Babel-on-the-Bay
Babel-on-the-Bay is the personal website of Peter Lowry. It is a vehicle for political commentaries.
Babel-on-the-Bay

Will the timorous want Tim Time?

by Peter Lowry

The pundits are calling for Tim Time.  They believe that the Mike Harris acolyte, Tim Hudak, is the natural successor to Dalton McGuinty if McGuinty’s two-term government falters and falls this October.

But pundits have been wrong before.  Who would have believed that a walking candidate for a heart attack such as right-winger Rob Ford would become mayor of Canada’s greatest city?  Who expected Jack Layton’s NDP breakthrough in Quebec to produce a majority government for Conservative Stephen Harper?  With those other right-wingers in office, does Tim Hudak qualify for a trifecta bet?

Hudak winning under the circumstances would be unusual.  Ontario voters have never been inclined to want the same party in power in both Ottawa and Queen’s Park.  Nor are Ontario voters noted for their right-wing leanings.  They tend to go with the flow.  They go to the best bet for economic stability and growth and they respect leadership.

And leadership is the problem for the Ontario election in October.  You have to look to Andrea Horwath, Tim Hudak and Dalton McGuinty for leadership.  Some choice!  That is all you have got.

Andrea Horwath is taking a reasoned, left of centre approach that is all over the map and confusing voters.  Tim Hudak is a trained pit bull and he considers it his job to ravage Liberals and anything they propose.  The voters are starting to know what he is against but they have no idea what he is for.  Instead of showing any leadership, McGuinty is playing it low key.  His strategy seems to be that he can be just conservative enough that people do not have to try Tim and that he is socially conscious enough that they do not have to switch to Andrea.  If the contest gets down to who can be the most boring, McGuinty is the front runner.

But who said provincial politics had to be exciting?

The provincial liberals actually believe that Andrea Horwath and Tim Hudak will cancel each other out and keep Dalton McGuinty in power.  The only question is exactly how many seats he will lose with this strategy?  If Dalton loses more than 16 of his existing seats, he could be into a minority situation.

One of those 16 seats in Ontario that Dalton might be risking is right here in Babel.

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

Where will Bob Rae lead the Liberal Party?

by Peter Lowry

In case you did not think that headline question was rhetorical, the answer is: nowhere.  The Liberal Party of Canada is not Bob Rae’s party to take anywhere.  When his couple of years as interim leader are finished, the party will still be very much in evidence in Ottawa and hopefully across Canada. Rae’s role is to encourage the party to use the opportunity during his time as caretaker to rethink and realign liberalism in this country.  He can help but it would be best for him to do it in a passive role.

The very fact of his previous life as a failed NDP Premier of Ontario will be useful.  His leadership position will help to cleanse the Liberal Party of Canada of the extremes of its right wing.  There is a Conservative Party that will welcome these misfits and the Liberal Party can more clearly define itself on the centre-left of the political spectrum.

The party never needed the Paul Martin’s and his ilk that thought they were smart to campaign on the left and then rule on the right.  The public quickly saw through Martin and his right-wing Liberals and said if they were going to have right-wing government, they would opt for Harper and the real thing.

But there is a desperate need in this country for a party of the centre-left.  That is the opportunity for liberalism.  It is an opportunity for a party with a social conscience, a concern for freedom of the individual, a party of equal rights for all, a party that says business serves the consumer first, that says government serves the citizen first, and ensures that we have courts that deliver justice to the citizen.  It has to be a political party that protects the environment for our now and future citizens.  It has to be a party, not dominated by unions, but that works for fairness for all workers.

Creating this new centre-left liberalism is not going to occur like magic.  It will take some years of hard work.  There will be missteps and confusion.  It has to start with the members of the Liberal Party taking over the power in the party from the Ottawa coterie.  This requires the recognition that the real power in the party resides in each electoral district.  The Leader’s office, with Rae temporarily filling the role, only runs the caucus.  The Caucus chose Rae as interim leader and they should work with him.  The Liberal Party members have a lot more important work to do.

