Uncategorized – Page 24 – Babel-on-the-Bay

On being royal refugees.

January 14, 2020 by Peter Lowry

It was hardly just the Downton Abbey dowagers who were clucking over the American divorcée marrying into Brit royalty. Well, their predictions of trouble are in, fast and furious. Harry and Meghan are rebelling against the vacuous life of the royal family. The very good news is that Harry’s gramma reacted as a loving grandmother, not as a queen. Good on her!

The trouble is that those kids have absolutely no idea of the problems such a fall from grace can present. There is far more to the separation of royals and their estates than naming your kid Archie.

And hiding out in a millionaire’s estate on Vancouver Island is far from the fun times in Toronto.

What makes you think you could live in a little two-bedroom apartment in St. James Town and find jobs immediately. At least you speak the local language—sort of. That apartment would fit in a very small corner of your Kensington Palace digs.

Will you get those acting jobs because you are a former duchess? Does it make it easier for you to find baby sitters or daycare for when both you and Harry are working? And, what is Harry good at? If he could learn to drive in the right lane, he could get a job as an Uber driver—no experience required. Hey, McDonald’s is also hiring.

Just wait until the immigration people hear he has only been trained to shoot a machine gun and how to wave to crowds.

It is not likely that Harry would be interested in the types of jobs being offered to former dukes. He does have a pleasant demeanour and does know something about charities. He would likely have some good ideas about planning fêtes.

And would he ever get used to the casual way Canadians would approach him and say “Aren’t you a prince or something?” Nobody is going to pay to keep the riffraff away. And what about the ones too polite to say anything, who just stare?

I think the toughest challenge will be with those Canadians who have no respect for royals and do not believe that your gramma should be Queen of Canada. And then there are those who think the whole idea of royals is a crock. Welcome to Canada.

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They can help you write right.

January 8, 2020 by Peter Lowry

You cannot be sure here, just who is the problem? It is all about a program called My Analytics from Microsoft and another program called Grammarly. Both programs are intrusive and trying to sell us something. They both present themselves as though they have groups of monkeys in lab coats ready to analyse us and our writing.

The first problem is that I do not like Microsoft. If I can avoid it at all, I do not do business with Microsoft. I consider the company to be intrusive, incompetent and inhuman. Its only advantage is that it is often half the price of Apple. It just never stops trying to get more money from us.

And it is an appalling thought to have Microsoft routinely analyzing my work habits, my washroom breaks, my cooperation with others and how I behave on play dates.

And add to that, this company out of San Francisco, that thinks it can make your American English more perfect. Perfect American English is an oxymoron. The Grammarly program says my productivity has been nil for the past week but my mastery of the language must be perfect because they can find no errors.

That is certainly the way I like it. Yet, I doubt that I have cracked open the second edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage on my bookshelf once in the past 30 years. I learned, a long time ago, that effective communications are not always rule-based.

As an editor, I learned that all that need to be corrected are errors that get in the way of effective communications. Errors that facilitate understanding are welcome. Though, I do think it helps to know the rules before you discard them.

No doubt, I make enough errors in these commentaries to keep the monkeys at Microsoft and Grammarly busy. But, sorry folks, no sale.

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Unity in the eye of the beholder.

December 30, 2019 by Peter Lowry

It was June 17, 2019 and I rarely watch any television during the day but curiosity had me turn it on—and the wife and I were caught up in the most amazing event. Born in Toronto, we have always considered it to be our city. On this day we shared that ownership with several million other Torontonians—and many more millions of Canadians.

At the time I turned it on, the parade organizers were trying to figure out how to get the old double-decker buses safely through the thousands of people around the Princes’ Gate of the Canadian National Exhibition grounds—where the parade was supposed to have already passed through.

But this was a day of celebration and the basketball players on top of those buses were already partying. This was great fun. And where did all these people come from? Well, they had not seen anything yet.

Okay, we all know Toronto traffic is getting worse every day. Those buses took four hours to get to Toronto city hall. People were crowding into Nathan Phillips Square before the buses were out of the Ex. It got me worried as to whether the city had arranged for enough portable toilets. And how could the hot dog vendors arrange for more supplies?

