Rob Ford's Response To Power Outages And Flash Floods In Toronto...

...Idle Tons More.

From the Ford Bros. reporter guy with the inside track, SunNews' Don Peat.


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Tip O' The Toque to the newspaperman formerly known as the rev. paperboy (and about a gazillion re-tweeters)
Update: Mr. Peat now reporting that Mr. Ford will, like, obviously 'be up all night'.
Meanwhile...Brother Doug gets to work...Allegedly.


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The Importance Of Reading Ian.

CanYouWearPragmatismAndAHeart
OnYourSleeveVille


Go read Mr. Reid's latest.

And whatever you do, don't skip the last bit.



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What, Exactly, Is The Hiebert-Clark Connection?

RussIsn'tTheOnlyOneWhoIsn't
TalkingVille


Harvey Oberfeld, who has done a great job covering this story, rightfully calls White Rock Conservative Reform Alliance Party M.P. Russ Hiebert to task for refusing to face the music, and the electorate, when it comes to answering questions about his egregious and discriminatory anti-labour legislation:

....Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall Hiebert ever saying, when he ran for office as an MP …. “Vote for me and I’ll bring in anti-union legislation and become a puppet of extremist anti-union groups … and I won’t give interviews ot answer questions if and when it all hits the fan!”

Not even from BC’s only remaining permanent reporter left on the Hill (the Vancouver Sun's Peter O'Neill) … a well-respected, experienced, extremely fair journalist.

If Hiebert truly believes in his proposed law and is not just a political prostitute for the extreme right … he should be prepared to stand up and defend his position … and take questions....

****

Tough not to agree with Oberfeld on this one.

But here's what I really want to hear...

A Ledge gallery journo to get up on their hind legs and ask Christy Clark, whose campaign for the Premier's chair received huge dollops of smear-site/politics-of-destruction ad-assisted support from a shadowy group of shadowy men (and people 'you're not going to know') from a shadowy (kinda/sorta/allegedly/maybe anti-labour)  planet here in British Columbia, why hers was the only provincial government in the entire country that publicly supported Mr. Hiebert's push poll-backed anti-democratic legislation.

And even more, I would like to hear Ms. Clark answer that question.


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We're Only Making Plans For Nigel...

But...

Before we can do that we'll have to find out from Dan Murphy just what, exactly, a 'Confederation Of Nigels' is.



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Header buggin' you?....Well, earworm....This!
And, by the way....Mr. Murphy himself approved this message....Kinda/sorta (scroll down).


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There Are Eleventy Billion Stories In The Twittmachine...

AllTheCharactersThat
FitVille


First up, TBogg tells the story of why black and white are not enough...

Second, Driftglass spins a non-scientific apparently fictional non-fictional yarn that shows us how the wurlitzer really works...

Third, our very own Premier tells us the story of how Lotusland is Boston...Or Lance Armstrong...Or the Cradle of Quick Wins...Or some such thing, we think (but maybe we shouldn't)...



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And then....There is....this....and...this.


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Is There Something More Than Meta...

...When It Comes To A (Not So) Critical Critique?

It's no Rotten Tomatoes, but one of my favourite aggregators is Metacritic.

Not so much for the numbers, but instead because I can find all my favourite reviewers in one place quickly.

And here is what the NYT's A.O. Scott had to say in summing up 'The Lone Ranger' which is currently overtaking a multiplex near you because Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer said so, or else:

...In the end, though, “The Lone Ranger” can’t quite pull off the daredevil feats it has assigned itself. This is an ambitious movie disguised as a popcorn throwaway, nothing less than an attempt to revise, reinvigorate and make fun of not just its source but also nearly every other western ever made. In trying to balance grandiosity with playfulness, to lampoon cowboy-and-Indian clichés while taking somber account of a history of violence, greed and exploitation, it descends into nerve-racking incoherence.

Atrocities are followed by jokey riffs and sight gags, and what links them is not a creative sensibility (as would be the case in a Quentin Tarantino movie) but a carnival barker’s desperate need to hold on to a distracted audience’s attention. Look, kids, a man eating another man’s heart! A horse in a tree! A genocidal massacre! Bunny rabbits with sharp teeth! “Who was that masked man?” is a less relevant question than “What on earth were you thinking?”



In the case of this particular movie the great majority of the critics' reviews, from all the rungs on the ladder of brow, are negative which means that its overall score (high 30's) is actually 10 points below Mr. Bruckheimer's already atrocious career average.

Which means, essentially nothing, as far as making money goes.

But it does mean that you might want to give the thing a pass based purely on its cinematic merits, or lack thereof.

So....

