Quotulatiousness

September 22, 2009

Truth in advertising?

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:10

Jim Davidson watches the new GM television ad . . . and pukes:

They used to advertise “that great GM feeling.” Nowadays it seems more like “that sinking GM feeling.” Case in point, car-neophyte Ed Whiteacre’s current ad campaign.

“Car for car when compared to the competition, we win. Simple as that,” he says in this bright new ad promoting his complete ignorance about automobiles.

Sure, the white haired old man looks alert and sentient as he parades through a nearly empty show room with strange other people wandering around not selling any cars. But the words make no sense.

Car for car when compared to the competition, GM sucks. And they gave up competing on cars when they went for the enormous taxpayer bailout. It isn’t simple as winning in a head to head car making competition. Remember? GM played that game and they lost. They lost all of their money, so they demanded all of our money.

Later he lies again, “So we’re putting our money where our mouth is.” No, you bastard, you stinking lackey of big government, you filthy thief, you aren’t. GM tried putting their money where their mouth is, and they lost. They went under. So now they are putting our money where their mouth is. He isn’t a nice old man, he’s an evil old liar.

Retirement planning

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:24

Dark Water Muse had a post a few days ago about the troubles with retirement planning (he’s just gone through the process).

I guess what only just in recent days became DWM’s “trailer park” retirement lifestyle, which he can almost afford, becomes his “cardboard box” retirement lifestyle. Assuming the healthcare system can afford then to cover the costs of treating paper cuts.

The scary part. DWM is one of the “lucky” ones, in a really good position, according to financial advisors. If this is true then how can anybody, in the past 30 years, have realistically expected “average” North American to be able to afford to retire? Aren’t these the same bong puffers who have been trying to eradicate the poppy fields in Afghanistan?

I guess addiction really is an irrational behavior, even when you dress it up and call it economics.

I wrote a comment, and then thought it might be a useful thing to expand on it a bit here:

This is a multi-pronged problem that will yield to no single solution.

The mere existance of the Canada Pension Plan (and the regular payroll deductions that fund current retirees) lull far too many Canadians into thinking that they’re going to be receiving enough money from CPP to carry on their pre-retirement lifestyle. That’s a huge, unconscious reason for people to fail to save for retirement.

Many Canadians have pension plans that are tied directly to their current employer. For the tiny fraction who successfully keep working for that firm/organization all the way to retirement age, it’s a winning bet. For far too many, three years in one plan, five years in another, seven years in a third will yield three miniscule pension cheques (far less than the amount if they’d been fifteen years in a single plan), as most pensions are geared to long-term employment. Given the commonly quoted notion that most Canadians will have three careers between entering the workforce and retiring, planning on putting in 20-25 years of pensionable work with a big firm is a pipe dream.

The banks and other finance organizations don’t help, either, as many of their print and online offerings for potential customers over-estimate financial needs (“What? I need $3 million to retire at 55? That’s impossible!”).

Schools don’t even attempt to provide financial planning information for students, and even if they did, who among us thought about retirement before age 35? It would likely be a wasted effort, unless it was a mandatory part of the graduation requirements. And even then, everyone under 25 thinks they’ll either live forever or be dead by 30, so it wouldn’t make much practical difference.

I’ve been in the working world for nearly 30 years, yet I’ve only ever worked for companies that had pension plans twice. In neither case did I work there long enough to accumulate any worthwhile seniority in the pension scheme (and given that neither company is still around today, I probably didn’t lose much). Among the other companies I’ve worked for, only two had Group RRSP plans (I think the closest US equivalent would be a 401(k) account). . . which paradoxically have been great for my long-term financial health. The broker for the plan at the first company is still the guy I call to get investment advice (each of us has moved on to different firms more than once, but it’s the personal relationship that matters).