We will keep you posted.

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

The Wondering World of Stephen Harper.

by Peter Lowry

It is unseemly for adult males to giggle but we recently read an op-ed in which a National Citizen’s Coalition apologist complained that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was no longer conservative enough.  It is important to explain that op-ed is newspaper jargon for opposite the editorial.  This has been the location which larger newspapers traditionally use for opinion articles that do not necessarily reflect the publication’s opinion.

Since we are referring to the Toronto Star, we can only assume that this is not the same opinion as is held by the Toronto Star editors.  Our very best giggle in the article was when the writer referred to the Fraser Institute as “a respected economic think-tank.”  Obviously the Toronto Star’s bureau of accuracy missed that typographical error.

But the article was funnier than that.  The writer assures us that Stephen Harper does not have some sort of a right-wing agenda.  He tells us that is the old Stephen Harper.  He introduces us to a new, kinder, gentler Stephen Harper who only wants Canadians to have the benefits of paternalistic conservative governments for ever and ever.

The writer denies emphatically that Stephen Harper has any intention of using his majority in parliament to embark on an ideological or right-wing crusade.  By this stage, the writer had this reader in paroxysms of almost wet-your-pants laughter.

He sees Mr. Harper as wanting his Conservative Party to occupy the “centre” or “moderate” political ground, a piece of real estate, the writer believes the Liberal Party once owned.  He fails to tell us how Mr. Harper could possibly find it.

A further bit of humour from this guy is that the Harper government will cut the deficit and balance the government’s books only, he assures us, if it can be done in a relatively painless fashion.  He notes that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has told Canadians that he can easily find $4 billion per year in savings.  Hell, what is $4 billion these days?

Mind you, he quotes some of those ‘thinkers’ at the Fraser Institute as saying the government’s plan will not work.  They say that drastic spending cuts are necessary.  They want “real and substantial spending reductions that either significantly cut programs or eliminate them entirely.”

Think about it.  These are the people who brought Stephen Harper to power.   We might not be in the majority these days but we can be proud we voted Liberal.

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

Blogs, bloggers and the feed-back they get.

by Peter Lowry

There was an interesting comment the other day from a regular reader who said, “Where did that microphone come from?”  She could not understand why the topic was suddenly microphones.  The simple answer was that we had just been at an event where the microphone and sound system were in terrible condition and nobody seemed to know how to handle the problem.

What we realized was that her concern was that, once again, we had wandered from the political commentary for which she reads our blog.  That fits the pattern we have seen in the statistical analysis we get from Google Analytics.  For example, the best read column in the past year was the one on the F-35 fighter aircraft.  It was not the discussion of the attributes of the aircraft that interested people but the political decisions behind it.

That settles it.  Our blog is now just of political commentary.  Most readers seem to have little problem with the liberal bias.  The Provincial Liberal Party here in Babel might argue that but their problem is that we are not writing for them.  When we see them doing the job properly and democratically, we will cheerfully recognize their effort.  When we see Premier McGuinty showing some leadership and liberalism, we will find something nice to say about him.  His only positive attributes at the moment are that he is not Tim Hudak or Andrea Horwath.

In the past year, we have posted something in our blog 365 days in a row.  That is sometimes a chore and sometimes we are posting something just to be here.  That is to stop.  If there is nothing posted one day, it will be because we have nothing important to say.  Posting a new item two or three times a week is an easier schedule for this writer and readers get better quality stuff.

There are also times we are busy working on something else.  Thank goodness some people like our writing enough to pay for it.

We are going to stop the silly little poems.  Nobody has ever admitted to reading them or even chuckling.  We believe that the poem, The man who stood on the side of the road, was the synthesis of Michael Ignatieff’s time as leader of the federal Liberals.  Few agreed with us.  The continuing series of two and three liners were going to be our contribution to Twitter (we called them our ‘twits”), but Twitter has already lost its bloom in social commentary..

