Thursday digest II
- According to hand wringing CBC analysts, the poor are getting poorer. How do they explain this? Well, for starters, welfare recipients in Alberta make about half as much now as they did back in 1986. I'd say that if you've been on welfare for twenty years, you've got problems ... and isn't that exactly the point? It would be nice if the coverage also showed how many people got off the welfare rolls after the tough-love approach was implemented. As Bill Clinton's reforms showed, true success is defined by the number of people who off welfare rather than by the number of people who are on it, and in a time of sustained full employment, welfare should certainly be seen as a (temporary) hand up rather than a (permanent) hand out.
- Also on social policy, the Canadian Medical Association has elected the controversial Dr. Brian Day as their president. While I wouldn't say that those who would like the freedom to purchase their own care as they see fit should start jumping up and down just yet, this is another in a long line of defeats for those who support one-size-fits-all, North Korean-style socialist monopolies when it comes to the provision of health services.
- Ottawa, a city with an inferiority complex the size of Toronto, is about to wave goodbye to their Triple-A ballteam which is poised to move to Allentown, Pennsylvania, a ham-n-egg town that was so down on its luck 25 years ago that it was immortalized in a Billy Joel song. People of Ottawa, you pretty much suck. You can have all the chamber music and folk festivals you want along with Lawrence Welk and the ballet at the NAC, but no one is going to consider you major-league if the people of the nation's capital keep shitting all over their sports teams like the Renegades and Lynx. And if you're tempted to point to the Sens as an exception, just wait till they inevitably become a non-playoff team and people have to drive to the suburbs of Peterborough on a Tuesday night in December to see them face off against the Columbus Blue Jackets for $175 a pop. Ownership, desperately looking to sell, will consider a three-quarters-full arena a good night, and we'll all be wondering why Ottawa just doesn't get any respect.
posted by Road Hammer @ 2:32 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Hammer, I understand the pain you feel as the Lynx pack up for Allentown. And Ottawans (self included) are guilty of not supporting a high level of ball in the city. But this is a different situtation than with the Renegades.
The Gades are history due to terrible ownership and bad decision-making by the league. You cannot blame the folks in the city for this one. Fans showed up in good numbers (not great, but good) IN SPITE of the way the team was run. The fact that some 20,000 a game were there is testament to the desire for a quality football operation in the city.
If the clowns who ran the team in its final 2 seasons put any kind of effort and money into their pet project, an extra few thousand a game would have filled the seats. And no, Mardi Gras type shenanigans borrowed from the Glieberman's ski hill venture doesn't qualify as a real marketing effort.
Don't blame the victims!
The thing about the Gades is that they only played 18 games over two years under the Gliebermans. To come out to a game or two once a summer/fall shouldn't be too much to ask but perhaps I'm just bitter, a sucker for punishment, or both.
B, how did the NDP screw up the location of the arena? I thought it was the NCC/feds, no?
The reason the Gades left town was because they didn't have an owner and the league didn't take steps to keep the team afloat, as it did for Toronto and Hamilton. The attendance wasn't the issue. In fact, around the league Ottawa is regarded as having a good fan base. That is why the board of governors is eager to get football back up and running in O town.
An aside rant ... I get sick of hearing people bitch that the Gades only got 20,000 a game, or whatever the number, and then cite the geniuses who run the Alouttes for moving from the Big Owe into the stadium at McGill. They love to point out that the Percical Molson Stadium has been sold out for consecutive seasons. Except the place only holds 20,000 itself.
Why is 20,000 shitty attendance in Ottawa, but a huge success in Montreal -- with a population about 4 times the size of the Nation's cap?
And agreement on the Sens' eventual attendance decline. That ridiculous location and the 10:30 p.m. traffic jam it causes 42 times a year is gonna catch up once the team loses steam.
The analogy about success can apply just as easily to the Als. Wait till Calvillo retires and they start losing. No one will care.
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