I lost a lot of paper wealth in the last 12 months (at the worst, I was down over 45%). My investments — my retirement savings, that is — are back up to about 85% of their peak. If I hadn’t had to withdraw cash during periods of unemployment, I’d be closer to 95%. I’m nowhere near the multi-millions that the bank “planning software” says I should have at this point in my career, but I’m not panicking, yet.

September 17, 2009

The Ontario wine scene

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:36

Michael Pinkus doesn’t pull punches as he reports on some of the big names in the Ontario wine arena:

As you can see, the Cellared in Canada problem has not waned one little bit, in fact, this summer I watched the debate intensify. I even saw the train wreck known as Hillary Dawson, president of the Wine Council of Ontario, defend the practice as “[allowing] Ontario growers and winemakers to compete with low-priced foreign wines”. I really do wonder about this woman sometimes, she says some pretty asinine things and you’d better believe I’m keeping her press clipping cause you can always count on at least one, juicy piece of inanity. The more she opens her mouth, the further she sticks her foot into it. Many have wondered out loud whether she is just a lackey (or mouthpiece) for the larger wineries, those that currently make Cellared product. Hillary, if I could have given you any advice this summer, it would have been to take a vacation, put away the pens, don’t write another word to a newspaper and for God’s sake don’t give another interview. If the topic of Cellared wine comes up, run the other way. Her vacation mate should be my favourite whipping boy Bruce Walker of Vincor. He was at it again, blaming the lack of a winery home for grapes, both this year and last on the growers (“I would suggest less grapes be grown in Canada …”) and not on the thousands of litres his company brings in to make Cellared in Canada CRAP (Cheap Readily Available Plonk).

I also found myself embroiled in the Buckhorn debate , as organizers try to figure out the direction of the festival for next year. Something tells me I’ve probably given my last seminar at Buckhorn, unless they want me to talk about VQA. They should talk to the Shores of Erie organizers about that one. But hopefully, finding their focus will make the festival better in the long run.

Here’s an earlier post on the whole wretched Cellared in Canada mess.

September 14, 2009

Should publicly funded media be free?

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 18:59

Let’s just set aside the whole question about whether the government should be even in the media-provider business* . . . if the government paid for it (that is, if you paid for it), shouldn’t it be available to you for free?

Let’s put aside my personal frustration at having my work locked away. The real question here is, since CBC content is funded by the public, shouldn’t the public own it? Or at least have access to it? Actually, the CBC archives are just the tip of the iceberg: the overwhelming majority of stuff made for Canadians with Canadians’ money is inaccessible to Canadians.

In Canada, movies are supported by Telefilm, TV by the Canadian Television Fund, books and art by The Canada Council for the Arts, and so on. But most of this stuff isn’t distributed very well or for very long, and you can only get your hands on a fraction of it.

So I want to put forth one more contrarian position: I think that any publicly funded content should (within, say, 5 years of its creation) be released to the public domain.

Thoughts?

* No, they bloody shouldn’t be. IMO. YMMV, etc.

September 12, 2009

The untold story from the Plains of Abraham

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:03

Desmond Morton points out that one of the most interesting parts of the battle — after both Wolfe and Montcalm had become casualties — is almost unknown today:

What happened next? Suddenly French soldiers knew: they would die. The chill of terror that dissolved British regulars in earlier battles now struck Montcalm’s men. A British cannon shell smashed their general’s side. As soldiers lugged Montcalm back to Quebec, they were jostled by terrified whitecoats fleeing for their lives.

Bayonets glinting, the British followed at their heels. On the left, Fraser’s Highlanders dropped their muskets, drew their heavy claymores, and raced forward with blood-curdling screams to cut off a French escape to Beauport.

This is as much of the battle as most historians report. What more do you need?

Montcalm died before dawn on the 14th. Hit again, probably by a Canadien militiaman, Wolfe died as the French ranks dissolved. Fighting on the Plains continued until dusk, sustained by Canadien militia and their native allies. When Quebec sovereignists killed plans to re-enact the battle they helped keep that heroic story secret. Perhaps they had no idea that it happened. When French regulars fled, the militia fought on.

