Archive for April, 2011

By Sue Ricketts

And the wind came roaring down the cleft in the valley screaming fury at any who could hear. It came down the side of the mountain bringing with it whirls of dust and leaves, pine needles and bits of odds and sods. The clouds in the sky banged off one another creating thunder and sparks of light which rushed down to the earth and back up again into the darkness. It was a cold wind in a hurry to be gone to other places far away. No one and nothing could stand in it’s way and if they tried they too would be swept off to wherever the angry wind wanted to take them.

In a small depression in the earth not anywhere near deep enough a small boy trembled face-down. He had a very heavy pack on his back which weighed him down and kept him from being swept off. There was no rain. Yet. From the grey-white colour of the clouds it could be either rain or snow which would soon be beating down onto the wind-blasted land. Here where no one stayed for very long the wind scoured a path for the deluge to come.

There were two possibilities; that the snow would come and freeze him with no one to see that a soul was gone or that water would come running off the mountainside and take him along with all the other detritus in it’s attempt to clean the land. He knew there was not much time to find safety.

Not being able to stand straight he crawled along on hands and knees in hope of not being blown off course. The clouds had been hiding behind the mountain and he had not noticed them in time. While he walked on the long journey home he had daydreamed about the four heavy books which he had managed to trade for in the marketplace of the city which was far behind him now. Precious, precious knowledge and joy which would keep them busy reading for a very long time to come. When he got home. When he got home. When he got home.

The first two books showed pictures and words which would teach them how to make their own tools and machines to help them survive in the cold, dark place where they had been sent. The older ones had been sent there for punishment in the hope that they would not survive and thus stop being a problem to society. The younger ones, like the small boy, were just unfortunate enough to have been born in the place of exile.

But the last two volumes which he had stolen from a pile in the back of the bookseller’s stall where wonders. He hadn’t really known what they were until he looked after running fast and furtively away from the city. They had stories about life in the rest of the world. Places where he and his kind would never be allowed. Stories of tall buildings and safe homes and plentiful food along with warm clothes and happiness. Things which he would never have.

His eyes were filled with tears from the force of the wind which kept blasting against them. He could not see clearly. There seemed to be a darker shadow off to one side and he hoped and prayed that it was some tall stone boulders which had tumbled down from atop the mountain long ago. As the boy turned and tried to make his way towards the shadows the screaming wind grabbed at his clothing and tried to take it off him. He laid down flat and began to squirm on his belly doing his best to head in the right direction.

The wind could last for days here in the wastelands. Although the storm would blow over eventually, the land would not look the same when it ended. The more he moved toward the stones, the further away they seemed to be. His pack was swaying and tugged by the wind who was jealous of what he carried. It tried to grab his precious pack and tear it away to the sky to flee along with the clouds.

At last his hand reached out and touched cold, hard rock. He felt his way along until he finally felt a space between two stones just big enough for him to cram himself tightly in between. The space was not very deep but the stones cut the worst of the force of the wind. Almost as he found the shelter out of the loudest roars, hard frozen rain began to pelt down and clatter all around the stone shelter. As he watched he saw hail the size of his hand go whipping along horizontally in front of him. He would have been killed if he hadn’t found this place of cold comfort.

By Sue Ricketts

Many of these thoughts were inspired by someone’s email to me. His opinions are carefully thought out and certainly thought provoking. I bring them out in hope that it will get us all thinking about one of our most precious Canadian rights. Could and should we improve on how democracy works in Canada? What could we do regarding voting in Canadian federal elections? Below are some suggestions.

1. Change the Canadian Charter of Rights name to read “Rights, Freedoms, and Responsibilities of Canadians”. That would make it mandatory for all Canadian citizens to cast a vote, just like in some other countries. Around the world people are fighting, dieing and even committing suicide in order to gain the right to choose who rules their country. Do you think our citizens should be allowed to shirk that privilege?

2. There should be a process for recalling dishonest politicians and I’d have a requirement that criminal charges be prosecuted against any elected representative or appointed person at any level of government who misuses public finds, lies to the electorate, subverts process, or uses public money for partisan reasons. And I’d make the punishment more severe than many other crimes, because of what it does to the faith people have in their country as a result of apparently increasing frequency and grossly corrosive effect. This would certainly make a lot of work for the other governmental body , the law courts of the land, because a lot of the games played are only evil in the eye of the beholder.

3. Secondary to that would be an enforced process of banning participation in government during investigation, prosecution and for a prescribed period of time following a person’s conviction including fund raising and lobbying. All this must meet the tests of the Charter, of course, but something needs to be done to keep politics clean and I don’t mean street sweeping or under the carpet sweeping.

Why use these possibly draconian devices? Because of the level to which our system of parliamentary democracy appears to have been eroded over the last few years. And that in the face of the fact that over 60% of actual voters wanted other than the Conservatives to govern.

Canadians, in my opinion, have been “getting the government we deserve” for the past few years because we have been lazy and not challenged the assertions of the faux-leaders who have been feeding illusions and untruths in their own interests, but not ours. A prime example is the Helene Guergis case. It appears that she was thrown out on the testimony of one person to the Prime Minister’s Office. It’s interesting that the PMO has taken the power to make judgements which should be made by the Courts. She was never convicted of anything and no other witnesses came forward to speak against her, or so we’re told.

To reduce the chance that apathy with the performance of current shenanigans from all parties which can lead to worse than what we’ve been getting (and there IS worse ahead of us if we don’t awaken the large numbers of non-participants who abstain from voting) I think we need to almost force people to participate.

Yes, I see the contradiction in trying to defend democracy with compulsion. But I also see the contradictions between truth and fantasy in what we have been getting from government lately. It has been so encouraging to see the Students at the University of Guelph reminding their peers and their betters that they can and will be voting. Even if one of our local party members tried to take a ballot box away while votes were being cast. How incredible that a drive to get students voting on campus before they go back to their home cities for the summer was given such a hard time. Is that democracy in action? I leave it to you, dear reader.

When a government exhibits disdain for the concepts, principles, processes, disclosures, responsibilities, checks and balances behind participatory democracy to such an extent as has been exhibited by current events, I fear for our future. It has certainly made me think twice about my voting preferences.

Never forget that many dictatorial regimes came to power due to tinkering and disruptions in the electoral process that preceded their acquisition of power and ultimate dictatorship. Some have even blocked people from voting, stuffed ballot boxes, etc. I don’t think that the boffins of the political party war rooms and the PMO will go that far. I hope I’m right. But the evidence is not reassuring.

So, how to counteract this possibility in absence of magical powers to rewrite the way the Charter describes our land?

VOTE!!! IN HUGE NUMBERS!!!

Some years back the Western Canada Wing was able to seize power during the Social Credit / Reform / Alliance coalition takeover of The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada by influencing changes in the PC membership’s rules before they voted on the question of merging with the Alliance (to allow a vast number of Alliance members who had already voted in favour of the takeover, to join the PC party and sway the result). Why do we not think they would manipulate the rules of election and legalities of government in Canada?

In the last two governments there have been a number of disturbing incidents. The habit of avoiding questions, subverting committees, suspending Parliament itself, blocking development of international agreements on climate change, preventing access to information, secretly negotiating arms deals without tender or accountability , secretly negotiating trade deals and perimeter security agreements that have an effect on national sovereignty, which even under the Mulroney government was subject to an historic election campaign on the question itself. grossly underestimating new aircraft costs, manipulating funding for NGOs that disagree with them, ignoring calls for resignation of ministers who violate laws, attacking the CBC, controlling the message so tightly there is no individual thought remaining among MPs, obscuring real truth, sabotaging the rules of accountability, creating distractions, distortions and out and out untruths does not give me confidence. The latest one was that two days before the election was called, the country was declared as a member of the coalition to go to war against the Muamar Gadafi regime in Libya without any discussion….. and nobody noticed? We haven’t managed to disengage from the longest war since the Second World War yet and we’re in another one. It should cause real concern in anybody who pays any attention at all.

I hope there are enough people left in Canada who are paying attention, to agree with this call for voter action. It is important that readers of this article will encourage everybody they know to research the actual philosophies of the parties running candidates in their riding, get to know who their local Member of Parliament candidates are, attend debates and visit the candidates’ websites. Ask questions and demand answers.

All politicians are responsible to us, not the other way around. They have a duty to listen to and respond to what we think and need. Everything a politician does will have an effect on your life no matter what level of governance they are involved with. Be an informed voter and use your educated right to vote.

So endeth the rant of the day.

By Sue Ricketts

     It seems that today we find more and more books and movies being made about vampires and super-beings as a category. I checked on Amazon and here’s the results of my research.

