Segacs’s World I Know

Some rare insight from a columnist who I usually disagree with, the Gazette’s Janet Bagnall:

Palin is a true-blue representative of her party. She is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and against gay marriage. Her opposition to abortion extends to cases of rape and incest. The women who backed Hillary Clinton’s historic run for the nomination for presidency don’t generally ascribe to those values.

[ . . . ]

Tokenism is an insult, an insidious one whose effects are difficult to erase over time. People will forget that there were other options on the Republican table, capable, long-serving, proven women like Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas – and that McCain ignored them in favour of doing something headline-grabbing. That effect is already starting to wear off. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll this week found, “Three quarters of all voters think McCain chose a female running mate specifically because he thought adding a woman to the Republican ticket would help him win in November.”

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with the otherwise politically-savvy selection of Palin. Choosing a candidate solely because she’s a woman is no better than systematically denying opportunities to qualified people because they are women.

And while McCain no doubt sees Palin’s stance on issues like abortion and gun control as qualifications, not drawbacks, given the socially conservative voters he’s trying to attract, the fact remains that Palin is much less qualified than the myriad other choices that McCain had – of both genders. She was chosen for her youth (to contrast McCain’s age) and her gender, proving that tokenism is no better than discrimination, after all.

A day for labour
Today we celebrate Labour Unions, which rank just below being shot in the head on my list of favourite things. Not too relevant in the ad biz, anyway. I guess it’s fitting, then, that I am spending the day – well, part of it, anyway – at work.

Festival season, coda
Another Montreal festival season is winding down. I’ve managed to get to 9 festivals this summer, which is not too bad, on the whole. There are still a few festivals coming up in the fall, but for the most part, that’s it till next year.

Not famous, just drunk (part deux)
Drunken shouting, singing, chanting teenagers wearing school colours on a weekday night can only mean one thing: That’s right, last week was Frosh week. At the time I was a student, freshman orientation was more about learning how to tackle riot police with 2x4s in protests to overthrow capitalism than it was about pub crawls and concerts, so needless to say, I didn’t participate. But, looking at the Froshies of today, I don’t think I missed out on much.

Back to…
The universities start classes this week, summer vacations are over, and everyone pretty much is getting geared up to go back to whatever it is that they do. That means that we can expect traffic nightmares for the next few weeks, solidly. I’ve always wondered where all those extra cars go after the first few weeks.

Can I still wear white?
Sure, if you like. Just don’t get it wet. Nobody wants to see that.

Here’s a shocker: Canadians don’t like to wait in line.

In related news, the sky is blue.

Canadian elections may only last for 30 days, but politicians handily get around that rule by threatening for months.

So will it be an election this time? Really? Or just more of the same? Does anyone really want an election? I, for one, suspect that all the press about the election campaign going on south of the border has turned the Canadian public off from having one here. Maybe if there were real issues at stake, instead of petty squabbling… but yeah, that’s about as likely to happen as pigs flying.

*Sigh*.

The percentage of Americans who were having issues with Barack Obama’s name to begin with must be having an alliteration field day since he announced Joe Biden as his VP candidate.

It does, however, beg the question of how many Americans won’t vote for McCain just because he sounds like a French freedom fry?

We did it! Montreal has been voted to the top spot on the Monopoly World Edition, occupying the “Boardwalk” spot on the game board.

If you recall, Montreal had a narrow lead with only a few days left in the voting, but everyone suspected that major American cities would pull ahead in the days when voting was hidden. It looks like we pulled it off, though.

In terms of Canadian presence, Vancouver and Toronto also made it onto the board, but in much lower spots. Interestingly enough, New York was the only US city to make the board.

The cities break down as follows:

• Dark Blue: Montreal, Riga
• Green: Cape Town, Belgrade, Paris
• Yellow: Jerusalem, Hong Kong, Beijing
• Red: London, New York, Sydney
• Orange: Vancouver, Shanghai, Rome
• Magenta: Toronto, Kyiv, Istanbul
• Light Blue: Athens, Barcelona, Tokyo
• Brown: Taipei, Gdynia

A ceremony was held today at the Old Port to celebrate the news.

