Uncategorized – Page 36 – Babel-on-the-Bay

Are we just self-appointed hall monitors?

February 3, 2014 by Peter Lowry

It takes years of writing a blog to realize what you are really doing. You do not want to be a nag, but you are. You are not just a writer desperate for an editor—but oh how you need one! You sat down at the computer this morning with the concept of being a hall monitor running through your mind.

Hall monitors are an American phenomenon. As a youngster in high school, we Canadian kids were still Brit enough to recognize the need for self discipline. The only supervision needed when attending high school was provided by teachers on their way to their own washroom breaks.

The only problem with being a blogger in this age is that most should not be. It gives the entire body of work a bad name. It takes years to build a solid audience and here you are, trying to present cogent arguments, in a world of 140-character twitters. That is not fair.

What does it profit us to have to reduce our 1000-plus word discussions down to 400-word comments? And yet we find that we have increased our readership three-fold. We live in a world of simpler words, shorter sentences and two or three sentence paragraphs but we still complain about the emoticons used in our teenagers’ texts.

But do we really have anything to say? Most bloggers appear to think the world is interested in them and every other sentence seems to start with “I.” Boring! Diaries are okay but if you think you are Samuel Pepes, Anne Frank or Boswell’s Dr. Johnson, you might have further to go than you realize.

You can probably deduce that this writer is opposed to destroying our environment with bitumen, has little use for conservative ideologues, royalty and eating parsnip. It comes with being honest about being a liberal. And when Liberal parties wander from liberal principles and think they are some entitled ruling class, they are going to hear differently from this writer.

And ‘no,’ we are not perfect. The other day we used a plural verb with a singular noun and we expected to hear about it. It was deliberate and nobody noticed. We are chagrined.

We do our best to develop dialogue. We really do appreciate hearing from readers. We know you are out there. Google Analytics tells us about our readers. We know where you are from, whether you are new or returning and what you are reading. No personal information is involved. We are strong believers in personal privacy.

Maybe tomorrow, we will get back to the bloody bitumen. This was cathartic.

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

Some political thoughts on 2013

December 25, 2013 by Peter Lowry

It was certainly an active political year,

But not one that we will hold very dear.

New federal leaders for Liberals, NDP,

And that will change things, you’ll see.

Ontario’s Cabinet plays musical chairs,

A lady’s now bossing provincial affairs.

It seems very bad she has no opposition.

Not that the Premier minds her position.

Who thought Toronto’d make any news?

But things’ll happen when voters choose.

But why would the mayor be so explicit?

Has it anything to do with a crack habit?

Stephen Harper is still heading the PMO,

The gentleman remains a formidable foe.

Thomas Mulcair yearns to be a successor

But Justin Trudeau is not PET the Lesser.

But none of that trio will earn any kudos,

If pollution increases via tar sand fiascos.

Harper thinks Canada has an oil economy

That subject causes a growing dichotomy.

We’re placing our bets on Justin Trudeau,

If he has the best policies in his trousseau.

Some people fear he lacks a political heft,

He has to stand firmly on the political left.

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

Rosie DiManno, the quintessential blogger.

December 16, 2013 by Peter Lowry

Having never been a fan of Rosie DiManno, this is by way of apology. She deserves a further read. This is because of today’s epic by Rosie that so scathingly cuts Lord Cross-the-pond—Conrad Black into little pieces. And in typical DiManno fashion, it involves hundreds of more words than needed to do the job.

If there is a quibble with Rosie as a writer, it is verbosity. In the age of the 140-character Twitter, Rosie wants to be paid by the word. How many times have you set aside a Rosie DiManno column to read later when you have time—and never read it?

This woman writes paragraphs that are longer than most blogs. And yet she still seems to think of herself as a blogger. She is caught up with the blogger’s failure—the extensive use of the word “I.” Is this allowed in her contract or is it just another failure of the Toronto Star editors?

But the point is that this page two column by Rosie is that it is an excellent hatchet job. How many people do you get to write about where you can casually refer to them as a convicted felon without fear of reprisal? And her comments on Barbara Amiel are priceless. Let us hope that the two ladies do not meet at any holiday parties. Mind you, as Amiel might sniffingly note: the two travel in quite different circles. Oh, how quickly Amiel has forgotten her days in newsrooms!

While DiManno seems to be grudgingly admiring of Amiel’s writing prowess, she uses it to put down the lady’s husband. This is probably just one more unnecessary hit on the guy. When you calculate the likely audience of a Conrad Black interview show on the particular channel, you wonder how silly it is for all the other media to comment on the show. The news media must have been 95 per cent of the audience.

And who needs to still be writing about Mayor Rob Ford? Like Lake Ontario fish, Mayor Ford has been out in the open air for too long. He is old news. He only belongs on the history channel.