We listened to hoop star Kawhi Leonard. We were awed by the uncountable crowds. We were proud. We were all basketball fans that day.

The funny thing is, my wife was the one who encouraged me to turn on the last couple games in the NBA championship series. I never was a basketball fan. I was always a bit chunky as a kid and I was built better for baseball and football. And we had only been to one Raptor game in downtown Toronto. Who can afford pro-sports tickets?

But I saw Canadian unity that day in June. We were all Raptor fans. We were all happy to boo premier Ford and cheer Toronto’s mayor and Canada’s prime minister. We could all agree as Canadians that having our basketball players beat all the American teams was great. Stick that in your hairdo Donald Trump!

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The year that was.

December 26, 2019 by Peter Lowry

It’s been a tough year. Commenting on politics in such a fluid situation as we find in North America and Europe requires considerable dedication. It is also getting expensive and more time consuming to keep abreast of rapidly changing circumstances.

The idea was that I had a leg up because of my expertise in the political ground game and experience in Ottawa and Washington. The only problem is that our current crop of politicians is inventing brand new games. We can become just as confused by their antics as the talking heads who are paid to comment.

And those of us who labour over our blogs are getting some unfair competition from the news media in the form of free newsletters. So far, they have not been monetizing these efforts, but when they do, life for bloggers will return to normal. By ‘normal’ I mean the usual complaints and kudos about our opinions.

Babel-on-the-Bay also gets the occasional complaint about our policy of not providing space for people to complain about our opinions. Mostly, we get interesting e-mails both pro and con as well as when we make a boo-boo. A good example was the guy who must be from Ingersoll, Ontario who tells me they are still assembling some General Motors SUVs down there. I seem to also remember some government funding for that CAMI plant when it was built for GM and Suzuki.

But to me, General Motors’s last gasp was in Oshawa where it had made the deal with Colonel Sam McLaughlin. The company has broken its trust with Canadians. It will take much more that a few SUVs in Ingersoll, to restore our faith in General Motors.

And we are happy to say that kudos from Babel-on-the-Bay readers outweigh complaints by about three to one. Mind you, I obviously have a good number of new democrat readers as I get the most complaints from them.

If I am looking for some interesting arguments, I just have to run a comment about voting systems that are not as good as first-past-the-post. That brings out readers from all levels of politics. They tried out preferential voting in London, Ontario last year. They found the results were the same as though they had used first-past-the-post. I could have told them that.

But I find that, in politics, there are many things that people have to figure out for themselves.

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Requiem for GM.

December 20, 2019 by Peter Lowry

After a lifetime of driving North American cars, I switched to a Korean import this year. Price was just one reason. It was heart-wrenching to give up the comfort and easy ride of my last Buick. Yet how could you stay with a company with no soul. The company broke faith with their founder, William Durant, and with his partner, Sam McLaughlin who, more than 100 years ago, created General Motors of Canada. GM finished their last Canadian-assembled vehicle (in Oshawa) this week.

We were supported by the Auto Pact that enabled Canada and the U.S. to share production. We were betrayed by the NAFTA agreement that sent assembly jobs to low-wage Mexico. We were betrayed by our politicians who did not get us the trade-offs when plants were moved and jobs in the hundreds and then thousands were lost.

But it is General Motors that lacks the understanding and the humanity here. When a company grows as big as General Motors, it becomes a larger fiscal entity than many of the countries of the world. With revenues in the billions of dollars, it becomes far more important than just quarterly returns to the stockholders.

We Canadians came to the corporation’s aid when it felt the effects of the financial crisis of 2008. Nobody complained about the production quality of GM’s Canadian plants. Canada stood by GM. There has been no quid pro quo! Only memories are left.

Years ago, we learned the lyrics of the commercial that asked us to “See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet” and Canadians became staunch fans of the ‘working man’s’ (or working woman’s) favourite car.

But Americans are beginning to note that there are fewer Canadians travelling in the increasingly angry, divided and isolationist U.S.A. these days. There are fewer GM cars being sold in Canada. Nobody is arranging this sales resistance and nobody wants to be angry at Americans. When you treat people with indifference, as though they do not matter, the consequences come with time.

