goCapeBreton.com and all lokol.me community websites are intended to be for a general audience. Any words that are commonly known to be problematic in such circumstances are deleted by admins. We make an effort to keep the original content as it is because we do not want to censor people's opinions. We only want to make the website appropriate for all ages. There are words that will automatically trigger a filter that will not allow a post or comment to go live at all. Some words are allowed to go live immediately, but depending on the context in which they are used, our admins may remove them, as was the case with the comment above. The entire comment itself was fine, it was just that one word that wasn't. With regards to your request for a list of forbidden words, surely, you do not expect that we would share a list of offensive words publicly as that would violate our own policies. I'm sure you can figure out what those words are. A general rule is if you would not use the word in front of a group of school children, then you should not use it on goCapeBreton.com Please review our Terms of Use for more detail on the type of content that is not allowed on goCapeBreton.com - MENU > ABOUT > POLICIES

Darn it Matt, you ruined my funny!

I have reviewed the policies and couldn't find the list. Perhaps you could sent it to me via private message? No I cannot figure out what the words are by myself. This is why we have written standards and things like film classifications. The people who apply such ratings do have clear guidelines.

Here you go Madeline: {word deleted by admin} {word deleted by admin} {word deleted by admin} {word deleted by admin} {word deleted by admin} {word deleted by admin} {word deleted by admin} {word deleted by admin} {word deleted by admin} {word deleted by admin} {word deleted by admin} I hope this is helpful! 8-)

Was the cape breton term for back side...4 letter word...starts with A ends with E lol...tame enough? Not a big fan of removing freedom of speech and expression personally but understand the general audience and will respect the ruled

This is my humble opinion Wayne. I agree with the policy and here's why. It allows people to debate intelligently and be creative with their language versus resorting to the lowest common denominator. Profanity has a place in our world, Rant Room for example, but as I always explained to my kids, if you want to appear intelligent, avoid it in your discussions. Not certain everyone one would agree but that is my opinion.

I agree and lines must be drawn and even if mine was mild use of language appropriate to the post you cannot allow raging rants with vulgar language. Its not an issue for me to reword to get the same point across

I enjoy the challenge to be honest....it's easy to say {word deleted by admin}, but we need to aspire to something higher. By the way, I added the {word deleted by admin} because it strikes me funny at the moment. Have a great Holiday season and Merry Christmas.

We are getting away from the issue at hand, but Stephen Fry best sums up my view on censorship. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/706825-it-s-now-very-common-to-hear-people-say-i-m-rather

They are a myriad of ways to convey a message in an open forum....the key word here is open. This is not censorship, this is courtesy and respect. There are many other place to exercise the use of {word deleted by admin}. If this was your only vehicle for expression, I would agree, it's not. Merry Christmas.

My gut feeling is that there are very few children reading posts about Cecil Clarke, although this site may have stats to prove me wrong, and I find that to mean that we are not protecting children, but protecting a certain type of adult who may be uncomfortable with a certain style of talk. I am not saying there is anything right or wrong with this, I am only saying that we should be honest about who the community standards are there to protect, but more importantly, we should be clear about what the standards are. I heard the Minister of Defence of this great country say Bu!!shi! on national television, so it is clearly not a bad word. You see movies rated as general audience which allow a certain amount of this sort of word. I do not own this site so I cannot expect the rules to change, but I do expect an editorial guide, even if it has to be sent to me privately, and I do expect it to be in line with what is "generally" accepted in other situations where "general audience" is a concept that comes into play.

{Link deleted by admin} Enjoy!

I LOVE that word! Funny that perhaps the ONLY word that is still not said even at most bars refers to a female thing.

I must say though that I didn't intend to detract from Mary fabulous commentary with this side discussion, although I hope that at least the traffic is bringing more eyeballs to her words, all fine words that they are.

Enjoying discussion hugely, but must point out that Michael Enright used that very four-letter word on the Sunday Edition recently and Graham Steele used it to describe the results of the last provincial election, so perhaps our ears are not so tender. At the very least, Wayne is in good company.

I fully support the language filter, and believe that instinctively most English speakers will have a good idea of what's in the blocked list. I command lots of those words, and use them more often than I *should* take a daily vitamin. In fact, much more frequently so. I've also observed (and thoroughly enjoyed) the mastery of folks like George Carlin make it a higher art form. However, for a general audience it usually just degrades the quality of discussion, IMO. If we're being thoughtful, we can be thoughtful about ways to express ourselves in a slightly self-moderated manner... but system-moderated works too when we forget. :) A single post with profanity can degrade the quality of an entire discussion and make it dismissable. A related local comparison might be Cape Breton Post comments which are apparently heavily moderated for possible partisan viewpoints (suspected based on personal experience) - and also profanity - but not necessarily for the vulgarity of ideas themselves (grotesque levels of ignorance, prejudice, and partisanship). Profane language is easy to dismiss, even when it's valid commentary - or has some extractable value if we looked at it objectively. If you ever wanted to be considered among the ones sitting "in the cheap seats" (Mayor Clarke) "at Tim Horton's" (Barry Sheehy, HPDP), inject a few terms from the mouth of sailors and they'll be sure to file you away there asap. The rant room is an entirely different beast. They have to labour over decisions as to whether or not to ban drunken racists. That's the bottom of the barrel, where communication ability is slowly being replaced by memes and grunts.

