Exactly. I mentioned it earlier because we used to have a decent rail service. It seems our major hurdle before we can get something decent going is workmanship. Our machinery, materials, and workmanship are just crappy so we have train derailments a lot. We use cheap quality materials to build things. Most labour is union so they think they can slack off on doing a good job.
Feds green light naked scanners
- Thread starter justinmb
- Start date
Yes rail has its own set of problems.
Safety is usually dependant on equipment or personel. If people weren't so hopped up on the "bigger is better/more is better" concept, tyhey'd pay more attention to quality than quantity and products would be better as well as workmanship and service. We have no pride in those things anymore, though.
Funding? Subsidies? How many handouts has Air Canada gotten?
Apparently no-one's thought to tell Via they should have the same security as airports. But I agree, it wouldn't hurt to have rail security, too.
Either accept that we will always have to deal with threats or else bite the bullet and fight back with the same tactics. "Listen, Mr. Habib. If you blow off that bomb and kill one of my kids. I will hunt down YOUR family and return the favor. Bomb our market and your mosque will get levelled". It's the only thing that will get their attention. You show them sympathy, leniency, mercy, and it just increases their contempt for you and your weakness. And I don't like the latter, so I am willing to accept that we have to adapt to scanners and stuff.
As long as they do it better than Parliament does...they don't actually have one organization in charge of security there...might be a good place to start establishing a simple, clear security precedent.
(How about C.H.S.? Canadian Homeland Security!) OK, I'm ducking already...:lol:
This is an excellent opinion piece on all these anti "terror" tactics.
Undressing the naked truth about the future of airline travel
Undressing the naked truth about the future of airline travel
Stephen Phipson, president of Britain-based Smiths Detection, the world's largest maker of full-body scanners, insists that the machines only produce images that show the outlines of the human body, not anatomical parts. “The privacy concerns are valid,” he says. “But our software can blur out parts of the body. And the scanners are far less intrusive than the traditional pat down of the body.” At the U.S. airports where scanners have been installed, security officers must look at the images in isolated rooms and are not allowed to have any piece of equipment, such as a camera or mobile phone, that could be used to capture or copy the images.
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=211641
Yes, Anna. Great suggestion. We travelled a lot by rail on the prairies when we were young. Used to a take a Bud Car to S'toon and visit our grandparents. I miss train travel. Start a petition girl. :lol:
Still off topic, but had to say... you sure have had an interesting life, Kakato. Those tunnels you found really intrigued me. :smile:
Don't get me started on that, just to say they started with no debt. As to your question; answer, in the past ten years at least, that's easy, none.
Sure its faster, but it is not taking away or adding anything. By the way, they also scan domestic bags, something not done prior to 2004. Plus they pull bags whose owners don't get on board, something else they didn't do for domestic bags prior to 2004. These things all cause delays right down the line until untold hundreds of folks have missed their connections and have to sleep in airport terminals, it happens daily. But what do I care, I'm paid by the hour, I just pity the poor schmuck who has to deal with the irate passengers.
That is the same rationale of the Coalition for Gun Control, and pretty much the same solution, but if it works for you...
A half hour? Aparently you weren't trying to travel between Christmas and New Years, try three hours, four, overnight. I've seen security lines in Halifax, yeah, piddly little Halifax, run up to two hours, on a normal day. It might not mean much to you, but the poor folks who spend four days of their one week vacation in an airport terminal might have a different opinion.
You can thank Pierre Trudeau for the trend in making airports uninviting. Toronto's terminal 2 was designed just so, to keep people away. It was built just as wide bodies were coming into vogue and for every passenger there were 5 well-wishers. With Alitalia it was twice as worse, but they operated out of terminal 1. Terminal 2 belonged to The People's Airline, (sorry, I'm showing my vitriol) and yes that terminal was even advertised as being people unfriendly. But designers have since been trying to right those wrongs, it's slow, but they're trying.
I just read a true account of a Blackwater employee going through security at Baghdad Airport, onto a Blackwater airplane.....he announced he was carrying a loaded Glock 9mm pistol, which the security personnel took from him, dutifully ran through the x-ray machine.....and then returned to him...lol
I shouldn't say this, but I will; my wife was cleaning out her purse one day and found three 12gauge shells that she stuffed in there after clay shooting a number of months prior. She held them up to me and asked, "where have I been since we were at the range". She had gone through airport security no less than six times after that day at the range. I told this story to a friend who had a similar story. He and his wife had moved from South Africa, visited the UK, came to Canada, gone back to the UK, and back here again. She was cleaning out her purse and pulled out six .45 Long Colt cartridges, 3 snake shot and 3 body armour piercing, (which are only issued to Special Forces, from which he had retired). No one caught any of these. Hmmm.
BTW, they used to load alternately shot and bullet in revolvers in SA because you never knew if you were going to have to shoot a snake or a large cat.
That's easy to understand. They charge $330 (cheapest flight) from Van to Calgary return where Westjet charges $257. They freakin well better have quit getting handouts.
Then there is stuff like this:
Air Canada: for $35, we'll let you talk to customer-service reps who can actually help you with a cancelled flight - Boing Boing
CTV Toronto - Air Canada shares fall as airline names new execs - CTV News, Shows and Sports -- Canadian Television
CTV News | Air Canada adds fuel surcharges to domestic flights
So quit flying if you don't like it. Take the train. Oh, I forgot, you don't think trains would be any good. Well, drive then.
Same rationale but a totally different subject. You are equating reaction to terrorist actions against thousands with the reaction to acts of a few against a few.
*shrugs* So quit flying then.
Anyway, as I asked before, the alternative to these procedures is what?
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I never said I thought trains wouldn't be any good, I just don't think they will solve any problems, and I do drive, whenever possible
Dig deeper, same rationale for a similar problem, the only difference is the numbers. Our reactions are the same, punish the many for the actions of a few. Tyranny gets its foothold one way or another.
I give up, you've outed me, I've been in the aviation business for four decades and flown for more of three of them, and I ain't giving it up, lord knows I've tried. People experience 5 or 6 days of headache at airports a year, I experience it 15 days a month. You're jones'n for a spat, I can see that. But I'll tell you right now, the security you want, you will certainly pay for. If you want to fly cheap as well, you can take your chances. I've been around long enough, I know far more people die from cutbacks than they do from terrorists when it comes to airplanes. The piper is going to be paid one way or another.