It might not be up to the standards of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade but somebody should have warned Ontario premier Doug Ford before he got into a squabble with the caucus bad boy of the Ontario Tories. Oh well, Ford is due for a drubbing anyway.
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: Something for everyone; Nothing for all.
There is supposed to be a little something for everybody and it turns out there is nothing overly impressive for anybody. It is a strange feeling going over this federal budget. Nothing is particularly surprising. Nothing impresses. What is with these Liberals? They are a big tent of neoliberals, right-wing
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Nothing New about a Stalking Horse.
Oh, to be in Alberta when the politicos are running! Have you heard the latest about that sleaze Jason Kenney of the united conservatives? With premier Rachel Notley about to pull the plug on the provincial election, UCP leader Kenney has got his jeans in a twist. It seems people
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Peaking early; Peaking late, in politics.
It is something like a fertility cycle. If you are too early or too late, that little sperm has lost an opportunity. It is like that time in a political campaign when unfertilized minds can be receptive to a particular message. It is only the entire costly campaign that is
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Can bad software crash a 737 Max?
In a career of explaining computers to people, I always deferred to my brothers as to what it was all about. I had four brothers who, each in his own field, was an expert. My oldest brother is the systems guy, the next brother (now deceased) developed innovative computer equipment
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Did they forget to tell Jagmeet?
It seems strange that the NDP apparatchiks around their leader Jagmeet Singh have forgotten to tell him something important. He certainly has enough French to understand that Québec Solidaire is a separatist party based in Quebec. It might share the orange party color and the left of centre politics of
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Fighting the Beer Store fight.
Have you seen the opinion pieces running in what is left of Ontario’s small-town papers? These are warnings forecasting higher prices for beer if we change the way it is sold? This is old-fashioned protectionism for the beer store’s unionized employees. Frankly, with some grocery stores already offering beer, that
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Comics in the Op-Eds.
I had a really good laugh the other morning when in the Toronto Star’s opposite-editorials page there was a headline saying: Brian Mulroney is our greatest statesman prime minister. I quickly checked the calendar. No, it was not April Fools Day. This guy might be serious. Since he might also
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: ‘Take that, John Horgan.’
The Toronto Star’s Calgary apologist, Gillian Steward, thinks maybe Alberta premier Rachel Notley can frighten her former ally, B.C. premier John Horgan, into approving the Trans Mountain pipeline. It seems that the Alberta premier has committed $3.7 billion to lease 4,400 rail tanker cars to carry diluted bitumen to Burrard
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The perils of punditry.
Despite putting the idea aside a number of times, I have made the effort to stay away from comparing Pierre Trudeau in 1972 to Justin Trudeau in 2019. I was sitting in the boardroom of the principal advertising agency for the liberal party that evening in 1972 when Pierre announced
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Watering the wine of Canadian politics.
Canadians deserve better. We are promised much but so little is delivered. Prime minister Justin Trudeau promised doctor assisted suicide to relieve people the pains of protracted death and all Canadians got was some comfort for the rich. He promised voting reform but had never thought it through. He has
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The storms on the Yellow Brick Road.
As we battle our way to the Land of OZ and the looming federal election, what we are hearing across the land is becoming more and more concerning. When normally respectful and erudite people vent with expletives, they are angry. When the prime minister of our country calls a public
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Reefer Madness in Ontario?
It is too bad premier Doug Ford’s younger brother died. The late Rob Ford might have been a wealth of information about the marketing of street drugs. As it is, it will take years to straighten out the mess the Ontario conservatives are making of legal retailing of cannabis. But
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Yes, I have stopped beating my wife.
We took a mid-winter break in Toronto recently and unfortunately the wife slipped on some ice at one point and she came home sporting a rather colourful black eye. After a while, you get tired of telling people the real story and you just tell them you will not do
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: No Butts about it!
With the Trudeau government, even a recently-resigned principal secretary to the prime minister sticks to the talking points. Gerald Butts appeared before the Commons justice committee yesterday and tried valiantly to salvage what he could of the reputation of the liberal government. He danced a fine line between trashing the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “But I have promises to keep.”
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders knows where he is from. He went back to his roots in Brooklyn, New York last week to launch his campaign against the presidency of fellow New Yorker Donald Trump. At 77, senator Sanders is likely to be the oldest person bidding for the Democratic Party
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Silence of the Liberals.
It is a time of quiet. Yet the storm is gathering. It is a time of assessment, we have little confidence of the future. The feeling of disappointment is real. We bought the early confidence. We reveled in those sunny ways. We cheered: the king is dead; Long live the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Empty handed in Hanoi.
That came as a shock. We had no idea that the sawed-off little runt of a dictator from North Korea was smarter than American president Donald Trump. He left Trump standing alone in Hanoi at Air Force One with his trousers (figuratively) open. While we would never recommend Donald Trump
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: How great is it going to be?
Do you really want to trust a politician who insists on telling you how great it is going to be? When the Ontario government announced its health care reforms this week, everyone was left wondering just how they were going to accomplish these great results. That was all we got,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Because all politics really is local.
We are coming into the season when arguments for proportional voting will once again be heard throughout the land. We will hear tales of the ‘wasted vote’ and the supposedly undemocratic nature of first-past-the-post voting. At every election there is pressure on politicians to change how we vote. The problem
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