Why, you may be asking, am I even bringing a mess from Bruckenheimer up on an Armagiddeon times-type Saturday night in Lotusland (there is actually a whirling warm wind blowing, which is weird around here)?

Well...

My interest was piqued by another group, the fine folks from a very fine media organ called the 'Christian Post' who are also telling people not to go.

For reasons that are, apparently, have absolutely nothing whatsoever to with things cinematic:

...In an interview with The Christian Post, Dr. Ted Baehr, chairman of the Christian Film and Television Coalition and Editor-in-Chief of Movieguide, attacked the film's "strong mixed pagan, revisionist, politically correct worldview."

"The government is bad – the army is killing Indians – the bad guy is a businessman, the military-industrial complex is bad," he explained, finishing the list with a notable exception – "the Christians are not always bad."

Nevertheless, "the pagan elements triumph because you're looking at it from Tanto's (sic) point of view." He used "pagan" as a generic term for non-Christian, unidentified spirituality. "It's not Buddhism, it's not Hinduism, it's a mishmash."...
Gosh.

I wonder what a guy named Harry Smith, who grew up on Canadian side of the Mohawk reserve and went on to play semipro lacrosse in Rochester for the 'Iroquois' and in North Vancouver for the 'Indians' in 1936, which is how he acquired the nickname 'Silverheels' before he moved to Hollywood, would, if he were still alive, think about that?

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Image at the top of the post is of Mr.  Jay Silverheels playing a sheriff's deputy in 1949's 'Lust For Gold' with Glen Ford and Ida Lupino....


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Is There A Way To Out 'Clark' Ms. Clark?

WhenInDoubtMakeEvenMore
StuffUpVille


From the round-up of the recent all-candidate's debate in the riding no longer owned by Ben Stewart (either now or, apparently, in 2017) by Castanet.net 'Staff':

...Clark may have gotten got the biggest and most positive response (form the audience) for her willingness to tackle the issue of a second bridge over Okanagan Lake saying “I believe it’s time for us to start planning a second crossing,

“Let’s get to work on it now,” said the premier. “If we can do it in the lower mainland, we can do it here.”...

Hmmmmm....

First off, there is the minor matter that Ms. Clark is not promising the arrival of a bridge (with the sparkle ponies and unicorns) sometime around the time 'StarTrek99 The Never-Ending Generation' comes out.

Instead, Ms. Clark is currently promising Lower Mainlander's a tunnel.

We think.

So nevermind any and all comparisons with that multi-billion dollar Icebomb Bridge that The Birdman built while he simultaneously put the squeeze on the budgets of Ministries that actually do actual stuff for actual British Columbians.

Because here's the real thing from the Westside-Kelowna debate....

Dipper Carole Gordon responded to Ms. Clark's balderdash in a careful, thoughtful manner that was based on reality and a true understanding of the local situation (i.e. she came off as someone who actually knows what the heckfire she is talking about). Not that something so trivial as that actually matters these days:

...(Ms. Clark's) adversary, (Carole) Gordon, was less convinced the second bridge idea is a good one, instead chastising designers of the current bridge for not building enough lanes in the first place, and wondered about taking on such an expense.

“The question is, how are we going to pay for it,” said Gordon.

Gordon was more specific and passionate about another transportation topic, namely Westside Road which has been voted the worst, and possibly most dangerous, in the province on more than one occasion.

“Westside Road needs to be brought up to provincial standard,” said Gordon.

Also on the subject of transportation was the West Kelowna couplet which dissects the downtown area by having separate highways for traffic going north and traffic driving south, thereby dividing the downtown region into three areas...


So...

How should Ms. Gordon have responded in this, the current 'she said/she said', media landscape if she wants to really win at all/any cost?

Well...

For starters, she should have said she has already offered the proprietors of the Dairy Queen on the outskirts of Westside a cool 5 million so that she can tear the old, tired ice cream emporium down.

Then, she would get to work building a second, even more expensive (let's say a cool billion), super suped-up version of BC Place (with free ice cream and vodka spritzer fountains for all 24/7 - and double that in the summer months).

Because with a plan like that everybody wins.

Especially if you sell-off, say, Vernon, in its entirety to pay for it.

OK?

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And besides, if we don't squander all our treasure and resources doing crazy, crony pocket-lining stuff like this how the heck will finest of the fine folks like the Goodship Watercarrier be able to constantly brush  actual British Columbians aside who want their government and its Ministries to actually do stuff for actual people with a rejoinder that pretty much always goes something like this..."But how we will pay for that school/hospital/apprentice program/housing for the adult disabled/wheelchair program for the elderly without raising taxes?!"...

