Category: Uncategorized

Hold tight Canada. You are about to be dazzled by the same people who have abused you before. You never learn do you? There is always another generation without the memory. We are talking about Rogers here. Rogers is the communications giant that blocked all communication with the hoi polloi many years ago. They do not need to talk to you and they are hardly going to bother now. Propaganda you will get lots; communication no.

Any senior business person has heard the old saw many times that “Customer service is journey, not a destination.” Some Rogers shareholders were actually wondering why God did not strike him dead when Rogers CEO Guy Laurence said that to them back in April.

As our old preacher used to say, “These people need to be saved, to be washed in the blood of the lamb, to witness for their saviour and to bloody well smarten up.”

There is a festering hatred in Canada for Rogers. It did not start that way. Founder Ted Rogers was originally admired and liked. He made a gamble on a new type of radio signal called frequency modulation (FM). He was right. People liked it. His original station CHFI FM became a dominant force in the Toronto radio market.

He next addressed the quality of our analogue television signals. He built his first cable television service into an international giant. Then he made a right turn and got into cell phones. And we supported this because he was open and his managers were accessible.

But not anymore. Now that Rogers is a television giant, the company uses faceless, mindless, automated, bureaucratic, unimaginative and basically rude call centres, hired at the cheapest price that seem to be there to annoy and dissuade Rogers’ customers from calling again. The day that CEO Guy Laurence decides to publish his own business number is when we might believe he is starting to understand something about how to communicate with customers.

In the meantime, he is going to discover that Canadians are very loyal to their sport of hockey and its traditions. Hockey Night in Canada is hallowed ground and he has dared to defile it. He has commercialized hockey across telecom platforms without understanding how people want to view hockey. He has tried to personalize a sport we share with friends and family. Who wants to watch hockey alone?

While people might seem more isolated today in their Facebook, blogs and tweets, they are still a social animal. Some of the pleasures of life involve more than one person.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Babel-on-the-Bay continues to have an almost perfect record when it comes to forecasting elections. People who used to make foolish bets with us either hold us to being within a few percentage points or have given up and save their money and pride. The latest win was our forecast for the ‘No’ side in Scotland’s referendum.

Only last week we were discussing the Scottish question with our barber. She was clipping away at our hair while explaining in her lovely Scots brogue why the ‘Yes’ side should win. Rather than lose an ear to an errant pair of scissors, we opted not to argue the case for the ‘No’ side.

There were more than a few who told us we were crazy earlier this year when we forecast the majority win for the Wynne government in Ontario. One of the Sun Media writers blithely stated that anyone who said they had forecast a Liberal majority was a bloody liar. We did not waste the time to threaten him with a slander suit.

It was a very different situation when Babel-on-the-Bay published the Morning Line for the Liberal Leadership with Sandra Pupatello of Windsor in the lead early in 2013. That was a delegated convention and the dynamics changed abruptly when Toronto MPP Glen Murray most improperly dumped his delegates into the undecided pool but then took his support to Wynne just before the delegate selection voting. While Pupatello would have won in an open convention, the corrupted contest in the old Maple Leaf Gardens gave the crown to Wynne.

The outcome of the election in Quebec was much easier to forecast. While Pierre-Karl Péladeau won Saint-Jerome riding, he lost the election for the PQ. It was easy to see why the Liberals would win that electoral contest.

Probably the most difficult elections to call are those in your local community. You get too many false readings unless you are actively involved in the campaign. Four years ago, we helped get a new mayor elected in Babel. That was hardly difficult to call. Running the ground campaign for him made it easy to see how the campaign was unfolding. Actually the operation was guilty of overkill. The campaign spent far more than necessary to win.

We are not involved this time around. Babel’s mayor will win re-election in any event. A local radio personality made the point on air the other morning. She said the mayor is boring. What he really is can best be described as a waste of talent. He is just a small town mayor, marking time. That is sad.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Boy, you just try to be fair and you hear about it. Babel-on-the-Bay’s complaint desk was overworked the other day after commenting on the Guelph Robocall verdict. You try to be fair because a foolish young man took the blame for something really stupid and people jump on you for not wanting to throw him in jail. If they had the real perpetrators of the crime in court, we would have been calling for a life sentence.

The Babel-on-the-Bay commentary under discussion was lamenting the ongoing cruelty of the political process in this country. There is a huge difference in politics between being competitive and being criminal. It is also a good reason why running a political campaign is not a democratic process. The factors determining how a campaign is run are time limits, spending limits and the limits on our actions imposed by criminal law.

First of all, the reason why we have always had fixed limits between the writ of election being issued and polling day is so that everyone has an equal opportunity. The campaign manager has a fixed calendar from the Returning Officer as to such campaign activities as when people can vote. The campaign manager builds the campaign within the parameters of that calendar and there is no forgiveness if you miss some critical milestone.

Spending limits are a newer aspect of campaigns and the campaign manager and the official agent have to work together to meet all the obligations. There are no ‘oops’ allowed after the fact that can remove your candidate from office. (You can look up Peterborough federal riding on that subject.)

