Magic Statistics

Over one hundred job positions are vacant in just one department of the Government of Nunavut.  That means there must be several hundred openings throughout the organisation.

Thirty per cent of the jobs in Nunavut's Community and Government Services Department are vacant, and government officials say they have had a difficult time finding all the people they need.

Senior staff told the legislative assembly Tuesday that 105 of the department's 345 positions are vacant.

The jobs page at the government website lists scores of openings in many areas: health care, management and administration, construction, policy wonkery, etc., etc.  There’s something for everyone.  The Nunavut government pays very well indeed and offers generous benefits and other incentives.  As well, Northern bonuses and significant tax breaks are available to Nunavut residents.

I can only see one drawback to a job with the Nunavut government: You’d have to move to Nunavut.

Previous related posts:

• Do not misspell Iqaluit
• Nunavut facing crisis in Inuit education and employment

Glitch in lottery system, N.L. [Newfoundland and Labrador] woman says — CBC Nova Scotia, 10 March

A 56-year-old British man has been jailed for 16 months on a charge of child abduction after helping his stepson flee the country to escape the tender clutches of child welfare services.  Thus is revealed the iron fist in the velvet glove.

British news media are forbidden to reveal the man’s name, ostensibly to protect the child’s privacy. The Times of London columnist Camilla Cavendish reports.

Prisoner X's mistake, in brief, was to fall in love with a woman who had been unfortunate enough to suffer a violent and volatile first marriage. As a result of the breakdown of that marriage, her young son had been taken into temporary foster care. A court stipulated that the boy should be returned to his mother once she had “sorted her life out” and found them a new home.

But even as she cleared every hurdle, social workers dreamt up new ones. The offers of her own mother and sister, both professionals with good incomes, to foster the boy, were apparently ignored. A psychologist cautioned that the boy was suffering dreadfully in care. One night in September, the boy let himself out of his foster home and ran back to his mother. Prisoner X, now her husband, drove them to Dover and on to Paris.

Some abduction!  The boy made all the arrangements to sneak out of care and escape to France so he could live with his mother.  He even set his alarm clock for 4am on the appointed day.  That is the first self-initiated “abduction” I’ve ever heard of.

The column contains another equally absurd and heart-wrenching story of a grandfather in jail for falling afoul of the child welfare bureaucracy.  He violated his stepgrandson’s “care plan” by answering the door when the boy knocked.  The man is 71 years old and has a heart condition.  He was sentenced to 20 months.

The system is merciless to people who question the system.

Ain’t that the truth.

Did some Islamophobe say that?  No, actually, it was a multitude of Muslim religious leaders in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh's military-backed government has backed down from a policy to ensure equal property rights to women amid angry protests by Muslim clerics that the move would override Islamic law.

The country's law minister Hasan Arif said the government "does not have any plan to enact any laws that goes against the Koran and the traditions of Prophet Mohammad," a government statement said.

Arif gave the assurance to top Islamic clerics and scholars late on Tuesday, after Islamic groups warned of nationwide protests, saying they would not tolerate any law that went against sharia, the Islamic law code.

Now watch someone report me to a "human rights" commission complaining that quoting Muslims is Islamophobic.

h/t: Dhimmi Watch

The US Secretary of State bows low before the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the appointment of Washington's first-ever special envoy to the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference will help to promote principles that Muslims and non-Muslims alike "hold dear," such as human rights, liberty and the rule of law.

"These are not American values or Western values," she told OIC ambassadors in Washington on Monday. "They are universal values, values that are lived and practiced by the majority of Muslims in the world, many of whom are citizens of democracies."

She offers obsequious flattery to an organisation comprised mostly of anti-democratic authoritarian governments.  Glenn Penner of Voice of the Martyrs Canada has a question:

What planet do you live on, Connie?  Of the 57 OIC members, only 14 qualify as "electoral democracies," according to Freedom House in its latest report on freedom in the world.  Only 6 of the 57 - Benin, Guyana, Indonesia, Mali, Senegal and Suriname - are deemed "free" in regards to political rights and civil liberties.  Let's look at religious liberty.  Hudson Institute's Centre of Religious Freedom stated in its 2007 report, "The Muslim majority countries comprise the religious areas with the largest current restrictions on religious freedom. This pattern parallels problems with democracy, civil liberties, and economic freedom, but the negative trend with respect to religious freedom is even stronger. Of the twenty ‘unfree' countries and territories surveyed, twelve are Muslim majority. Of the seven countries receiving the lowest possible score, four are Muslim majority. This is a phenomenon that goes beyond the Arab world or the Middle East."  There are exceptions, such as Mali and Senegal, but they are the exceptions, not the majority or many (contra. Secretary of State Rice).

More egregious nonsense emanates from the OIC meeting in Dakar, Senegal.

The world's Muslim countries warned Wednesday that an "alarming" rise in anti-Islamic insults and attacks in the West has become a threat to international security.

Insults threaten global security?  And here I thought that international peace was threatened by radical Muslims who blow themselves up in hopes of killing innocent bystanders, fly airplanes into skyscrapers, and brutally murder female relatives for dressing improperly.  Silly me.