Five times they stopped Fraser’s terrifying Highlanders from slaughtering the terrified regulars. Thanks to their despised militia and aboriginal allies, Montcalm’s French regulars could safely stop at Beauport, catch their breath, and begin a long, dreary march back to Montreal to prepare for another year of war. Did the separatists not want anyone to know?

September 11, 2009

Visiting HMCS Toronto

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:04

The Economist reports on a visit to HMCS Toronto during Operation Nanook:

Thursday

A BLAST of the bosun’s whistle at 7am starts the day on the HMCS Toronto. Footsteps echo through the metal hull as the day watch makes their way to breakfast. We journalists lag behind. It is not easy to climb out of the bunks (or racks, in navy slang) stacked three high in areas kept permanently dark because someone is always sleeping. It was even harder to get into our racks the night before, as there were no ladders and no obvious way to get up to the middle or top racks.

Yesterday we were warned that we might have to climb a rope ladder to board the frigate from the Zodiacs. This threat was withdrawn and a set of steep metal steps with handrails was provided. Perhaps they took pity on the sedentary hacks that normally spend their days staring at computer screens. More likely, it was because the Canadian prime minister, the defence minister, and the top military brass are joining us.

While having the leaders assembled in one place appears risky — one well-aimed torpedo from an enemy submarine could cripple the Canadian government and wipe out its military command — we are assured that there is no conventional military threat in the Canadian arctic.

A true cynic might say something like “it’s a good thing the Liberals don’t have any submarines . . .”

September 10, 2009

Magna wins the competition for Opel

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, Germany — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:49

The German government has settled on Canada’s Magna as the winner in the bidding for Opel (GM’s European presence, including Britain’s Vauxhall):

Earlier, there had been rumours that GM could be planning to try to keep control of its European arm.

Magna was the German government’s preferred bidder. The decision must be approved by the Opel Trust, which is due to hold a press conference shortly.

Magna has pledged to keep all German plants open.

“I am very pleased about the decision that’s been made and it is along the lines that the federal government has been advocating,” Chancellor Merkel said.

“But it’s also along the lines that the employers and the employees of Opel wanted.”

GM_Europe

September 9, 2009

An example of the polarizing nature of the health debate

Filed under: Cancon, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 13:26

This is a classic polarizing topic for debate . . . so much so that very little information is exchanged between the sides because they’ve already made their minds up and facts are not going to change anything. I’m not over-fond of Canada’s healthcare system: my dealings with it have been quite uneven, but generally not good experiences. That aside, there are positive things about the system along with the negative.

The American debate is well past the point of rationality. As an example, the other day I read an announcement that a well-known person was struggling with cancer and that the prognosis was not good (and I’m deliberately not linking to the discussion in question). The responses on that particular page split fairly evenly into three groups:

  • People who expressed their sympathy and hopes for her recovery.
  • People who pounced on her illness as a reason for implementing Obama’s healthcare proposals right now.
  • People who used her illness as a way to decry socialized medicine in all its forms.

Comments from group two failed to notice that the family lives in Canada. Comments from group three failed to notice that this was a human being in pain, facing an even more painful future. Neither group covered themselves with glory.

I can’t even say I was surprised. Disgusted, but not surprised.

Operation Nanook

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:13

I was surprised that they chose this particular name for the exercise, as I’d have assumed it would provoke mild symptoms of offensensitivity. Apparently not:

Ostensibly, we’re here to witness Canada asserting its control of the Arctic, which is attracting increased military and commercial interest due to the melting polar ice cap. But a political motive lurks behind the PR: Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister of a minority government, may well be facing an election in the autumn. He has made the Arctic one of his signature issues, and will drop by for grips and grins.

We are told to be at Apex Beach, a five-minute drive from central Iqaluit, at 5:30am to witness the first part of the exercise. Around 140 soldiers and their guides, known as Canadian Rangers, will land from the frigate HMCS Toronto and icebreaker CCGS Pierre Radisson. Midway through the two-month arctic summer, the waters of Frobisher Bay are glass-smooth and ice-free.

