The wife wants to stop delivery of the Toronto Star. The truth is that The Star costs us almost four times as much each year as it costs us to maintain this web site. And then we see an opinion piece this morning by our old friend Bob Hepburn that follows our Morning Line stories of early this month. Bob knows the difference between plagiarism and research but he should have also researched what a morning line is with his sports page buddies.
A morning line is prepared by a knowledgeable track person who can establish a reasonable basis for opening the betting for the race. Obviously Bob Hepburn is no handicapper. And, obviously, if you are going to propose odds on a race, you hardly wait until the horses are at post and, in this case, you need to know a lot more about the politics and people involved.
But even Babel-on-the-Bay is not perfect. We wrote our morning line in the hiatus between Christmas and New Years. And we lost our only bet. We bet ten bucks with a computer-savvy person that MPP Eric Hoskins would beat MPP Harinder Takhar. You would have thought that was a safe bet. We lost.
We overestimated the influence of social media with the younger Liberals. We really hate Facebook and Twitter and all the rest of them. They are shallow, intrusive and people who follow them usually need to get a life. We should have guessed that smart young Liberals might feel the same.
It was only just before the electoral district voting last week that Eric Hoskins came to Babel and we had a chance to see how young people reacted to him. We asked Eric a loaded question and then watched the young people especially as he answered. He was boring them. He never answered the question. He deserved to come last. From a positive and interesting start to his campaign, he became dull and desperate.
But we were right about the rest. Sandra Pupatello came first, as expected. And she has the potential to grow. MPP Kathleen Wynne might be a close second but she has little growth potential. And posing Wynne as progressive is a joke. All that people are doing with that line is trying to keep Gerard Kennedy from moving up to be a real contender. Gerard is the only political progressive in the race and that was where Babel’s young people went.
MPP Charles Sousa can relax, as his position in the party is secured. You might think the same for MPP Harinder Takhar but being a go-between with a specific ethnic group is not always the key to a political future.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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