Somebody should get a bill for this. Babel-on-the-Bay has been telling people for free that the Conservative government’s well advertised economic action plan is a crock. Do they listen to us? No. They have to do studies to prove it. Now that it has been proved, where does that leave us?
There has been a debate raging here as to whether Babel-on-the-Bay should not produce suitable crying towels for Canadians. It seems to be the appropriate hand-out. All we ever seem to do in this country is bitch about things. The idea came a-cropper when we tested it on the wife. “You’re going to waste our money on what?” was all she asked. The government should test their programs on her.
Of course, it is easier to get answers from the wife than the government. Canadian Press had to use Freedom of Information legislation to find out that Canadians are generally dismissive of the Conservative government’s self-aggrandizing advertising. The government had spent $29,000 for a Harris-Decima poll that told them what we had already told them for free.
But when you find out that the Tory government has spent $330,000 just on polls related to its economic action plan, you are not getting the entire story. Creating one of these ‘feel-good’ advertisements can cost as much as $100,000. These ads might look like they were created in someone’s kitchen with a cell-phone camera, but you have to add on all the agency fees, finders’ fees, talent fees, friend-of-a-politician fees, residual fees, lighting, art direction, camera direction, political direction and coffee for the crew, you can see how it is a bit of a contest to see how fast you can spend taxpayers’ money.
To the chagrin of the government, the latest survey found that nobody had bothered to call the toll-free number for more information on the government’s economic action plan. Operators were of course, standing by—hopefully doing something useful while the telephones were not ringing. Luckily a few people were referring to the web site for more information—all three of them. Here we must reveal that one of the visitors to the site was this writer. Having a special interest in web sites, we checked out the economic action plan site. We can duly report that the site is pretentious, confusing and really says nothing—but it is obviously expensive and tries hard.
As with anything done by the Conservative government, its economic action plan fails to stimulate the economy or Canadians. It is ideologically driven, shallow and lacks any basis in truth or economics.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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