You would think that Conrad Black would know a thing or two about newspapers. DiManno makes much of his arguments with the Toronto Star over the rather poor interviewing techniques he demonstrated. Black is not a professional interviewer. So what?

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

On getting e-mails.

December 8, 2013 by Peter Lowry

There was an executive decision years ago when this blog started that there is little need to waste time editing comments from others. To be fair, your writer also does not waste time commenting on the inane ramblings of other blogs. You only need read the occasional blog to see what others are saying. While you cringe at the failings in grammar and spell checking, you have to forgive the failings. Blogging does not seem to attract many good editors.

But it pays to encourage thoughtful e-mails. Some are quite interesting. Some deal with the obscure. Luckily, only a few give you the comeuppance you deserve. (We might never mention toilet wipes again!)

And yes, it is well understood that bitumen is very boring. That is not the writer’s fault. We desperately need to care about the environment. And we certainly try to give the subject a bit of panache. This is despite the public relations people from the tar sands and pipeline companies who never seem to write anything that can be confused with truth.

And no, we are not angry. In fact, there is no question but that the best read commentaries in Babel-on-the-Bay are the ones about the Hair. You would be amazed at the peaks of readership that greet our more whimsical stories about Mr. Harper’s hairpiece. If this was a commercial blog, supported by advertising, there would be nothing but stories featuring the Hair and the hairdresser.

Political commentaries are really an ancient art. No doubt the hieroglyphics in King Tut’s tomb included commentaries on how the boy king misruled for those brief years. They might have been more subtle than the commentaries of today but we do not have the high priests standing over us to check what we say. (The Conservatives are hoping to correct that oversight.)

One of the questions about Google Analytics that puzzles us is that it gives us no yardsticks with which to measure a blogs’ progress. With a constant growth in readership and a fairly consistent 35 per cent or more of repeat visits, is that good or bad? And knowing that all blogs are hardly created equal, does it even matter?

But, it has to be admitted, some ennui has set in. More and more stories are being brushed aside at a time of a wealth of content. There is little to say about Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and maybe next year there will be better possibilities for the city.

Queen’s Park is a wasteland. If you really want to know why people are being turned off politics, the political situation in Ontario is a good explanation.

What are your thoughts?

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

Voters hardly deserve our governments.

October 30, 2013 by Peter Lowry

It is a mindless statement of politics that the voters get the government they deserve. That is such a false statement that it should be declared illegal to even say it. What we most often get across Canada at all levels of government is the government that is the least offensive under the circumstances. And sometimes there is just no choice at all.

An interesting sample of this at the municipal level is the Mayor Rob Ford fiasco in Toronto. Against the usual suspects in an open mayoralty race, Rob Ford was the easy first choice. He stood for something—such as it was and the yahoos running for nothing but their own egos quickly collapsed or got out of his way. Ford did not win the job of mayor as much as everyone else surrendered.

It is why municipal elections are such excellent training grounds for politicians. The challenge to every neophyte is to become known. Municipal election campaigns are run on name recognition.

Ontario and Quebec provincial elections recently are excellent examples of the wrong people winning election for the wrong reasons. Jean Charest the Liberal Premier of Quebec had run out of gas, allies and support in Quebec and the only left of centre party came out ahead of a bunch of right of centre parties. It was simple mathematics but Quebec Premier Pauline Marois is making good use of her play time in office to make points for separatism.

Meanwhile in Ontario, Premier Dalton McGuinty had run out of gas, allies and support with the Conservatives poised to take over. The only problem was that the Conservative leader was so inept and the New Democrat leader such a loser, the election ended up as a stalemate with a minority Liberal Government. Ontario voters really do not deserve everything that has happened since.

But then there is the federal government. Canada’s voters wear the Harper government as their hair shirt. Nobody deserves having these people in power. For too long now, the Conservatives have been giving Ottawa an enema designed to reduce spending on everything except the government in the House and Senate. They have stripped the civil service of everything, including its dignity. There is not a department in Ottawa that is not limping along barely able to do its job. If Finance Minister Jim Flaherty can meet his deficit targets in the next year, there will be a lot of blood lost from those program cuts.

The only spending this government does is on itself and its propaganda. It is a government of ideologues and sycophants. It is a government of privilege and entitlement. It is anti-democratic and uses the procedures of government to hide truths from the voters. The only facts are their propaganda. It is a government with no empathy for people. It rules. It does not care.

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

Winning at casinos is not impossible.

August 31, 2013 by Peter Lowry

There was an outraged response from a reader to our recent suggestion that problem gamblers needed to learn how to gamble. This person swears he is never going to go near a casino again in his lifetime. Okay, that is one solution. Just stick to it.

But the urge to gamble is very human. We always want to challenge the law of averages.

