Tag: Non-partisan blog posts

Warning: Business Writer Having Fun

I have never embraced the idea that one should not say anything if you have nothing nice to say. This is the ethic of the charlatan and the git. This is not to say that one should not use good manners as problems are honestly surveyed. Yet one has to admire the particular gusto with which this Toronto Star writer takes on the tale of the ending of corporate thingie BCE announced yesterday:

…The die may have been cast in the gradual decline of a great company on April 28, 1983, when Ma Bell was reinvented as BCE by then-Bell CEO Albert Jean de Grandpré. Bored by the regulated phone business, the trained lawyer and erstwhile classmate of Pierre Trudeau at Montreal’s Jean de Brebeuf College refocused one of North America’s most consistently well-run phone utilities away from its core business. His almost comically maladroit diversification campaign took Bell into natural gas pipelines, a trust company, women’s magazine publishing, banknote and other commercial printing, office towers and shopping centres in Canada and the United States and far-flung cable operations in the United States and Britain.

De Grandpré’s successors were left with the unenviable task of unloading that grab-bag of troubled assets at an enormous loss. But Jean Monty, CEO in the 1990s, was the equal to de Grandpré as an ambitious and ill-starred empire builder, snapping up fibre-optic giant Teleglobe Inc., CTV Inc. and The Globe and Mail, and leaving it to Sabia to endure huge writeoffs on Teleglobe, Bell Canada International Inc. and other chronic red-ink generators.

Feckless diversification takes its toll in two ways…

I think that is what someone having fun looks like.

Oh No! Not Torynomics!

I had hope that we had seen the last of the habitual bad math but this report does little to give comfort:

Ottawa itself could lose as much as $218-million in annual hotel tax revenue alone, he said…”Talk about shooting yourself in the foot,” Mr. Pollard said. The value of international tour groups and conventions in hotels was $1.28-billion last year, he said. Canada’s convention business as a whole is worth more than $2-billion a year, another industry official said. The government cancelled the Goods and Services Tax rebate program late last month. It said the move would save $78.8-million and that less than 3 per cent of foreign visitors applied for the rebates anyway. But Mr. Pollard believes the government didn’t include conferences and group travel in its calculations because convention planners get the GST rebates up front, not after the fact.

These number may not pan out as the actuals – do they ever – but as the looming bubble burst approaches doing things to make bits of the economy less competitive is an odd approach for a traditionally pro-business party. The whole tax policy thing is odd when you think about it: increasing income tax, the big-talk do-little GST shift, the uncertainty about moving around tax credits between levels of government, the beer and popcorn money tht makes my kids pay for your kids and now this.

It raises the more interesting and non-partisan question of “why is tax hard?” One likely reason is that it is used as a mechanism for other social and economic policy. It is a tool. If the policy is not well scoped out, perhaps difficulties will show in the tax side of the matter. But what policy goal is achieved by adding $78.8-million to the cost of international business and travel into Canada?

Acces…reaking….up…an’t…Post

What to do? What to Do? Access being denied. I have my rights you know!

OK, that seemed to work. We’ve been having mainly good access but once in a while the sympatico high speed still cuts out. How is it that the phone never cuts out like this, the electricity never cuts out like this, the water never does but high speed is at the whim?

While we are suffering these technical difficulties, check out Mike’s tribute to 80s Can Rock via YouTube, aka “the technology that killed the blogs.”

My Nova Scotia Home

I am quite proud to say I grew up in Nova Scotia as often it seems like it lives in another world where you can do things that just make sense:

Borrowing from a similar project started at the University of Toronto several years ago, the N.S. government wants its 10,000 employees to leave their desks at lunch — to eat, exercise, run errands, even power nap — in hopes of making people more productive in the afternoons. To drive the point home, the N.S. Public Service Commission sent out postcards proclaiming, “Take back the lunch break” with orders to “relax, refocus, refresh, re-energize.”

Week Four With Brendan Carney

OK, I have to admit I missed the game on TV as I was at the concert. And then I never got around to figuring out how Brendan did in the 34-14 win over Miami of Ohio. Our man does not appear in any of the reports I can find even though his performance was a notch above of last week. Most of the focus is on the loss of the surprisingly good Taj Smith. There was this exchange in the Syracuse Post’s sports mailbag:

[Comment]…Finally, say what you want about Brendan Carney – he rarely delivers the big kick when you need it most – that will keep him out of the NFL….