This is why I was careful to add "in general". For instance, one of the trade offs was clearly infrastructure, with horrible road conditions in the CBRM in many areas. In the short term, they think of it as austerity and debt repayment (conservative values). Long term, they make this a less desirable place to live. The flower program doesn't cut it. I agree with you. Just trying to isolate the variables a little. :) I'm personally advocating leveraging debt more strategically. One of the ideas I've floated in a few conversations is actually a 5-10 year free tax incentive on new homes (primary residence only), for those building here. I've had multiple variations on the same idea. But it, at its core, is about creating a strong selling point to getting people to live here, while the CBRM is sacrificing some tax revenue (in one sense). Overall, it sacrifices very little revenue *if* it's recruiting people to build, and live here, and spend here - that wouldn't otherwise do so.

I completely agree Joe. As for our mayor he hasn't had any "successes"in his political career...not provincial and especially not as Mayor.

Is that partisan Wayne, or you really can't think of anything positive he's accomplished? I'm really searching to find out what he may have done. He definitely looks the part of a mayor. If we could choose image alone, I'd give him thumbs up. But my introduction to him has been largely regarding the port dealings, of which I'm certainly not a fan.

I don't really have partisan ties. I voted Harper in 2006, Layton 2011 and Trudeau 2015. My ideas of success come from 2 1/2 decades in business. The models for success are fairly simple and transferableto government. My team was made aware of every aspect of our division and involved in brainstorming. Say for example budget required tightening...they were made aware of why and we would brainstorm options...cutstaff, reduce hours,;reduce spending or whatever works with least impact. A success to me is not 1 successful area causing 3 other failures. In business you would not dump all resources into one project without first taking time and resources to develop critical infrastructure necessary for its success. You have to start working on the core issues before jumping on a 1.2 billion project that has no infrastructure to support and so far no studies showing potential for success. $100 million over near 30 years could have been better used for all the infrastructure and to remove some of the issues (poverty,;addiction and whatever that makes our commimunity less then attractive tonew talent and new business). I guess my measure of success is logical and has a set of goals to be met by importance.

Absolutely, agree. I vote based on whom I think can do the best job at the time. With every vote, that includes knowing the person will have some conflicting views; but we have to choose the greatest "expected value" of the outcome overall. :) My feedback also isn't highly dampened after I've voted for someone. Critique or praise is fair game for anyone, whether I voted for them or not. The partisan model is just so counterproductive, decelerating, and damaging to society. Viewing an accomplishment in isolation is often the way press releases are written. :) Reducing debt is a very good thing, but not if it leaves us in a worse overall position or has a large opportunity cost that we can't afford. Given that I don't see the mayor as having accomplished much (pending correction), I'm glad to see that the debt was at least reduced during this period of decline.

I would love to have a transparent CBRM with open books so I could decide if the lower debt was worth the detrimental impact. My personal example would be my property taxation has risen by about 20%. In the 3 years I lived here our roads haven't been touched and our snow removal declined in effectiveness and efficiency quite a bit more each year...so my question is what my extra taxation is for. Now the past year fuel prices have dropped from near 1.40 to staggering slightly above/below the dollar...so wouldn't plowing/salting have gone done substantialky? I want to know all aspects and factors of spending to be able to make a clear decision on if it hurt or helped us and were some factors really not true savings (i.e sale of Archibalds wharf for less then its value...did this create a false perception of good fiscal management something along the lines of Harpers "balanced" budget or 1.9 billion surplus from selling GM stocks at a bad time, stealing from the EI fund and cuts to vet affairs and other places...Harper still only had a surplus of 1.9bil after making 10x that from just GM stock and EI fund transfers....so is that not still a deficit?).hasCecil done the same thing? Sold off valuable CBRM assets cheap and reallocated other funding to the detriment of CBRM to show "balanced" budget? In my opinion assets should be included in surplus/deficit budget calculationsas these assets once gone are a lifetime loss. And "what if" say archibalds wharf does release toxins...does CBRM bear the burden? Just an example as I have no idea the scope of that project. Which brings me to another huge point. I would love to sue CBRM to release all "non disclosure" agreement details because a) the mayor works for us so would it not mean legally b) the documents are ours. A CEO cannot hide documents from the entirity of its shareholderbase and if a shareholdervote was 50% plus one then they get whatever they want so legally (as Cecil has the same as ever other citizen and 1 share)

Then can he legally withhold agreementsand documents from the majority shareholders? I would bet he legally cannot and would be made to release these by the courts if challenged

someone has to take up the case Wayne, that is the problem. We need civil society to do that. We have the wonderful rich lawyer in Toronto who is sueing Harper over C-51, and if he had been elected again, that case would wind it's way to the top... maybe it still will, but someone has to take action and believe in it enough even though it will take a long time to get settled. I was refused the city solicitor's opinion on the prayer issue because of confidentiality of client, and I replied the same, I am the client, but in the end someone leaking the opinion to me was more effective. Our own legal expert said we had to stop praying at council, yet Cecil hid that from us and went along on his merry way, with a big show. It was a minor issue for some, but it proved that someone has to take a stand and challenge these closed methods.

excellent contribution. another fine example of the evil of spin doctors, otherwise known as communications professionals. Someone actually decided to use 2010, and of course, most of us didn't notice. Thank you.

I fully and completely overlooked it. :)

Brilliant work. This is precisely the kind of observant eye, and willingness to do research that has real impact! :) I would like to know what policies began the trend in debt repayment progress? Simply housing tax increases (increasing assessment values)? Do you have a link to the Frontier Centre data?

Yes excellent job. See the deeper you dig the more dirt you find.

Here is the 2015 report. We're 96 of 100. https://www.fcpp.org/sites/default/files/documents/FCPP%20-%20Local%20Government%20Performance%20Index%208th%20ed..pdf

Sherry, can you provide that link for the CH?

http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1315319-cbrm-decreases-its-debt-by-roughly-2.5-million

Sherry, this is a great post and should not be buried in the comments -- you should consider posting it as an article. Thank you for doing the math!

I agree, this should be posted as an article Sherry, so I can share!