And that is all that gambling is about. The almost impossible odds of 14-million-to-one for the top prize are hardly stopping people from buying Lotto 649 tickets? You have a better chance at being struck by lightening or run over by a garbage truck.

While you might have a better poker face, you get dealt from the same deck of cards as every other player. A pair of dice has the same six sides and the same probabilities as any other pair. Casino games are based on the odds favouring the house. If the odds do not favour the house, the house can not afford to offer the game.

What the smart gambler does is take advantage of the groups of wins among all the losses. If you make the same bet every time you play a game, you are feeding the house. The law of averages will ensure that eventually you lose.

But if you bet more when you are winning and less when you are losing, you can often overcome the law of averages.

Blackjack is a good example. If you bet $10 and win, why not take half your winnings and make your next bet $15. If you win the second bet, you can make the third bet $20. You should stop increasing at $25 so that you can accumulate some more winnings. The person who wins five hands with the same $10 bet will win $50. The person who increases reasonably can win $80. Since the major winnings in the game are when you get a blackjack or can split or double your bet, these increased earnings can fund some of those even more profitable bets. Nothing guarantees a win but you can take advantage when you do.

And you should stay away from traps like playing two spots on the blackjack layout. It is a guaranteed way to lose twice as fast. Also watch out for these new propositions that the casinos come up with such as letting you bet on getting a matching pair in your first two cards. The odds are something like 35 to 1 yet the casino will only pay you 25 to 1. Why not just increase your blackjack bet; the odds are better.

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

Heavy-handed Heather hypes Torstar.

August 20, 2013 by Peter Lowry

Having usually enjoyed Heather Mallick’s writing in the Toronto Star, there was some consternation the other day when reading her piece extolling Torstar’s electronic output. While you never blame the writer for the headline, “Beyond the paywall lies a beautiful vista” should have been warning of the confusing pap to come. Heather might best be advised not to seek a future career in public relations.

While we sympathize with the Toronto Star’s wish for better profitability, this is not going to be done at any cost to this subscriber. There are those of us left who prefer our newspaper on the table beside our coffee in the morning. There is that special feel of newsprint that we cherish. The person who delivers our Toronto Star every morning (except Sunday) by 5 a.m. tells us that we not only have the slowest elevator in Babel but we are the only Toronto Star subscriber in this high-rise building. (We will remember that come Christmas.)

But Heather’s heavy-handed attempt to tell us of the joys of paying for the Star’s electronic edition fell on deaf ears. After all, Babel-on-the-Bay provides you with reasonably well thought out opinions for free. And there are days when the Toronto Star’s opinions are worth about as much. And they are also getting advertising revenue! (Do you see any ads here?)

In our experience, Torstar is not even doing a good job collecting its subscription money. It was two months ago that we first called the Star’s circulation department and asked why the company was charging us so much for our subscription. That was when we were told that someone had their Star Dispatches charged to our subscription. This was compounded because we called again today to question our charges and found that the Star Dispatches had never been cancelled. The person in circulation (a very noisy call centre) told us that they could not give us the money back for the four months but only two. There was no time to ask for the person’s manager.

Frankly, Torstar has yet to prove that the company is adept, creative and able to build a logical pathway for on-line news reporting. Yes, the print edition is slow and cumbersome but it allows readers to self-edit a view of their world. What programmers do not understand is that people need to back up as easily as they can go forward. And every little fancy step they add to the electronic presentation is just another snare waiting to trip the unwary reader.

Heather’s “opinion” piece for the electronic edition is not up to her usual standards. It is disjointed, overwritten, irrelevant, confusing, personal, vulgar (the gratuitous comment on Mr. Weiner’s penis should have been edited out) and fails to sell us on paying for the Toronto Star on-line. Maybe Rosie DiManno enjoys writing stuff like that but Heather, you can do better.

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

In the dog days of summer.

August 11, 2013 by Peter Lowry

It must be the dog days of summer. That is when all the politicos, politicians, pundits and prevaricators take time out to refresh and recharge for the political wars. Because Babel-on-the-Bay has views on municipal and provincial happenings as well as federal, we use the time to advantage. Instead of joining the puling pundits on the beaches in their Muskoka chairs with a gin and tonic, we look for the least lovable capitalists to challenge before regulatory boards and commissions.

The upcoming National Energy Board hearing on the proposed reversal of Enbridge’s Line 9 and increasing the line’s capacity is a case in point. We got our comments in on time–with two hours to spare. We told the board that we are not in favour. In fact, we made the point that buying into that stupid pipeline plan through Toronto was akin to recreating the Hindenburg disaster at Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937. The explosive gas in that Zeppelin was unsafe and so is forcing bitumen slurry through that pipeline.

