windsorINB

In a last ditch effort to answer to critics who have long criticised the automaker for not providing products that represent sustainable forms of transportation, Chrysler in exchange for a 40 billion dollar grant will be retooling its Windsor Assembly Plant this summer. The grant, which will come from funds from the E.I. surplus, has been welcomed with open arms by CAW brass. Officials at Pentastar Central are not revealing many details, but have indicated the bicycle will be powered by a V8 Hemi engine and will be available with an optional Class III tow hitch and 2 1/2 on board DVD players for the kids.

From AM800:
A dramatic jump in the number of people receiving employment insurance benefits. According to Stats Canada, the number of people relying on E-I rose 30-percent in Windsor compared with 2007. By comparison, the national average rose by 3.9-percent.

A recent story on AM800's website talks about a "Dramatic increase" in suicides across Windsor and Essex County. Averaging 1 per day.

Windsor Police's (shitty) website has some statistics on suicide which you can read here. Previous years seem to have about 20-30 suicides. the difference could be the fact that that Windsor police's statistics do not include the rest of Essex County. However, the dramatic increase is still concerning... No surprise that the shitty economy is being blamed for this.

I work in a factory, I work very hard and I sacrifice my body and my youth for the big three. I am not alone in this. Many people, stretching back 100 years in this city have done the same as I have and lived to tell the tale. Now those tales will no longer be told. The sunny photographs of vacations at the lake and the camping trips on sunny weekends will be erased. The 8mm reels will be rewound and burnt to a crisp and this city will never be quite the same.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-young/how-to-save-a-major-autom_b_143749.html

Find a new ownership group. The culture must change. It is time to turn the page. In the high technology sector there are several candidates for ownership of a major car and truck manufacturer. We need forward looking people who are not restricted by the existing culture in Detroit. We need visionary people now with business sense to create automobiles that do not contribute to global warming.

This very telling story on AM800 caught my eye:

"Pollution is being cited as the reason why Ontario's Ministry of Corrections decided not to build a jail in West Windsor. Ministry Spokesperson Julia Noonan says Brighton Beach is heavily industrialized and would not be conducive for a jail. She says the area probably would not get the necessary environmental approvals."

Makes you wonder about the residents of this area...

For 200 years society has been on the move. We have moved from small, rural communities in droves for the cities just beyond the horizon. We went in our huddled masses, we yearned to be free and reinvent ourselves in a new, golden metropolis. The invention and proliferation of the automobile made this possible. Before long, people grew tired of living in rancid, crowded tenements and ached for the country air. We moved in droves to the suburbs, bought a few cars, had a few kids and we thought nothing could be better.

I admit I blather on and on about useless information. I write as I speak, so imagine being a friend of mine and listening to me talk can be very taxing. I talk more than Joe Valachi. Joe Valachi? Look into him, an eternally fascinating character.

This time I will skip the foreplay and go straight to the meat of the story.

If we are to be a great city, we must change our thought process. We must change the cultural makeup of what makes Windsor people Windsor people. We absolutely must give up our autocentric frames of mind and reach out to the electric engine, the brick house, the trolley, the free thinkers and artists, because the combustible engine has beat us into a small, blathering pulp.

Class, is defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary as : elegance, grace and dignity. These traits in no way describe Buzz Hargrove, or anyone else who calls themselves "Buzz" for that matter. Well, maybe with the exeption of Buzz Aldrin. I guess Edwin Aldrin wasn't a cool enough name for him. Hargrove's real first name is Basil. From this point on I will refer to "Buzz" by his Christian name. Perhaps it will remotely transport a bit of elegance, grace and dignity to his profoundly short sighted brain and ingrained sense of spectacular ineptitude.

The alarm goes off at 5:30am. Too early, as if I were a farmer who needed to milk his cows. Yet I am not a farmer, I don't have the intrinsic pleasure of working for myself, I work for a large corperation, so I, like almost everyone in this city who has a job, works for someone else.

Bleary eyed, I walk out of my front door into a cold morning that wakes me up better than any coffee could ever do. I walk to a bus stop, sit there looking into idling cars waiting for the lights to change, and smoke a cigarette. The bus comes, the same time every day, and I get on, and see the same faces I see every day.