[Answer]…As for Brendan Carney, I exchange emails with one fan that absolutely hates him. But consider this – Miami had one of the top punt returners in the nation in Ryne Robinson. Did you know Robinson did not have a single return in the game? Carney either got hang time to force a fair catch or kicked them away from Robinson. – DW

Attaboy. Carney is doing everything that is asked of him and puts the “N” in orange as far as I am concerned. Here are his numbers for 23 September:

Kickoffs
No.
Yds
TB
OB
Avg
CARNEY,Brendan
7
449
1
0
64.1

Punting
No.
Yds
Ave
Long
In 20
TB
CARNEY,Brendan
5
203
40.6
50
1
0

My eldest brother was telling me to mix up the photos in this series and I said no. Then I read that Sophomore Patrick Shadle for SU was named Big East Special Teams Player of the Week after popping two field goals to average 1.5 a game. And who holds the ball? Mr Unsung Hero, Number 47.

Next week, we are live at the Carrier Dome for the Wyoming game. Woot. If you want to say hi, I will be the guy in the orange t-shirt in the cheap seats.

More Brendan Carney here.

Cheese 2020

Just so we are clear, I am pro-cheese. I use these little observational techniques like what if it was like this and then – voom – nothing but emails from cheesemakers. But do they hold Cheese 2020 think tank get togethers, too?

The internet will be a thriving, low-cost network of billions of devices by 2020, says a major survey of leading technology thinkers… More than half of respondents had a positive vision of the net’s future but 46% had serious reservations. Almost 60% said that a counter culture of Luddites would emerge, some resorting to violence.

That is odd. Seeing as the persent lot of luddites who would terrorize us back into the medieval rely largely upon the internet to discuss this way and that way to remove rights though violence, why would they attack the internet? Where can this foolisness being coming from?

“Today’s eco-terrorists are the harbingers of this likely trend,” wrote Ed Lyell, an expert on the internet and education. “Every age has a small percentage that cling to an overrated past of low technology, low energy, lifestyle.”

“Of course there will be more Unabombers,” wrote Cory Doctorow of blog BoingBoing. Some commentators felt that the violence would either be tied to the effects of technology, rather than the technology itself, or possibly civil action around issues such as privacy.

Oh. My. God. Cory figured out a new one. And soon Dave Winer will take credit for it. [Ed.: rimshot! Yawn.] Of course there will be more. How else to get on conference speaker lists? There really should be a 20% of a year’s income deposit for these sorts of statements. If only because they should be pulled out and made accountable. And you should have to make six- and eighteen-month predictions along with the long term ones so we can judge the actual skills of the foreshadowing futurist. And for the creation and neato-sourcing of an idea like “the Unabomber of the Internet” so that 27 jerks can now start day dreaming about it.

Mondayishness

We really ought to be scientific about it. All we need to do is address what is wrong with the day and respond directly to that. Then we would be relieved of both the moany groanings of pop tunes about having to get up yet we would want to get up.

Whatever it is, whatever the condition, it gets worse as autumn comes. Mybe it is the cloud formations. Coming back down 416 and the 401 – as only the 401 should get the “the” – there were ribbons of cloud running north-west to south-east insterspering rain with blue sky every five miles. Disconcerting it was all that structure in the sky. They cared nothing for my cares.

Billy Bragg, Ottawa Concert

So we went to see Billy Bragg in Ottawa last night, eighteen years since the last time when I got the t-shirt and taught Bill suffleboard during a break in a sound check as I held the best table in the place all afternoon. I actually turned down free Sloan tickets a few days earlier as I learned my lesson about the ringing of ears from three years ago. It was a good move as the setting for the Bragg show was great. We got there a bit early and I saw everyone heading for the balcony and the stage I look around and, as God is my witness, there was a sofa and an armchair at the back.

So there I am at the back of the crowd in an armchair. Everytime I feel like having a peek, there is Bill about a hundred feet or so on the stage of the smallish venue and seeing that he is still in a red shirt with a guitar I can sit back down again. My neighbours were similarly comforted by the sofa. A little farther away we were at first slagged for our lack of rocking out effort but then, due to out firm plan to stay comfortable, we got all our cred back and more. Best of all was this honking great big table thing that kept the mob largely from us so that we were not forced into the “my space / your space” argument. Towards the end others were telling me what was going on, who had a lighter up, what Billy was doing with his hands. Very comfy and not unlike if he and 500 people had come over to my house for a concert.

It was all good plenty of early stuff like “New England” and World Turned Upside Down”. It got very sing-along music hall after a while with good story telling and a bit of yap back with the crowd. The theme of goat pee moved through the stories and, during the encore, he sort of lost it when “Sexuality” became “Beastiality” as he giggled and had to stop. Very chummy, though the last sentence probably means you had to be there for that bit. He mixed up the lyrics up dating political tunes with current facts. He also did a mix on “England, Half English” to the tune of and with the first verse of the traditional English song “John Barleycorn“. Perhaps odd to see that I was likely in the middle of the crowd in terms of age. Most photos too shakey. Good two-hour set. The ears do not ring.

One last thing that I found interesting is how he made good fun of bloggers who would be doing what I was doing here but then was on and on about YouTube. Hampsters eating a cookie and animals that talk got about an eight minute monologue. YouTube is killing blogs because it is easier and offers value for less effort.

Friday: Chat. Pleeeeeeeeeeese.

Is it summer or fall? I have no idea. I put the furnace on last evening as much to deal with the damp from the rain. It worked. It worked without making a clang, a thump or a low grinding noise of any sort.

  • This will likely be the news of the day as reported in the Times of India:

    Islamabad’s delicate ties with the United States is threatening to come apart at the seams after it was revealed Thursday that the Bush administration threatened to bomb Pakistan into the ”stone age” if it did not cooperate in the war on terror after 9/11.

    If it actually was said, one has to admire what can only be a Frintstones reference working its way into global politics. Given that the government of Pakistan has now signed a cease-fire deal with Taliban militants in North Waziristan, one should pay attention to Pakistan’s military ruler Pervez Musharraf a little more closely than we may have been.

  • Last night, the Red Sox played the game that they wished they had played all year, beating Minnesota six to nuttin’. Big Papi got two homers and Josh Beckett was incredibly sharp for an eight-inning shutout performance. Beckett had the string on the ball thing happening, pulling inside fastballs back to just nick the plate.
  • I want my roll-up computer monitor. Life will be better with a roll-up computer monitor.
  • I think Steve did a good job:

    The Prime Minister made the remarks yesterday during his maiden UN speech, which he also used to reinforce the challenges faced in rebuilding Afghanistan and rooting out the Taliban. He said the world community must stay united, lest division make the mission harder for Canada, which has 2,300 troops in the country and will soon have 2,500. “We have no illusions about the difficulties that still lie before us,” Mr. Harper said. “Difficulties don’t daunt us. But lack of common purpose and will in this body would.”

    Interesting to note the demand that everyone seems to have all of a sudden to make the UN work. So much for rejection of world order. Conversly, I had an Ezra Levant article imposed upon me in on of those legal trade magazines yesterday going on dopey-wise about how the supposedly successful Isreali battle in Lebanon this summer showed how international law and action is a fraud – no one told the nation apparently. I guess there was some delay between writing and publishing or maybe just a delay between brain and keyboard. But I suppose when you can come up with great junior-high phrases like “moral ghoulishness” and then build a political theory around it, you have to be given newspaper and magazine column space…right? This one is gold: “Are you a September 10th person or a September 11th person?” By this he clearly means do you agree with me or disagree with me but loads the latter with a truck load of moral superiority that cannot be questioned. Go ahead and question…and watch out for people who award themselves the moral gold star in any discussion.

  • Somewhere there is a scientist saying “why do magnets always get the rap? This had nothing to do with magnets yet there it is: Magnetic train crashes in Germany“. Time we spoke out against the thin veneer that rests over the anti-magnetism we all share but speak not of.

That’s it – gotta go to work now.