Although the sun has already been up for an hour, the weather is cool, more like a crisp autumn day than a midsummer morning. The military has thoughtfully provided a tent stocked with coffee and muffins for the journalists. Those who forgot their hats and gloves shelter there as the first of the Zodiac boats zip across the calm waters to the beach. Aside from the Sea King helicopter circling overhead, there is little drama in the landing. The soldiers, clad in green camouflage, calmly disembark and march off in groups of four to assemble at the top of a rocky hill.

The Canadian Rangers may be the least well-known of Canada’s military:

Rangers reflect the communities they are drawn from, says Mr Buzzell. In the western Arctic, where he is from, they are a mix of white, Indian, Métis and Inuit. In Nunavut, where Inuit make up 85% of the territory’s population, they are mainly Inuit. In any exercise on land, the regular forces would be lost without the Rangers’ survival skills, as would the numerous expeditions from all over the world that set out each year for the North Pole.

The Inuit are usually too polite to make a point of this. But a video I picked up in Iqaluit called “Quallunat: Why white people are funny” provides a rare glimpse of how Inuit view hapless southerners. The scene in which an Inuit on a snowmobile rescues two so-called explorers, equipped with the latest gear but little sense, makes for funny, if uncomfortable viewing.

A plethora of Billy Bishop airports

Filed under: Cancon, History, WW1 — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:53

Publius reports on an attempt by Toronto to steal away the name of Owen Sound’s most famous warrior:

The small regional airport was originally named after George VI. Publius’ humble suggestion would be to change it back to its original name. Modern Canadians can’t tell the difference between George VI and George III, so that’s probably a no go. The choice of Billy Bishop, one of the leading Allied fighter pilots of World War One, as a namesake is an inspired one.

So inspired I was shocked by it. Billy Bishop is very Old Canada, pre-1960s. Bishop didn’t engage in peacekeeping and we’re fairly certain he was a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. He was never discriminated against, except when British officers made fun of him for being Canadian. The British used to do that a lot back then. We just returned the favour by making fun of them. Perhaps Bishop could have filed a human rights complaint, had such things existed back then.

Billy Bishop was something modern Canada has half forgotten. An ordinary man with extraordinary skill and courage from small town Canada. He was one of the very best in the world at doing a very dangerous, very new and very important job. Here was a Canadian who was, in the current phrasing, completely world class.

September 7, 2009

Toronto air show photos

Filed under: Cancon — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 21:40

No, no, not mine . . . while I was caught in traffic along Lakeshore Boulevard on Saturday afternoon during the Snowbirds portion of the show, I took no photos. Aside from the occasional glimpse of one or more Snowbird aircraft, I managed to get a brief look at HMCS Ville de Quebec and a Canadian Coast Guard vessel.

Chris Taylor (proprietor and chief pilot of Taylor Empire Airways), however, is an air buff, and can be depended upon to be there with camera (and charged batteries), and to take photos.

September 3, 2009

1939: Britain declares war on Germany

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, History, WW2 — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:54

The German invasion of Poland two days earlier triggered the French and British governments’ guarantee to Poland, so after the expiry of the ultimatum, war was declared. Here’s British PM Neville Chamberlain’s announcement of the state of war (RAM file, not WMV).

Unlike the situation in 1914, where Canada was automatically at war when Britain went to war, in 1939 Canada was able to decide whether and when to go to war. It wasn’t until a week later, on September 10, that Canada was formally at war with Germany.

September 2, 2009

Canadian troops acting badly . . . in WW2

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, WW2 — Nicholas @ 13:02

Jon sent me an interesting anecdote from The Telegraph. According to this (as far as I know uncorroborated) story, the Canadian soldiers stationed in Britain during the Second World War were far from being boy scouts:

Apparently the manoeuvres had got completely out of hand and some of the people living in the Forest Hill and Shotover areas of the county and adjoining Wheatley were being terrorised by tanks, driven utterly without care and thought through the area.