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Who Says The News Won't Bring Eyeballs To A...

...Newspaper Near (Or Far From) You?

In case you've missed them, Paul Willcocks has the first two of three excellent posts up on all that ails the newspaper business 'round here.

Number 1 post is here.

And number 2 is here.

And I, for one, am eagerly awaiting Number 3 wherein Paul is promising to offer up possible remedies.

Which, in the interim at least, brings me to a recent report by Nicky Woolf in The Atlantic on this very (kinda/sorta) topic.

First, the bad news.

Which is, of course, that codswallop still sells:

Of the three English-language newspaper websites with the highest readerships, two are British.

The number one spot has been occupied since last January by the Mail Online, an industrial-sized feedbag of celebrity titillation and gossip, with a ComScore rating of 50.2 million monthly unique visitors worldwide for May....

But then there is the very good news.

Which is that actual news and real, new information does too:

Currently in at number two is The New York Times, with 46.2 million. Snapping at its heels is The Guardian: it had 40.9 million last month.

That was before Edward Snowden arrived on the scene. Figures given exclusively to The Atlanticshow that -- according to internal analytics -- June 10, the day after Snowden revealed his identity onThe Guardian's website, was the biggest traffic day in their history, with an astonishing 6.97 million unique browsers. Within a week of publishing the NSA files, The Guardian website has seen a 41 percent increase in U.S. desktop unique visitors (IP addresses loading the desktop site) and a 66 percent rise in mobile traffic. On June 10, for the first time in the paper's history, their U.S. traffic was higher than their UK traffic...So.

How did the Guardian do it?

Of course, it's the Greenwald effect.

But only partly:

...The publication of the NSA documents represented the first time since the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 that 'top secret' classified documents were made public - nothing in the files leaked by Bradley Manning to WikiLeaks in 2010 rated higher than 'secret'. They were leaked by former CIA employee Edward Snowden to The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, and a veteran team of reporters led by Editor-in-Chief of Guardian US Janine Gibson was convened to shape the raw data into the story....

Very cool (and I highly recommend you take your eyeballs over to the Atlantic site and read Ms. Woolf's story in its entirety because it's really good stuff)...

And the story she tells, at its core, is of the very old-timey dig-, shape-, and follow- type newspaper work by The Guardian, I reckon.

The other thing I find satisfying about all of this is that is demonstrates that people really do want to still search out and read from the primary sources about stuff that they deem is important, and not just titillating.

Not that the two are always mutually exclusive or anything, as even real live Lou Grant/Ben Bradlee-types surely know deep in their creaky old bones.


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Hey, don't know if you caught it, but....Another old-timey local newspaper guy, Mr. Jeff Lee, sure got himself steamed-up on the Twittmachine when it came to CTV's reportage on the troubles at Postmedia recently....

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The Demolution Will Not Be Televised...

DidGilScott-HeronEverVisit
TheCradleOfFree-EnterpriseVille


...But it will be tweeted.

And the two best threads on the Westside-Kelowna All-Candidates Debate Thursday night, in my opinion, can be found at Wes Hopkins' and Kathryn Marlow's Twittmachine feeds.

I especially enjoyed this closer, from just after the debate finished, from Ms. Marlow.

...So true.


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TOIFA Viewership So Far....The Number Keeps Shrinking.

WhenInDoubt(OrInFrontOfAMicrophone)
JustMakeStuffUpVille


First Ms. Clark told us that that the $11 million dollars of our money that she spent on the Bogus Bollywood Awards, money that could otherwise have been used to pay for real programs for real people in British Columbia, was a good deal because it resulted in 400 million people watching the production on television.

Unfortunately, Ms. Clark made that patently false statement two months before the show was even shown, via tape delay, on the TeeVee (and one month before that little diversion we had called an election).

Then, more recently, Ms. Clark's newly minted Minister of Jobs, (and former BC Rail Ground Zero meeting participant), Ms. Shirley Bond claimed that 60 million watched the actual broadcast of the show in mid-June.

Well...

Emily Jackson, writing for Metro News, has a different number that, interestingly enough, does not look like it has been made up out of whole cloth:

...Only 29.7 million people watched TOIFA 2013 when it broadcast in India on June 16, according to reports citing India-based TAM Media Research...


Surprised?

Of course not.

So...

Given the track record, which of the following statements made by the good Ms. Bond do you think will turn out to be worth appreciably more than, say....

Zero?

...“We’ve already seen a return of $17 million, and that number is growing,” she (Bond said about TOIFA) said, pointing to 6,000 people hired to stage the event, 3,000 hotel rooms booked and 24 local corporations contracted for services...