We will try for more balance between the federal, provincial and municipal scene.  The current municipal scene lacks the humour of the last council.  Mind you, having the free services of Councillor Prowse as our new chauffeur is a funny tale but we will save that for when council takes July off.

The danger in commenting on the federal political scene is that, too often, discussions of the Harper government’s policies—or lack thereof—come across as rants.  Sorry about that but some people can really piss you off.

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

Our Canada, our country, please help.

by Peter Lowry

It is okay to be patriotic.  It is especially alright for Canadians.  There is a lot to cheer about across our country.  There is much to love about this strikingly beautiful and richly endowed land.  And there are some very good people here.  Many are smart.  Most are very pleasant.  A few are angry about something or other but luckily they are the exception.  After all, if there were not a few assholes around, how could we recognize and appreciate the nice people.

And we certainly appreciate those nice ones.  We smile at the person who holds a door for us.  We thank people who are pleasant to deal with in business.  We wave at a motorist who lets us in to a line of traffic.  We greet people we know well with appropriate hugs or kisses.  Canadians are, in the main, warm-hearted, friendly people.  They are also mostly tolerant.  They do not all go into shock to find out someone is gay.  They generally accept the facts that not everybody has the same birth language, the same religion or no religion.

If we were asked for just one word to describe Canadians, our vote is for tolerance.  We are known around the world for that.  People respect us as a nation for our tolerance.  Americans envy it.  Brits see it as part of our youthful exuberance as a country.  The French deride it.  The Germans do not understand it.  The Scandinavians want us to pay them royalties for it.  In other countries, the struggle to simply survive leaves little time to contemplate it.  Canadians should enjoy it.

But first, we have to deal with some of those aforementioned assholes.  One, we would push to the front of the line, is Mr. Stephen Harper.  Some think the Prime Minister is a wolf in boring clothing.  One thing we know for sure, he lacks tolerance.  He appears to us to be a chauvinist, a careless laissez faire economist, an egotist and he has proved he has no compunction about lying to the Canadian people.  He is a warmonger.  He is mean spirited.  And he has damaged our international reputation.  We should all feel sorry for the people whom he gulled into voting for his party.  Boy, will they regret it!

But, obviously, his government will run its course.  That gives Canadians a window of about four years to plan a better way to run our wonderful country.  That is not much time for the makeover of a country.

What we need is a larger and more vocal movement to endorse a constitutional conference for the country.  The conference would need to be followed up with a referendum.  There is no other peaceful way that we can effect change in how we are governed.  If you think we should wait for the federal and provincial governments to agree on changes, you should live so long!  These governments will not agree to a constitutional conference unless we as citizens force the issue.  We have to cut across party boundaries, political boundaries and cultural boundaries and make politicians pay attention.

Today is Canada Day, 2011.  In 2017, our country will be 150 years old.  Is it not about time that you get off your ass and care?  Is it not time to wave that beautiful flag and say enough is enough?  Let’s grow up Canada.

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

Comment for today.

by Peter Lowry

The ties binding Canadians to England’s royals,

Are handcuffs of ignorance and our blood boils.

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The speech and how to tame it.

by Peter Lowry

Why are people afraid of addressing an audience?  The most common answer to that is that they lack confidence.  In teaching courses in public speaking, we have seen the most timid person become a tiger on the platform.  All it requires is the time to show the individual what they can accomplish.

Mind you, the basics can be learned but it is application and practice that creates the really great speakers.  We learned how far practice can take a person from our late friend Charles Templeton.  Chuck got his early start from listening to the evangelists who came to Toronto when he was young.  He used to practice their styles in front of a mirror.  He had learned how they used words and how they used their bodies for emphasis   He would admit with a laugh that he really started out to be a cartoonist but found that it was much easier just to talk.  That confidence in speaking never left him, even after he quit the church, tried politics and found his niche in the media.

But confidence can be deceiving.  In making a brief presentation to city council a couple weeks ago, we were overconfident and did not do well.  People who watched on television said that it was fine but we knew we lost our place in our notes a couple times and we could have done better if we had practiced it a few times.