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Who will rule? Google, Huawei or Microsoft?

November 25, 2019 by Peter Lowry

Who is kidding who in the high-tech wars? Based on what Google Analytics can tell us about readers of this web site, I think you should all sit up straight and try not to drool as you keyboard. No, it’s not that bad. It’s worse. Big Brother is alive and well and running the World-Wide Web. Why wait for Huawei?

Google’s Sidewalk Labs only wants to take over Toronto. I just found out that Microsoft is making a lunge for the whole country. And I would trust the Peoples’ Republic of China before I would ever trust the evil empire of Bill Gates and Company.

I did not spend 30 years in the computer industry, just learning how to keyboard. I remember a conference sponsored by Gates and Friends in Seattle one time. When the guru from Microsoft finished his presentation, I grabbed a floor microphone and told the audience of over a thousand techies “I might speak with a Canadian accent but when it comes to Microsoft’s promises, I’m from Missouri.” There was a lot of laughter before Microsoft lackies could recapture the mic.

And yet, the other day, Microsoft sent me an e-mail offering me, the Microsoft version of MyAnalytics, for my exclusive use. It seems this small addition to my software could help me improve my focus and wellbeing. Not only that but it promises to improve my networking and collaboration. With Microsoft? And they tell me this is for my personal use. Oh?

Now, how quickly can you tell me how many of you use Windows? And how often do you accept Microsoft updates to your software? And you do know that information goes both ways when you do, don’t you?

It is certainly not my intent to create any paranoia here but you would be amazed at what Microsoft already knows. It might not be as exciting as the traces of bodily fluids that you and a friend left on the back seat of your daddy’s Chevrolet but almost as embarrassing.

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Alberta should say no to own police.

November 15, 2019 by Peter Lowry

We are hearing a lot of bad ideas from Alberta of late. When premier Kenney gets into a hissy-fit, he rails and rants a lot and he comes up with some really dumb suggestions. The dumbest of them is the one where Alberta would create its own pension plan and put all the money into the tar sands. Another is the idea of firing the RCMP as the provincial police in Alberta and creating their own provincial police.

The policing idea has merit but I would suggest that the start-up costs for an Alberta force would be sizeable and there could be unnecessary levels of chaos in the transition. What Kenney and his friends should do is hire the Ontario Provincial Police to do the job. The OPP has the training facilities, the people and the skills to provide a seamless transition. And the good news is that Doug Ford was never allowed to put his people in charge of the OPP. They are untouched by politicians.

It makes them one of the best police forces in North America. Compared to the nearby New York State Police, headquartered in Albany, the OPP are paragons of virtue. They always stood a head taller than the Quebec Provincial Police but I am told by Quebecers that the QPP are no longer the bunch of thugs, they used to be.

While my experience with RCMP headquarters in Ottawa was always friendly and interesting, I could not say that for the kids fresh out of training in Regina who travelled the roads of Alberta looking for someone to harass.

But just why the dismissal of the RCMP as provincial guardians of law and order in Alberta would be a blow for freedom by Kenney is beyond me. It is easy enough to imagine that pulling four million people out of the Canada Pension Plan would be a small set back for the larger plan but the entire idea is that the larger the plan’s base the easier it is to ensure growth in its asset base. Small plans are more vulnerable.

Especially if you put the Alberta portion into as polluting an industry as Alberta tar sands.

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On the home straight.

October 15, 2019 by Peter Lowry

We are in the final week and nobody really knows how this election will play out. We tend to confuse what we hope will happen with what is really happening. The pollsters seemed locked in secondary races and are ignoring the real one.

Maybe green leader Elizabeth May is the only realist. She admits to the media that she is not running to be prime minister. She does have images of being the balance of power dancing in her head but the pollsters are even pooh-poohing that idea.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is the least likely to achieve. Instead of dealing with the realities of being a third party, he has delusions of the glories of the prime minister’s office. His princess is going to be terribly disappointed with the results. The reality for Singh next week will be the heavy loss of Quebec seats for the socialists. And there is no way those losses can be recovered with a few possible gains in B.C.