Scene: A downtown shoe store, mid-afternoon, out shopping with a good friend of mine. She’s francophone with perfect English, I’m anglophone with pretty good French and we usually speak English whenever we hang out, though we switch back and forth a lot. Typical Montreal, right?

Only the sales clerk seemed very confused by it all when, after chatting in English about various shoes for a while, she asked him for a couple of pairs to try on in her size, in French.

“How is it that you speak such good French,” he asked her (in French).

“Well, I’m francophone,” she answered.

He didn’t seem to get it. Maybe he assumed by the way we were speaking English, just a couple of blocks from the comedy fest, that we were tourists. Maybe he’s not local and just hasn’t been here long enough to realize that franglais is as much a part of Montreal as poutine and potholes.

Whatever the case, this was definitely another Montreal “first”. Especially when we got asked for impromptu English lessons.

Responding to massive public pressure, including an online petition that garnered over 57,000 signatures, Rogers has announced a $30 data plan for the iPhone.

It’s not the unlimited flat plan that people had hoped for, but at 6 gigabytes, it’s pretty close. And so far, it’s only available to people who purchase their iPhone before August 31st. But it’s a whole lot better than the previously-announced plans, which start at $60 and range to $115 per month – gouge-worthy levels.

The problem is, Rogers holds all the cards. Once people rush out to take advantage of this pricing and sign three-year contracts, they’re locked in. And Rogers’ regular rates for data plans are outrageously high.

Meanwhile, Bell and Telus are coming under fire for their decisions to charge for incoming text messages… by the government:

Industry Minister Jim Prentice publicly demanded an explanation from two of the country’s telecommunications giants yesterday about their “ill-thought-out” decision to start charging cellphone customers for incoming text messages.

Here’s a thought: Rather than summoning them in front of a government committee to try to justify their pricing, as these telecom giants are accustomed to doing from their monopoly days, why not open up the market to real competition instead of our current oligopoly-style imitation? That would take care of their cash-grab collusion pricing in a hurry.

Two related stories in today’s Gazette, referring to all three major players in Canada’s mobile phone market:

First, a story about how Bell and Telus are both going to start charging for incoming text messages. Considering most of the spam I receive is actually from Bell, that shows some nerve. Coupled with my recent notice that Bell’s plan prices are going up yet again, for me, this is finally the last straw. I’ve had it with Bell. Enough. Fini. C’est tout.

Unfortunately, the competition isn’t much better. Rogers, which recently signed a highly-touted exclusivity contract with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada, is charging ridiculously high rates for data, basically pricing the iPhone out of reach of the average consumer. And don’t try to get an iPhone from a competitor, either; there aren’t any.

The competition bureau, of course, doesn’t see a problem here:

“Where consumers are concerned about the plans being offered with the iPhones, we don’t consider this to be a competition issue,” said bureau spokesperson Marilyn Nahum. “We don’t consider the iPhone to be a distinct market.

“It’s a cellphone that competes with other cellphones in the market. If consumers don’t like the plans being offered with the iPhone they can go to the competitors.”

This is nothing new. With only three major carriers in the marketplace, Canadians have been gouged on cell phone prices forever. We pay twice what Americans pay for similar voice or data plans, and several times what Europeans or people in the rest of the world pay. Most of us pay a bogus “system access fee” of $6.95 to $8.95 per month, and virtually everyone pays for incoming voice minutes – a practice almost unheard of outside of North America. Our phones are “locked” to our carriers, we are locked into 2- and 3-year contracts with hefty cancellation penalties, and until last year, we couldn’t even keep our phone numbers when switching carriers.

Don’t expect things to get better anytime soon, either. As long as the major telecommunications companies are in bed with the CRTC, and virtual monopolies are allowed to exist, things are only gonna get worse.

Meanwhile, Bell and I are history. Anyone have an old Rogers phone they want to donate / sell to me at a reasonable price?