world19News #107 - June 26, 2002 |
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world19News This e-mail is going to people on the mailing list for world19. If you don't want to receive further notices, please reply to this e-mail with "remove" in the subject. Let us know if you prefer to receive this in "plain text" format. Please forward this to anyone you think may be interested. In this issue: BREAD & ROSES SOLD We'll have more about B&R and the Ziembas soon. STELCO DEVELOPMENT - Open House June 27 Our "stelco" pages (http://www.stelco.world19.com) have html &
PDF format report of the recent site walkabout, which focused on site remediation. RUNNYMEDE HOSPITAL EXPANSION Is there a geographic limit to world19 concerns or has no-one brought up the disaster of the so called Runnymede Health Care Centre redevelopment. The project is simply too big for the property and rather than bury the parking lot the Centre's Board is going to bury the neighborhood by literally cutting down the trees and paving he Park. Joni Mitchell couldn't have foreseen worse. Redevelopment is by definition supposed to improve the neighborhood. Instead this misguided project will reduce the quality of life in the neighborhood and for the centre's residents who will have their trees and Park replaced by trendy synthetic internal atriums. Whatever the double-speak the proponents of this project want to use they cannot escape the fact that everyone in the community knows that this is paving over and needlessly destroying green space. There are huge parcels of cheaper land north of Dundas that truly need redevelopment and would benefit from a hospital project. Do a land swap. Use your imagination. Destroying green space needlessly is not a solution but a tragedy. Any comments, GARBAGE STRIKE - High Park & public space Hi Everyone, As we all know, the strike is on. This directly affects the operations of High Park. So, if you are in the park and see garbage, it would be much appreciated if you could help by picking it up and placing it in the bins. Particularly, we could be especially vigilant around our labyrinth site. As a safety measure, it is recommended that you take a pair of rubber gloves with you on your walks in the park. Finally, if there is any kind of mess at the labyrinth site that requires a broom and/or a hose to clear up, please e-mail me and I will look after it. Let us remember, not only is this our park, but we can also be active guardians of the space. Peace and blessings HIGH PARK - Art of Nature "Every city park is a mixture of art and nature, and
none more so than High Park."
World 19 has informed us all of your article on the plight of small booksellers. Personally, I believe the heart of the problem lies in the paragraph that reads: "Many of Stoddart's current problems can be traced to his business relations with Chapters prior to its merger with Indigo. With Chapters representing 50 per cent of GDS bookstore sales, what seemed a promising business relationship for GDS quickly turned into a nightmare of late payments and a massive volume of returns, overtaxing the distribution company's ability to cope." When I was in the business of handling all sub-contract work for an engineering project, my immediate superior gave me some excellent advice. He said "Never be more than 25% of someone else's business and never let anyone else be more than 25% of yours. If you do, his problems become yours and yours become his." It seems that neither Jack Stoddart, or any level of Canadian government, has either heard of or heeded this advice. In my opinion, here and now would be a good place and time for us all to start to ponder the consequences of this myopia. Historically, there may have been good reasons to embrace large organizations and limit competition. We were a young country with limited resources, struggling to maintain our sense of nationhood across a vast terrain. Those days have gone, and we now need allow for a corporate structure that can better enable us to unleash the tremendous latent abilities and energy that lies within all of us that has been, in many cases, frustrated by the inflexibility and anti-competitive attitude of large business enterprises that seek to remain dominant in a growing sea of small businesses spawned by the down-sizing activities that we have witnessed over the past 20 odd years. With this in mind, I believe that the book industry should give serious consideration to seeking the immediate support of the Federal Government to enable the industry to restructure to ensure that: "There are competing choices at the book publishing, distribution and retail levels, with no one company controlling more than 25% of the marketplace". To achieve this, interim managers at GDS should receive temporary financial support until a more healthy business structure can be developed, presumably either by splitting GDS up into a number of separate companies, each a viable business unit and selling them of or by some other means. Finally, once the book industry's problems are resolved, we
all should be placing pressure on governments, at all levels, to encourage the creation of
a healthier economic environment by ending the domination of companies in any industry
where that company has more than 25% market share. For world19, world19: |