
b) humanity
c) the environment
outside, by the entrance or exit... Looking more in need of uregent assistance than any beggar I have ever seen, oftentimes!!!
But I digress...)
+++
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