{snippety doo-dah}

“Outreach to India is key to the long-term economic stability of British Columbia,” Bond (also) said (about the 'success' of TOIFA)...


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When Doug Saunders Met North Van's Grumps.

AChurchillUnderEvery
PRWizard'sBedVille


First, Mr. Saunders via his Twittmachine feed:

Next,  North Van's Grumps via his blog:

...If the RCMP have been tracking these two individuals for so many months, what's with the Grand Standing, the Photo Op, the Churchillian speech .... "we will fight them on the beaches ...." why allow them to just walk right in?...

Why, indeed.



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The Globe article linked to in Mr. Saunder's tweet, which is like most of the rest, is here.


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Even If They Aired The Bogus Bollywood Awards More Often Than Seinfeld Re-Runs...

NumbersSchmumbers
WhoNeedsRealOnesVille


...They would still probably not make it to Ms. Clark's fake 400 that she claimed watched the 'event' live back in April.

Heckfire.

I'd like to know where Ms. Bond even got her latest Sweet 60:

(all fake numbers in millions....allegedly)


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The real numbers?....The eleven million dollars, give or take, that we no longer have for programs because Ms. Clark spent them on (not) appearance fees, PR and vote buying.
And a couple of other things for Ms. Bond....Bogus Bollywood TeeVee viewers do not, in anyway whatsoever equal jobs...According to the fine folks who are tracking my visitors and reporting them to whomever, the current population is approximately 34.45 million....Two times that is actually quite a bit more than sixty...Therefore, you may want to make up some new fake numbers...


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It's Great That The Dippers Are Getting Tough, But...

...It's just too bad this solid pushback is happening on July 2nd instead of May 2nd.

OK?

(sorry, couldn't help myself - will stop with the rearward-looking snark now)


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And What Are The (Real) Legacies Now?

CutAndCover
EverythingVille


Well...

When it comes to international tourism, the 'boost' from the 2010 Olympics, which cost every single family of four in this province $1,800, is less than zero.

Paul Willcocks has the story:

...B.C.’s tourist visits aren’t just flat-lined. They’re declining. The Games impact has been non-existent.

That’s not surprising. How many British Columbians decided to make visit Turin after watching the 2006 Games?

But in selling the public on the Games, the government promised big benefits. It commissioned a study in 2002 that predicted the Games would result in 1.7 million to 2.7 million additional international visitors between 2008 and 2015. That’s at least 200,000 per year...

****

So...

The raw numbers are way down.

Which is bad, but some of the flack-hackery could use the recession of 2008-09 deflector spin pseudo-argument.

Which brings us to the real kicker...

The percentage of international visitors to Canada coming to British Columbia as a whole is also down.

And there is absolutely economic/recessional explanation for that.

****

Next up....

Turnstiles.



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Payroll Cards...Gouging Those Most Who Can Afford It Least.

WeAreAllKansas
NowVille

What is this thing?

Well, it would appear that in an evil symbiosis gone wild, big employers have gotten together with big banks so that they can rob hourly wage earners of their wages when they try to get at their actual wages.

Seriously.

Here is the lede from Jessica Silver-Greenerg's and Stephanie Clifford's piece in this morning's NY Times:

A growing number of American workers are confronting a frustrating predicament on payday: to get their wages, they must first pay a fee.

For these largely hourly workers, paper paychecks and even direct deposit have been replaced by prepaid cards issued by their employers. Employees can use these cards, which work like debit cards, at an A.T.M. to withdraw their pay.

But in the overwhelming majority of cases, using the card involves a fee. And those fees can quickly add up: one provider, for example, charges $1.75 to make a withdrawal from most A.T.M.’s, $2.95 for a paper statement and $6 to replace a card. Some users even have to pay $7 inactivity fees for not using their cards.

These fees can take such a big bite out of paychecks that some employees end up making less than the minimum wage once the charges are taken into account, according to interviews with consumer lawyers, employees, and state and federal regulators.

Devonte Yates, 21, who earns $7.25 an hour working a drive-through station at a McDonald’s in Milwaukee, says he spends $40 to $50 a month on fees associated with his JPMorgan Chase payroll card.

“It’s pretty bad,” he said. “There’s a fee for literally everything you do.”...


Mike the Mad Biologist, who has been on this for awhile now, points out that these things were actually test-marketed on even poorer people, meaning those using food stamps.

Which leads Mike to wonder if the middle class can be far behind.

This is an important story that matters to millions. Let's see how many newscycles it lasts.



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For those not wandering over from Harvey O's place...Mr. Oberfeld has a solid piece up on how checks (not cheques) and balances are supposed to work in everyone's favour...


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