My back yard

Every week day I bus it up to Oakridge shopping center and pick up my medication for my spinal condition.This is not about the 14 months I've been waiting for decent and humane treatment for the chronic pain I suffer since a virus destroyed the entire lumbar section of my spinal cord.This is about the shooting of a man in the underground parking lot at 2 oclock this afternoon.This was yet another gang land,targeted hit in which the shooters escaped and the police will make no progress.They did have some guys displaying brand new gangland squad jackets crawling through the bushes.I guess they finally decided a gang squad was a good idea.I made it past the exit the shooters used and saw the cop cars and towers for the television broadcast but the gun fire was long past and the shooters were probably on a plane back to wherever they came from.As I write this there is a stand off happening in another suburb and a guy I used to call a friend is in the papers as a wanted fugitive from 5 bank robberies.He was just on television in a warning to the public that he was being released.There are people that are just too dangerous to be out among us.I have several friends I'm happy to say who are now out and living productive lives that were labeled that way.It just goes to prove that you can never tell who will turn out alright and who won't.If we had the death penalty in Canada,two of these guys would have been executed without a doubt.One is a well know actor on the local scene and did a stint with the X files when they were shot here.I hope we never see the day that people lose the chance to become what they have the potential to be.I know so many people that are still addicts and are doing well and living as normal a life as is possible under current circumstances.I hope the chance to do so won't be stripped from all of us by a conservative government that uses biblical morality to form it's drug policy.Such a travesty is possible if the Harper thugs manage to fool enough people to be put in charge of this country.It never makes a bit of difference to the number of crimes or the way they're handled when a government talks tough on crime and lengthens sentences for drug crimes.It's amazing that with all the evidence there is of this,we are hearing saber rattling from a government that seems oblivious to the last 40 years of studies and statistics.I know that there has been a complete stop and a slow reversal of all the gains that were being made in this country up to the election that saw the Harper conservatives come to power.If this bunch of neocon thugs is allowed to run amok through parliament for a few more years,we will be in serious trouble.These guys are a nightmare of right wing ideology and dogma driven policy that has made us a poorer country with a meaner outlook on just about everything.