Thursday digest

- According to the separatist Bloc Quebecois, 60% of the dollars flowing from federal aerospace industry contracts should flow to Quebec because 60% of the industry is based there. Moreover, Parti Quebecois leader says that even if Quebec votes to separate, Ontarians and Albertans will still have to foot the bill for government day care, rock-bottom tuition fees and other public spending programs in Sweden-on-the-St.-Lawrence.

The CBC would say that pointing out the ridiculousness of these nonsensical positions makes me divisive and anti-Quebec at best, or an intolerant, redneck squarehead at worst, but come on.

Certainly the Bloc and the PQ wouldn't agree that, say, less than one in four dollars in transfer payments should go to Quebec as their population hovers somewhere around 22% of the total population, or that no more than one in four federal government jobs should go to Quebecers?

- The braniacs at Canada AM reported on a study this morning, stating that Canada's families are working harder and earning less than 30 years ago. I don't know about you, but thirty years ago, my wife was 3 and I was 2. In any case, they went on to infer that we ought to all be bitter because "in 2004 the richest 10 per cent of families with children (earning more than $131,200) earned 82 times the amount made by the poorest 10 per cent (earning below $9,400) while in 1976, the richest families earned 31 times the income made by the poorest families."

The reporting would have been more honest if they would have taken those who were in the poorest 10% back in 1976 and looked at where they are now. If you were in the poorest 10% of Canadians over thirty years ago, and are still there, I'd say you have bigger problems to worry about than keeping up with the Joneses. Furthermore, what if they took the average income for a family in 2004, which happened to be $70,000, and compared it to the average income for a family in 1976? I can't find the data for that year, but a simple Google search tells us that family income in 1996, eight years prior to the figure they mentioned today, was $57,000. Anyone complaining about average household income going up by $1,625 per year? The fact is that while some are getting richer faster than others, everyone is getting richer, and that's a good thing - but you won't hear about it from the scholars of public policy at Canada AM. They ought to stop pretending to be economically literate and stick to covering the gutwrenching heartbreak of last night's Canadian Idol, or resurrecting the "Bowling for Dollars" program, or whatever.

- Arguably the biggest wanker in rock n' roll, Roger Waters, is touring this spring, promoting himself as "The Creative Genius of Pink Floyd". Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't think "Comfortably Numb" had a bass solo.