Someone asked recently what gave us the right to challenge a company such as Enbridge. It was an interesting question. We simply said that being a Canadian gave us the right to challenge anybody at all. Mind you, you sometimes feel like that Chinese citizen did when he challenged a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989. Luckily he was wearing dark pants and people viewing the photograph were unaware that the gentleman was likely wetting his pants.

When you have built a career of challenging the pompous and the authoritative, going before boards and commissions is just another walk in the park. Our first hearing before the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) was the experience that set the pattern. We had been part of the political team that had pushed for this new commission and we had no fear of it. In fact, at that first hearing, we got into an argument with the chair because he seemed to be too legalistic in his approach to the question before the commission. It was when he used our wording to explain why the commission ruled in our favour that we might have become overconfident.

It also taught us an important point with the media. When the Toronto Star telecom expert came up after the hearing and asked for my notes, I said to him that we had discussed the subject before and he knew my feelings on it. He said, “Yes I do. But you have never accused the industry of producing garbage before.”

The point is that you should always do thorough research on the subject and then you can make your outrageous statements to please the news media.

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

Honouring Canadian accomplishments.

July 2, 2013 by Peter Lowry

We need to do a better job of recognizing real accomplishments by Canadians. We have people in this country who commit heroic deeds, overcome seemingly impossible obstacles, show unexpected leadership, excel in the arts and sometimes commit random acts of kindness. We need to find appropriate and balanced ways to better recognize these Canadians. We certainly need to improve on what we are currently doing.

Watching a friend receive a medal promoting the Queen’s Jubilee some time ago, we found the event to be excruciatingly boring, overtly politicized and it had nothing do with the British royals. It was particularly annoying to watch the Conservative Member of Parliament hogging the microphone throughout the ceremony, being photographed with each of the recipients and assuming a familiarity with each recipient that was not always welcome. Some of those people richly deserved the recognition of their community and it was a disgrace to see to see their efforts used so blatantly to political advantage.

The Queen’s Jubilee was an effort by the British government to add some lustre to a flagging English tourism. For the Canadian government to try to cash in on the event in such a manner showed how cheap and venal the current government can be. While destroying Canada’s reputation as a peace-keeper and honest broker to the world, this government has chosen to promote itself as monarchist and loyal—in a democratic country that has neither need nor desire to have royalty.

It is regrettable that the honours offered through the Order of Canada have become cheapened by people such as Conrad Black. Mr. Black fights to keep his call to the Order which he besmirched and ridiculed in renouncing his Canadian citizenship to become a sham of a British Lord. As a convicted felon in America, he seems to lack the dignity and honour to quietly return the trappings of the Order.

Meanwhile the provinces, universities and municipalities seek to honour those of their own through sporadic programs of honours. Frankly we do the best job in recognising the arts through writers, actors and music organizations. Businesses have also stepped in with the realisation that they are promoting their own products and services through awards named for their company or its products.

What we need though is a non-political, non-commercial way of recognizing the outstanding accomplishments of Canadians, particularly those who make a contribution to our country and to our lives as Canadians. Please, we need to seriously think about it.

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

And that must be the length of it.

June 27, 2013 by Peter Lowry

When you are always intending to write something about blogs and finally get around to it, you wonder why. As a blogger, you should be able to say something positive about the practice. It is neither illegal nor immoral, we hope. The fact is that most bloggers are cranky egotists. And if you want all three of the people who read your blog to admire you for your discernment, erudition and verve, you better have something pithy to say.

But despite the breadth of bloggers on the Internet, there does not appear to be much depth. This is the five-year anniversary of this blog and we wonder what the hell it has accomplished. You end up with some of the local Liberals hating you, some thinking you might be a bit angry and a few thinking you might be right. That does not explain the readers across Canada and around the world. (The person in Qatar who reads us regularly, who are you?)

In trying to answer your own questions about blogging, you pay close attention to what you hear from readers and you also read other blogs, hoping it will be helpful. We must report that reading other blogs is an exercise in self-abuse. We freely admit there are thousands of absolutely awful blogs out there. And all of us need editing help. Mind you, a few errors are allowed but not three per line of copy.

What we cannot get over are the twits who think a blog is a tweet. While we always considered tweets of less than 140 characters as a delightful challenge, that does not mean you can use emoticons and bad spelling.

Years ago, when we were teaching neophyte politicians how to handle television interviews, we would put them on a cable show. You would point at the camera and tell them “When that red light comes on you are going to be talking to 12 people who have tuned in by accident. You are going to capture their interest and tell them something so important so that they will forget to change channels.” And welcome to the modern version of a cable show: blogging.

That is why we always tell bloggers “Look stupid, your doting aunt cares about you and that is why you start a letter to her with ‘I.’ Nobody else gives a damn.” When you are talking to a blog audience, you tell them what you are going to tell them about. And you better make it interesting.

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