They ploughed up gardens, ruined hedges and flattened walls and carefully cultivated vegetable plots. Concrete pavements were smashed and local roads were apparently chewed up like ploughed fields.

One woman out for a walk with her children was terrorised by a madman in a tank and had her pram damaged.

Stories of the causes of this irresponsibility abounded and the memory of that awful Sunday lived on for years.

The Canadians had the dubious distinction of having inflicted more damage and fear on the civilian population that the Germans!

I’d not be surprised to hear that there’d been some incidents, but I hadn’t heard of anything of quite this magnitude. Has anyone else heard about it before?

More on the Michael Bryant incident

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

CTV News has additional information on the victim in Monday’s traffic incident involving former Ontario cabinet minister Michael Bryant:

A cyclist who was killed in a collision in downtown Toronto earlier this week was involved in a confrontation with his ex-girlfriend that brought police to her home less than an hour before he was fatally injured.

Police arrived at a home where the former girlfriend of Darcy Allan Sheppard lived on George Street, just after 9 p.m. on Monday. Officers were reportedly there to deal with a disturbance of some type.

Toronto police Const. Tony Vella said officers escorted Sheppard away from the scene and there were no allegations of criminal activity.

[. . .]

The Globe and Mail reports Sheppard had 61 outstanding warrants for his arrest in the province of Alberta at the time of his death.

The warrants were related to allegations of fraud, the newspaper reported.

Well, this story certainly gets more involved at time goes on.

More on the travesty that is “Cellared in Canada” wine

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

Konrad Ejbich has an article in the most recent issue of Wine Spectator discussing the business and legal side of allowing large Canadian wineries to import grape juice and sell the result as “Canadian” wine:

It’s a longstanding quirk of Canadian wine law: “Cellared in Canada.” Several Canadian provinces allow wineries to import bulk wine (the popular choices today are Argentina and Chile), bottle it and call it Canadian, as long as the back label contains those three magic words. In the country’s two biggest wine regions, Ontario law requires such wines to contain 30 percent local grapes while British Columbia law requires no Canadian grapes.

But Ontario’s growing boutique wine industry is now calling for an end to “cellared” wines, arguing that the time has come for Canadian to mean Canadian. They claim the practice is tarnishing the reputation of local wine and jeopardizing the livelihood of grapegrowers. They charge that big wine companies are importing bulk wine and marketing it as “Canadian,” while domestic grapegrowers leave thousands of tons of fruit to rot on the vine.

“When we have wineries literally driving past vineyards full of Ontario grapes to pick up imported grape juice to make a blend, it is clear there is an issue,” said Jim Warren, president of the Ontario Viniculture Association. Growers and small wineries are organizing protests outside wine stores and have called for a boycott. They’ve asked the Ontario government to enact clearer labeling of “Cellared in Canada” products, increase the percentage of Ontario grapes used in blended wines and significantly increase the availability of VQA wines in Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) stores. (VQA, or Vintners’ Quality Alliance, is the appellation and quality organization that guarantees the authenticity of domestically-grown wines in Canada.)

Historical note from the old site: in a 2006 post, the name “Conrad Edgebeck” appeared in the comments. That was someone’s attempt to render Konrad Ejbich’s name from hearing it spoken on the radio. That particular post drew slow but steady Google hits showing that there were lots of others who clearly knew who Konrad was, but had no idea how to spell his name. Having now re-referenced the approximate pronunciation, I expect this post will serve the same function for this site.

Update, 9 February, 2012: Just as I suspected, this post is still showing up frequently in the search logs (161 times in the last week). To save you a bit of further work, here’s the top Google entry on Konrad — http://winewriterscircle.ca/members/ejbich-konrad and here is his Twitter feed — https://twitter.com/#!/winezone. Just trying to help.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress