For weeks, while most of Canada has been ignoring it, the Quebec government has been brewing a massive list of amendments to its language legislation – amendments which virtually make it a crime to speak English in Quebec. They guarantee the destruction of an English community that has lived in
Continue readingAuthor: Graeme Decarie
The Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 22: Even the budget is a zero
Last night, a good fairy flew into my room, hovered for some minutes, and we chatted. But I’ll discuss that at the end._______________________________________________________________________________The best that can be said of the federal budget is that it means almost nothing. It’s strategies are vague. There is little indication of how it will
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 21: Bo-ring…
Page A1 has a story headed “CFL, other events are economic catalysts”. Now, a head, as it’s called in the trade, is supposed to tell what the story is about. There is only one, possible meaning to this head, that it is a proven fact that such events stimulate the
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 20: recovery…..
My computer is now working again. Sorry about yesterday’s mess. So let’s start with what I wanted to say yesterday. Harper and Alward are very, very upset. Big business is screaming at them that it needs people with trade skills – like welding. (This, by the way, is the same
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 19: The Pope
(This blog is a bit of a mess because I’m using an Ipad, and my lessons on it don’t begin until tomorrow. It has absolutely refused to let me correct some errors or to finish. I wanted to say something about the governments’ (federal and provincial) sudden interest in training
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March18: Damn it, Norbert….
…will you please stop pronouncing on subjects you know nothing about. You have never studied education. You have never taught a day in your life. It is possible you have the clear and scientific mental processes you claim to have in today’s column. But those processes aren’t much use when
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 17: Riverview to build memorial to 1950…
..yes, I forgot to mention this in yesterday’s blog. Developers have bought a Riverview golf course (presumably because it isn’t making money), and will convert it into a lovely garden community with houses well spread out and a driveway complete with car as an absolute necessity. This is an idea
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 16: Trivia day
There isn’t much to say about the TandT today because there isn’t much in it. So let’s start with an editorial blunder on p. A1. Imagine a headline which said “Nuclear bomb to strike Moncton tonight”. Can you imagine the reaction? the panic? Then, as you read the story, you
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 15: Today’s winners?
The editorial and op ed pages are the winners. In fact, the news pages are so far back, they have yet to cross the finish line. Look, I yield to none in my interest in the new pope. But three pages is a bit much – especially when they have
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 14: There are no depths……
…to which the Moncton Times and Transcript will not crawl in obedience to the the wishes of its master. It was bad enough when it butchered a report of a talk by the province’s chief medical officer, Dr. Cleary, on the severe damage likely from shale gas development. Then it
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 13: The reason why…
It was never clear why the US launched a war on Afghanistan. After 911, the Taliban offered to surrender Osama bin Laken to an international court. That fully met its obligations under international law. There was no evidence (and still is none) that Aghanistan had anything to do with 911.
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 12: on a positive note—-
—let’s start with how foreign news in a newspaper should be handled, starting with a few principles. 1. Reporting them as is done now is largely a waste of time. We get one incident at a time – but trying to understand anything in that way is like looking at
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 11: Not a bad day for the TandT…..
—-boring, bland, lots of nothing about nothing. But not really, actively bad. Probably the biggest story of of the day is that Eva Longoria (a famous person of whom I have never heard) is “…still longing for true love.” Everything else is just nothing, one way or the other. The
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 10: Those whom the gods would destroy…
…they first make mad. It happens to all of us. Whenever by good luck or by birth or by our living at the right moment in history we are doing well, we make two assumptions.1. We did it all by our own merits and efforts.2. And that god planned it
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 9: Money does not die…….
….or disappear. The money that existed in our prosperous days still exists. What has happened is that it has for some years now been shuffled around so that a very high proportion of it is now in the hands of a small number of very rich. The theory is that
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 8: A very pleasant surprise…
…no. It wasn’t section A. Unless you get sexually aroused by a photo of a balding man pouring himself a beer, the only only thing worth looking at in Section a is a p. 2 story about the abysmal, discriminatory and even racist treatment of native peoples in our prisons.
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 7: Wow! a Men’s Probus Club…
I just love it when headlines talk dirty. If seems the mayor of Riverview gave a speech to the Men’s Probus Club. I’ve never seen a man’s probus. But, then, I never kissed a girl until I was 36, so there’s a lot about sex I don’t know. Anyway, the
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 6: Mostly boring….
The lead story is that the CFL will play a game in Moncton this fall – and we’ll make millions and millions of dollars. Several questions have always puzzled me about these extravaganzas.1. How much do they cost us?2. How much money do they bring in?3. How much of that
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 5: Brilliant and fair-minded……
…..by the standards of the Moncton Times and Transcript. The front page even has a full colour picture of a shale gas protest, featuring two, very cute, little girls. The story is followed up on A9 – though I good deal of it is given over not to shale gas
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: March 4: How not to write a headline….
Headlines are normally written or, at least, approved by editors. The purpose of the headline is to give readers a sense of the main point of the story. This is important because many readers won’t go past the headline. Below that is a sub head which enlarges slightly on the
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