But we really prefer to write speeches than deliver them.  We learned very early in our career that we had a knack for being able to hear the person say the words in our mind as we wrote them.  It is also the way good dialogue is created when writing for radio and television or producing fiction.

The key to speech writing is to build on audience agreement.  You layer agreements through the speech, building acceptance of what the person is telling the audience. You structure the sentences to allow the audience to react to the speech at planned intervals.  You create applause points for example to enable the audience to react.

A person for whom we wrote a speech recently tried to change some of the sentence structure.  He was correct in his grammar but it was wrong for the speech.  We convinced him to use our wording.  He was impressed when the audience proved the point by feeling free to applaud at what he thought was the wrong way to end some sentences.

Good writing is not always a good speech.  Speech writers research the audience and then research the topic.  They know how the words are understood.  There are many examples of that.

Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream and he used heavy repetition to drive home his point in a brilliant speech that was heard around the world.  Abraham Lincoln told the audience at Gettysburg that few would remember his words that day.  Millions of American school children know he was wrong.  Marc Anthony told the Roman mob that he came to bury Caesar, not to praise him.  He lied.  He turned the mob.

A good speech is communication at its most basic.  It identifies with the audience.  It uses words that are easy for the audience to understand.  It employs emotion.  It challenges.  It motivates.  It informs.  It paints pictures.  It asks for commitment.  It is memorable.  It is visceral.  It shows leadership.  And you thought it was just another speech.

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

Comment for today.

by Peter Lowry

The monarchists are hyping up the coming royal visit,

To treat them as visiting movie stars isn’t smart, is it?

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How to learn to love the microphone.

by Peter Lowry

The microphone is your friend.  It can help you communicate with large groups.  No matter how big your voice, there are audiences that are bigger than your voice alone can handle.  If you want to be a communicator, you have to learn to use the microphone.

The only problem is that most microphones you encounter in banquet halls, church halls, schools, community centres and other such venues are absolute crap. Even if the sound system is of the correct quality and design for the room and installed by an acoustical expert (rarely, if ever), that was two years ago and since then people have been intent on doing severe damage to the system.  They have no idea of the trouble they cause when they hit the microphone, run wheels over cables, play with the amplifier dials, randomly flick switches on and off and drop delicate speakers.  All you can do most of the time is hope the damn system lasts long enough for you to finish communicating what you need to say to the audience.

There is one solution that is practiced by professional communicators.  A professional comes early and checks out the system.  The professional asks that someone be there who knows how the system works.  A paid professional insists that someone be there to manage the system when in use.  Good luck with that.

If checking ahead is impossible, try to watch from the back of the room while someone uses the sound system.    If, for example, you hear popping, screeching, breathing and the voice tends to boom, the speaker is probably too close to the microphone.  That is a common error and is easily corrected by stepping back from the microphone and speaking over it, not directly into it.  And do not forget that the mouth is the most visible part of facial expression.  Do not let the microphone hide it.

And, for goodness sake, do not touch the microphone.  Only professionals use hand microphones.  Unless you are going to spend many, many hours practicing holding it properly, keep your paws off it.  You need both hands for your notes or full speech.  You need your hands for emphasis.

(If it is one of those cheap directional microphones—they are small and have a flat grill face—try talking directly into it from at least eight to ten inches away.)

The macho speaker who listens to previous speakers and claims they do not need that microphone is kidding nobody.  If they keep it up, they will do irreparable harm to their voice, lose all inflection and tone of voice for emphasis and annoy people in the front rows because of shouting at them.  It is a lose, lose, lose situation.

If you know it is a bad microphone, it is not the best course to see how fast you can talk and get out of there.  Many of these bad microphones—positioned properly—will do the job if you speak clearly and distinctly and enunciate every word.

It is critical that you only speak when you are looking at the oldest person (who is a little deaf) in the back row.  If you do not hold this person’s attention, you might as well cut your talk short.  You are not communicating.

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

Comment for today.

by Peter Lowry

There are a few months until the October election,

Voters have time to consider their party selection.

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