And in addition to election law, you have criminal law. Just one example: Every political worker at some time or other has felt the urge to kick down an opponent’s sign. What stops you is that it is known as vandalism and has been the cause of getting people arrested. No campaign manager likes being woken by the police in the middle of the night to discuss what a group from the campaign thought would be a lark in the dark.

And as much as older politicos refer to the parliamentary staffs on the federal and provincial level as “kiddie land,” the reality is that the more senior members of the party usually have too many responsibilities that keep them from being available for those jobs. It is a great learning experience for these young people and we greybeards have a responsibility to keep them out of jail for some stupid act on behalf of their party.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

North American politics has arrived at a major cross street and the traffic lights are not working. While realism says to come to a full stop and proceed with caution, it is only the foolhardy and the brave who can make their way through the intersection. There are many collisions and fatalities.

The word is that the political left have been left out in the sun too long. The political right are the ones telling us that social conservatism is just common sense. And the milk of human kindness has soured. Nobody has time for reason or liberalism.

The perception is that the political left is run by an academic elite, divorced from the realities of the hard-scrabble living of today. The right is conversely supposed to be a business elite that covenants with and supports the one per cent. And that leaves the rest of us in what can only be called the mass muddled middle.

And it is open season on liberals. They are believed to be those tax-and-spend blowhards who have never met a problem they were not willing to generously use other people’s money to solve.

Meanwhile the conservatives are the mean-spirited bastards who think charity can resolve the social ills of our time. They want small government, little taxes, big police, bigger prisons and large workhouses for the indolent. They want to free business to do what they think business does best. While they think business will create jobs, it is really best at getting more profit from customers.

Conservatives see business as self interest while liberals see it as a possible partnership in the interest of society. Conservatives have meanwhile joined forces with the hard-line religious right by promising to enforce capital punishment and to stop abortions. They endorse the gun lobbies and pander to the old country causes of our newer citizens. They constantly seek out and support the right wing causes of the angry and their Not-In-My-Back-Yard causes.

The right builds walls of hatred against those who seek to live in peace and harmony. The right is anti-gay, anti same-sex marriage, anti anything that is not in harmony with their rigid conformist views of the world around them. They see the enemy in the liberal left that seeks to build an inclusive society. They are wary of progress, challenged by change, fear freedom and face a rising revolt in their own youth who cannot buy into their cant.

Ideology is not what our youth seek. They want to experiment, to experience, to enjoy the freedoms possible in an enriched society. They want to build a better society but need role models and opportunities.

The liberal left tries to build harmony and acceptance for all. It is difficult.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

You would think that this far into the summer, when many readers are taking a holiday from politics, that bloggers could also take a well-deserved (if not earned) break. It might not happen. Babel-on-the-Bay is still well supplied with ideas and sources for commentaries. The in-box regularly produces interesting challenges from readers and friends. The stack of comment ideas is as tall as ever beside the computer.

But we have to stop getting too far ahead. We have a backlog of items sitting in the computer to run in the weeks to come. And we are already putting together some of the stats we will be using in September to provide a morning line for Toronto’s municipal mayoralty election. Babel-on-the-Bay is sticking to an earlier decision that we are not commenting on the Toronto mayoralty until it becomes important in September. And one comment a day is plenty for people to digest. Think of Babel-on-the-Bay as your own personal political comment-a-day calendar.

And when you consider the political hiatus across Canada over the rest of the summer, we are delighted with the loyalty of our many readers. Fully half of our readers check in at least weekly to see what we are discussing this week. Hopefully there is also a chuckle or two to please their palate. While we truly believe that laughter is the best medicine, sometimes our annoyance with politicians in general seeps through.

We also need to be more conscious of our many American and world-wide readers who might not be au currant with political names, customs and events in Canada and appreciate it when we explain things. We will not be as kind with the occasional words used that require a quick search on Google. As Reader’s Digest always admonished us: “It pays to increase your word power.”

As a public relations professional throughout our career, including many years for the computer industry, we have a broad interest in everything from sports to the environment. And there is no apology for being very proud of Canada and taking less pride in politicians who screw things up.

We tend to view the current political scene in Canada with some regrets. After many years of being a faithful political apparatchik, we still believe in the political process and the concept of liberalism. What we can do is write with some inside insight on how politicians are failing us in the 21^st Century.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

It was the Snake’s birthday the other day. It has been a long time since Babel-on-the-Bay told you about him and his brother, the Corporal. It might not be political.

But Snake at seventeen is something. Tall, tanned, tapered and talented, he might be the answer to many a maiden’s dreams. You could hardly ask for a finer, more obliging grandson. He was at the daughter and son-in-law’s summer place in Muskoka near Parry Sound and we drove up for the birthday celebration. Snake took us out by boat for dinner of pizza at a place on the lake. Skimming over the still waters in a summer evening in that part of the country is an idyllic experience.

The younger, more rambunctious Corporal was also there. Recently turned 15, the Corporal will be taller than his brother when he grows into his large sized feet. Already tall, gangly and pushing the bounds of handsome, he has all the fast moves of the hockey goalie role he enjoys through the winter.

And wow, how their mother has changed her tune since she was that age and knew everything there was to know. Maybe there is nothing youth cannot outgrow when they are loved very much.