But, in the same way, the higher poll figures in Quebec for the Bloc Québécois do not seem realistic. I agree that these voters are telling the pollsters that they are inclined to vote for the Bloc in rejection of the Tories. I also think many Quebecers are up to their usual tricks on the pollsters. There is a possibility that more than a few of those reported Bloc votes are really parked votes that the voters are embarrassed to admit are going to the liberals.

What worries me the most is the deteriorated state of organization in Ontario liberal riding associations that are not running an incumbent. If the effectiveness of the Tory ground game when Doug Ford had his romp to power provincially, is even half as good this year, it will be more than the liberals will be able to match.

And it should be obvious by now that the conservative weakness this year has not been Doug Ford but Andrew Scheer. Chuckles is no leader or debater or politician and he was lame when on the defensive. Even his attacks on Trudeau often come across as hollow and rote. He is not credible as a leader.

I think the forecasts in our Morning Line are still valid. We will be putting it all together next week. We live in interesting times.

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Liberals won’t miss Jane or Jody.

September 13, 2019 by Peter Lowry

There is an erroneous assumption that liberal voters in their B.C. and Ontario ridings would want to vote for former Trudeau cabinet members Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould. That is not too likely. What most often happens in a situation such as this is that they will pick up enough disgruntled liberal vote to defeat the official liberal candidate and allow a conservative or NDP candidate to take the riding.

But that is often the best outcome from their point of view. For people who want to make something of their life, a four-year stint in the far corner of parliament, away from the real action, might pay well, but is a boring prospect.

Philpott and Wilson-Raybould took their initial cabinet jobs in the Trudeau government quite seriously. One example of their work was Bill-14 – the assisted dying act that was past by the last parliament. The fact that most liberals considered it a weak and ill-considered bill failed to worry them.

What should worry them is the ruling by a Quebec superior court judge the other day that invalidates sections of theirs and Quebec province’s medically-assisted dying acts as being restrictive and unconstitutional. This is the first step in the act being sent back to the federal parliament and the Quebec national assembly to be reconsidered and fixed. That is what happens when the job has not been done properly. The process starts over again.

The court ruling was a victory for progressive Canadians who saw the acts as a poor substitute for what most see as the need for peace and dignity at the end of life. As written and supervised through parliament by Philpott, a medical doctor, and Wilson-Raybould, a senior lawyer, the act failed Canadian needs.

Voters in Jane Philpott’s and Jody Wilson-Raybould’s ridings need to remember that these people let us down.

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In defence of print media.

September 12, 2019 by Peter Lowry

Starting the day with coffee and the newspaper is a formula that works for me. The coffee wakes me and the newspaper introduces the day, informs, incites and inspires me. The ageless love for print news is my only bow to conservatism. It is a model that has its origin hundreds of years ago in civilized history. It is a model that has constantly been challenged by technology.

The challenges started more than 100 years ago. Initially, communications professionals had watched radio position itself as a news medium to the consternation of print media. It was a live and let live process as it sorted out the winners and losers. And it happened again when television challenged both radio and print. They had to change and accommodate each other.

But where we are failing today is in recognizing that the Internet needs to be accommodated in the same way. Nobody realized that our politicians would fail so badly in recognizing what that accommodation meant. When the new kid on the block lacks the disciplines and controls that impact all the other kids, you have allowed trouble on the street. The failure to tax and set realistic standards for the Internet has allowed this medium to have an unfair advantage over the older, established media.

There would be nothing stupider than for government to give money to preserve print media when it fails to tax or control the Internet that is causing the losses to print media. Government is there to level the playing field—not to decide who is to survive.

The people who make the ultimate decisions are the users. The only thing that users have to realize is that we all benefit if the rules are the same for all media. If an editor goes to jail for publishing false information, then Facebook and blogs must try for similar standards. And if a billboard company pays sales taxes on renting a billboard, then Google should pay taxes on its advertising transactions.

You will never convince this reader that print media is for dinosaurs. Print is a self edited version of news that is efficient and satisfying. Radio and television news are linear and you have to go through the boring to get to the stuff of interest. And on the Internet, you are never sure if you are being told the truth unless you can trust the source.

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