Super-beings 391

Werewolves 4,188

Vampires 25,633

I find it interesting how much people enjoy these subjects. Is it the danger that attracts? Or, perhaps, a fascination with Immortality? Danger had 23,628 hits and immortality had 27,097. This is what we human’s want to do in our spare time. To read and watch about things which threaten or tantalize us.

     When I think back to the 1960′s there was lots of interest in and fascination with Aquarius (6,778, today’s rating) and UFOs (11,538). It seemed everyone was wrapped up in “The Age of Aquarius”. The astrological ages are said to affect mankind and correlate to the rise and fall of mighty civilizations and cultural tendencies. Every 2,150 years or so there is a change in the position of the stars which we see from Earth. The astrological ages progress in reverse order to the Astrology of the sun which we are more familiar with from reading horoscopes. Various great and intelligent people have dated the dawning of the Age of Aquarius anywhere from 1447 AD (terry MacKinnell) to 3597 AD (John Addey). The International Astronomical Union decided in 1929 while defining the edges of the 88 official constellations that the edge between Pisces (the fish) and Aquarius (the water carrier) would begin around 2,600.

     Why the fascination in the sixties when none of these dates existed? Well, Aquarius traditionally “rules” over electricity, computers, flight, democracy, freedom, humanitarianism, idealists, modernization, astrology, nervous disorders, rebels and rebellion. Just a few other Aquarius things are nonconformity, philanthropy, veracity, perseverance and irresolution. If any of those words seem to describe the world we live in today, we probably are in the Aquarian Age.

     Is there anything which was of interest for fifty years which is just as compelling for us to watch, read and meditate about in 2011? Yes! By far, both then and now we all want to question what we are told. The biggest category of all with 34,365 books and movies are about Conspiracies. Trying to discover what we are not being told. What is hidden from our understanding? What aren’t we being told?

     We have been led to believe that people throughout the dark ages were sheep willing to be told what is right and true by small select groups of people – royalty and religion – without asking why. The “excuse“ for that was that most people didn’t have the capacity to understand or comprehend the facts. Nor did they possess the logic to distinguish between competing ideas.

     Of course, today we know better than that. Every human being possesses the capacity given a chance to learn the basic skills of reading, writing and having proper nourishment of their bodies. The other “frill” which we have today is that we have time to devote to thinking. We are not spending every minute of our time finding food and shelter for ourselves. There are few places in the world today where such conditions exist.

     Speaking of conspiracies – I wonder if those in power throughout the centuries just chose to ignore those who came up with some pretty special ideas and inventions. Those engineers and alchemists who found ways to combine and reshape the elements of our world into new and more useful things. Those who learned how to build and create new places for shelter and glory. Those who stood back and let others take credit for what they produced.

     And what do our reading and movie watching preferences say about us today? I think they started out as a way to once again defy authority. Authorities said that if you talked about things deemed to be evil you would somehow bring them on yourself. You would become their victim. If you were interested in “bad” things, you would become bad yourself.

     Every new generation tests the belief of those before them and come up with their own truths. Although I don’t believe there are any immortal vampires or werewolves, I know people find it titillating to imagine being in danger and proving that they can meet the test and win. It is our eternal human dream.

 According to Wikipedia

     In some sense we can say that insurance appears simultaneously with the appearance of human society. We know of two types of economies in human societies: natural or non-monetary economies (using barter and trade with no centralized nor standardized set of financial instruments) and more modern monetary economies (with markets, currency, financial instruments and so on). The former is more primitive and the insurance in such economies entails agreements of mutual aid. If one family’s house is destroyed the neighbours are committed to help rebuild. Granaries housed another primitive form of insurance to indemnify against famines. Often informal or formally intrinsic to local religious customs, this type of insurance has survived to the present day in some countries where modern money economy with its financial instruments is not widespread.

     Turning to insurance in the modern sense (i.e., insurance in a modern money economy, in which insurance is part of the financial sphere), early methods of transferring or distributing risk were practised by Chinese and Babylonian traders as long ago as the 3rd and 2^nd millennia BC, respectively. Chinese merchants travelling treacherous river rapids would redistribute their wares across many vessels to limit the loss due to any single vessel’s capsizing. The Babylonians developed a system which was recorded in the famous Code of Hammurabi, c. 1750 BC, and practised by early Mediterranean sailing merchants. If a merchant received a loan to fund his shipment, he would pay the lender an additional sum in exchange for the lender’s guarantee to cancel the loan should the shipment be stolen or lost at sea.

     Achaemenian monarchs of Ancient Persia were the first to insure their people and made it official by registering the insuring process in governmental notary offices. The insurance tradition was performed each year in Norouz (beginning of the Iranian New Year); the heads of different ethnic groups as well as others willing to take part, presented gifts to the monarch. The most important gift was presented during a special ceremony. When a gift was worth more than 10,000 Derrik (Achaemenian gold coin) the issue was registered in a special office. This was advantageous to those who presented such special gifts. For others, the presents were fairly assessed by the confidants of the court. Then the assessment was registered in special offices.

     The purpose of registering was that whenever the person who presented the gift registered by the court was in trouble, the monarch and the court would help him. Jahez, a historian and writer, writes in one of his books on ancient Iran: “Whenever the owner of the present is in trouble or wants to construct a building, set up a feast, have his children married, etc. the one in charge of this in the court would check the registration. If the registered amount exceeded 10,000 Derrik, he or she would receive an amount of twice as much.”

      A thousand years later, the inhabitants of Rhodes, invented the concept of the general average. Merchants whose goods were being shipped together would pay a proportionally divided premium which would be used to reimburse any merchant whose goods were deliberately jettisoned in order to lighten the ship and save it from total loss.

     The Talmud deals with several aspects of insuring goods. Before insurance was established in the late 17th century, “friendly societies” existed in England, in which people donated amounts of money to a general sum that could be used for emergencies.

     Separate insurance contracts (i.e., insurance policies not bundled with loans or other kinds of contracts) were invented in Genoa in the 14th century, as were insurance pools backed by pledges of landed estates. These new insurance contracts allowed insurance to be separated from investment, a separation of roles that first proved useful in marine insurance. Insurance became far more sophisticated in post-Renaissance Europe, and specialized varieties developed.

       Some forms of insurance had developed in London England by the early decades of the 17th century. For example, the will of the English colonist Robert Hayman mentions two “policies of insurance” taken out with the diocesan Chancellor of London, Arthur Duck. Of the value of £100 each, one relates to the safe arrival of Hayman’s ship in Guyana and the other is in regard to “one hundred pounds assured by the said Doctor Arthur Ducke on my life”. Hayman’s will was signed and sealed on 17 November 1628 but not proved until 1633. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, London’s growing importance as a centre for trade increased demand for marine insurance. In the late 1680s, Edward Lloyd opened a coffee house that became a popular haunt of ship owners, merchants, and ships’ captains, and thereby a reliable source of the latest shipping news. It became the meeting place for parties wishing to insure cargoes and ships, and those willing to underwrite such ventures. Today, Lloyd’s of London remains the leading market (note that it is an insurance market rather than a company) for marine and other specialist types of insurance, but it operates rather differently than the more familiar kinds of insurance.

Insurance as we know it today can be traced to the Great Fire of London, which in 1666 devoured more than 13,000 houses. The devastating effects of the fire converted the development of insurance “from a matter of convenience into one of urgency, a change of opinion reflected in Sir Christopher Wren’s inclusion of a site for ‘the Insurance Office’ in his new plan for London in 1667. A number of attempted fire insurance schemes came to nothing, but in 1681 Nicholas Barbon and eleven associates, established England’s first fire insurance company, the ‘Insurance Office for Houses’, at the back of the Royal Exchange. Initially, 5,000 homes were insured by Barbon’s Insurance Office.

The first insurance company in the United States underwrote fire insurance and was formed in Charles Town (modern-day Charleston, South Carolina, in 1732. Benjamin Franklin helped to popularize and make standard the practice of insurance, particularly against fire in the form of perpetual insurance. In 1752, he founded the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. Franklin’s company was the first to make contributions toward fire prevention. Not only did his company warn against certain fire hazards, it refused to insure certain buildings where the risk of fire was too great, such as all wooden houses. In the United States, regulation of the insurance industry is highly Balkanized (meaning rules apply in small areas, not everywhere with primary responsibility assumed by individual state insurance departments. Whereas insurance markets have become centralized nationally and internationally, state insurance commissioners operate individually, though at times in concert through a national insurance commissioners’ organization. In recent years, some have called for a dual state and federal regulatory system (commonly referred to as the Optional federal charter (OFC)) for insurance similar to that which oversees state banks and national banks.

In Canada we have a similar system to America but the umbrella for operations is the Insurance Act of Canada.