Snake and his mother recently completed the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage from Portugal. We are not sure if they gained anything spiritual from the experience but the long walk was wonderful exercise and it seems the real value was the people they met.

Both Snake and the Corporal were adamant this year that they had more than enough books still to read from their grandparents and that more practical birthday gifts were in order. We have not given up on encouraging them to read but we have noted that it is not an overwhelming pastime of today’s youth.

But we are more discouraged about their seeming lack of interest in politics. Their mother grew up in a very political home with political guests or political conversation at many a dinner. They are aware of this blog but seem to be blasé about its nature. To make note of some aspect of politics each day might be fun for their grandfather but boring to these young men.

They might not be aware yet that, as the term is used in the army, they have been mentioned in dispatches.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

This should be a standard lesson in Politics 101. Have we all forgotten it? Why have we stopped making common cause with voters? Looking at the municipal, provincial and federal political scene lately, the only common cause we see is ‘Screw the voter!’

And common cause can exist. Look at the recent election in India—the largest democracy in the world and the voters made common cause with their new prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi. The voters in that country were tired of being taken for granted by the Congress Party.

But in Canada we have politicians such as Ontario Provincial Conservative Leader Tim Hudak who stand up and say, I’m going to fire ten per cent of the people working for the province. And then he says that he is going to create a million jobs—not good jobs necessarily, nor paying very well, probably with no benefits, no pension, no union, just a job that you might be happy to have.

Timmy and other Conservative ideologues think this is the way to treat Canadians. Look at that Employment Minister Jason Kenney. He is presently scurrying to fix the loopholes in the foreign workers program that the federal government thought would help lower expectations for Canadians. They were allowing companies to pay the foreign workers less than they pay Canadians and the companies thought this was a license to exploit foreign workers and not hire Canadians. (It certainly seemed that it was.)

Demagogues such as Hudak and Kenney think being elected gives them the right to mistreat people. Why are none of the politicians in other parties making common cause with Canadians against this type of treatment? It is as though these politicians are saying, ‘Shut up and do what you are told. We know best.’

It is the same in microcosm with Mayor Ford of Toronto. Rob Ford will be coming back from rehab soon, healthy (he will say) and ready to derail the fictional gravy train again. And the bad news is that there will be idiot voters who will support him. The really bad news is that Rob Ford can win if nobody can make common cause against Ford’s style of unruly municipal government.

And we have Ontario Provincial Conservative Leader Tim Hudak trying to make common cause against Ontario’s civil servants. He obviously thinks they are fat cats because they have jobs. He hardly cares how vital the job might be or whether the worker does a good job—just fire 100,000 of them. What kind of common cause is that? What makes him think the voters are mad at the civil servants? Or that they are jealous?

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Listening to a political speech the other day was a disappointing experience. The speech was by someone who already had our vote. You just wished he cared enough about the audience and his speech to do it properly.

And a proper speech is not that difficult. It takes preparation and since he had taken the time to write his speech ahead it was obvious that he felt a level of obligation to his audience. And if he had thought to check on things ahead, he would also have had a lectern for his notes and a working microphone.

Did we mention that the speaker was paying for the event? Mind you, that crowd would be good for well over $20,000 in donations and would produce some key campaign workers. It was his campaign kick-off for re-election.

It would have been a better kick-off if the speech had been better organized. Sure the speech gave the obligatory thanks for the support last time, the excuses for what went wrong in the first term and the crowing about possible successes, reasons why some things did not work as planned and the high hopes for the next term. It was no barn burner. It was missing many of the ingredients that can take a speech from boring to a hit.

To be fair, the speech touched on a few notes to which the crowd was responsive. He was obviously chagrined by council’s unthinking sweeping out of town of people on lower incomes and he made the point strongly that he did not want his city to just be a bedroom community for the city down the highway. These points hit a deeper chord.

Maybe that was is good as you need to be to be a small town mayor. At the same time, there is no reason not to be better. When teaching public speaking there are only two texts that we use: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (specifically, Mark Antony’s funeral oration)and Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Those texts and a willing student can work wonders

And it is more than just words. A great speech builds. It comes in layers. It creates images. It elicits nods of agreement. It uses the pull of power phrases. It weaves in ever greater crescendos. It evokes sounds of appreciation and spontaneous applause. This is because it involves the listeners, conscripts them and wins deeper and deeper levels of commitment. And it can create the actions that you want from them. Because without that success, what is the point of the effort?

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

You do not often get shouted at in an e-mail. Mr. Kinsella has requested an apology. He may certainly have it.

Please understand the confusion. A column appeared in the Toronto Sun last Sunday in which Mr. Kinsella was declared to be the author and identified him as with QMI Agency. Since QMI Agency is part of the Quebecor organization, it was assumed that he was either employed or connected in some way with Pierre Karl Péladeau’s business interests. You can therefore understand why someone might be confused.

But there was absolutely no intention to hurt Mr. Kinsella’s feelings. Nor would we wish to defame him by association. If Sun Media or QMI Agency do not make a contribution to Mr. Kinsella’s living costs, we humbly apologize.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]