By Sue Ricketts

So many times we run across complicated, outdated language in forms which were created for one reason or another, usually by some level of government or legal courts. They were usually designed and crafted by members of the legal profession whose main object was to clarify each and every word and punctuation thereon. All well and dandy, but the effect as years passed and forms remained the same was that common usage of the language changed the meaning of the words and the words themselves may have dropped from common language. How many times have you and your friends sat over coffee lately and talked about “terms of estopal thereon”?

In the life insurance business in Canada we have for many years had a three page form which must be made out in triplicate in order to allow the owner of an insurance policy to cancel one policy and purchase a new one. This form was legal size, meaning won’t fit without folding into most file folders and envelopes. It also could not be reproduced by anyone other than the government printers. So, it was not uncommon to find that you didn’t have any when they were needed and agents had to pay for them and return at a later date to finish a sale with their clients. The form had about thirty-five questions and three boxes at the end of each which needed to be filled in with information about the old policy, information about the policy being proposed and the differences between them. Often clients had no copy of the old policy, which was written in “legalize” and deciphering the particulars was a tricky thing indeed. When you’d done all that you had to turn the whole form over and fill in some blanks on the back. A painful process for most everyone involved and an easy form to miss some vital fact on.

The purpose of the form is to be certain that the Owner of the insurance understands exactly what he/she is giving up if they cancel the old policy. The other purpose was to stop insurance agents running around cancelling policies and selling new ones unnecessarily, thus earning new commissions, when there really was no reason . Owners may be doing it to get the short term gain of the money within the policy and not thinking about whether they will qualify for life insurance later on. They may not realize that a future policy will be more expensive simply because they are older when applying for it. Some policies are designed so that the premiums appear lower for the first term of the policy than others but will become more expensive in the second and following terms. If the policy had a fixed term end there may have been an inheritance value for someone else or an annuity value for the Owner’s retirement, cancelling and going to something else may not be a good idea. Because the wording was a bit outdated and there was insufficient room in the boxes to fill in the information sensibly on this huge form, the client and the advisor both may have signed things without really understanding what they were giving up or gaining.

We all know that all the ruling bodies have so many new things to look at that they don’t have time to look back and cancel, update or otherwise amend things they’ve done in the past, don’t we? Well, I’m here to tell you that that isn’t true of the folks who are in charge of the Insurance Act of Canada. They have just instituted a new Life Insurance Replacement Declaration in Ontario which is simple, easy to understand and in point form. Take a look at what can be done below. If you have any questions, please contact your life insurance agent or myself at sue@suesviews.ca. Comments on this or any other article are welcomed.

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  Life Insurance Replacement Declaration

Do not cancel your existing policy until the new policy is in force and you accept it. Before you cancel your life insurance policy you should have answers to the questions below. Ask any insurance agent or broker, or an independent person, for help if you need it.

Questions about your present life insurance policy

1. Why do you want to replace your policy? Is the new policy better for you? How?
2. Should you just buy more insurance or change your policy? How much will these changes cost?
3. When should you cancel your present policy? When is your next annual dividend paid? Will the timing affect your cancellation charges?
4. Will you pay more income tax if you cancel your present policy?

Questions on the advantages and disadvantages of a new life insurance policy

1. Do you understand the type of insurance policy you are buying? Is it a term life, whole life, or universal life insurance policy? You should know the differences.
2. Are there times when the new policy will not pay all the benefits that your present policy does? Examples are suicide and contestable periods and contractual exclusions.
3. Will the new policy pay as much as your present policy? Examples are death benefits, cash values, and dividends.
4. Does the new policy have the same extra, or optional, benefits as your present policy? Examples are waiver of premium, guaranteed insurability, accidental death, and family member riders.
5. Are there cancellation charges on the new policy?
6. What guarantees apply to your present and proposed policies? Which policy has the best guarantees?
7. Will either of the policy premiums (payments) go up? For how long will the premiums stay the same? How much will they increase?

Important: Please ensure that the agent or broker provides you with copies of the written explanation of the advantages and disadvantages of replacing your life insurance policy with a new policy.

I confirm that I have received this Life Insurance Replacement Declaration.

Client’s signature Date

I have given the client this document and a written explanation of the advantages and disadvantages of replacing their life insurance policy, before starting the application for a new policy.

Agent or broker’s signature Date

Note: Your agent or broker should deliver and review the new policy with you. If the policy is not satisfactory for any reason you may have a right to reject it and receive a full refund of premiums, under provincial or territorial law or under contract. Check the policy and the law for the right of rejection and the time limit for rejection.