Anyone notice the lame and insulting "Worth a Million" PR campaign brought to you by the TTC union has disappeared without a trace?
Don't believe me? Click on its dedicated website link: http://www.worthamillion.ca/
Unveiled just before the "we have a deal / we have a strike" PR fiasco, ATU Local 113, which represents most TTC workers, put big bucks into the campaign, with posters, commercials and a fancy website.
But I guess people looked at the poster of ten TTC employees they had in subway stations and decided at $100,000 a year each in pay, they were indeed worth a million.
I suppose whoever was behind this campaign never heard of focus groups - that basic idea in the ad biz that you show the campaign to some ordinary joes and ask them what they think. If they had, this Rosemary's baby of a campaign would never have seen the light of day. What it really shows you is how disconnected the TTC union is from reality.
If I was a union member, I'd be asking how much of my pension fund was spent to bring this short-lived monster into this world. Of course, starting the campaign in advance of contract negotiations was probably seen by some union rep in a suit from Moores as a good way to soften up the public for the next round of extortionate pay demands - show the public why they should love and respect the TTC workers and we'll pony up. Proof they've been spending too much time in the unventilated subway tunnels.
Thanks to the wonder of the Internet, you can still read cached pieces of the pages from the site to remind us how wonderful our TTC employees are:
[Photo missing] ATU Local 113 President Bob Kinnear (centre, blue shirt) with the stars of the union’s Worth a Million television and transit advertising campaign. They come from many different areas of TTC operations, including Maintenance and Wheel-Trans. Some are here because they did something special and noteworthy while on the job. The rest are here because just in doing their daily jobs, like all their fellow ATU 113 members, they make Toronto a cleaner, safer, and more prosperous city. Read more about them here.
The Special Report by leading environmentalist and former Ontario Cabinet Minister Marilyn Churley [still available on YouTube - a must see - ed.] calculates that the economic, environmental, health and other benefits of the TTC to Toronto total at least 12 billion dollars. And that’s a conservative estimate. Many benefits of the TTC are literally incalculable, but real.
Since about 11,000 people work for the TTC, that means each contributes, on average, more than a million dollars in benefits every year. Most TTC workers are represented by ATU Local 113, the sponsor of this site. We’re proud of the work our members do, work that deserves public recognition. Each one is literally Worth a Million.
Well, at least a tenth of million.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Worth A Million
TTC Gets Its Money's Worth for Information Technology
If anyone doubts the TTC is getting its money's worth out of its Information Technology budget, just have a look at their slick website: http://www.toronto.ca/ttc/
It's amazing what the TTC can do with IT expenditures of $170.4 million.
Our Mayor in the Dark
Okay - it's old news now. In politics it's positively ancient history. But still, it bears repeating often and deserves to live on in the infinite pass-along word of Internet searches.
The date was March 29, 2008. Specifically it was 8 pm.
Earth Hour - a cult-like ceremony of national hypocrisy when we feel better about our year-round Kultur of incredible excess and wastefulness by turning off our lights. We were led in this exercise by the city's high priest of hypocrisy, the Mayor.
The Mayor even posted an Earth Hour video on YouTube, where he sits by a flickering gas fireplace, wearing an earth-friendly brown suit and tie, and says:
At 8 p.m. he stood on the stage in front of City Hall with Jagoda Pike, publisher of the Toronto Star, and pulled a ceremonial switch to plunge City Hall into actual and not just intellectual darkness.
“I want to ask you all to do one thing tonight,” His Worship told the crowd. “Be a leader.”
Curiously, "Leader" is defined in the dictionary as both: "a person or thing that leads" but also "a duct for conveying warm air from a hot-air furnace to a register or stack".
It was widely reported the next day by a reporter who dared follow the Mayor off the stage. As NP writer Peter Kuitenbrouwer then reported:
"At 8:15 p.m. on Saturday, Mayor David Miller got in a car and drove from City Hall to a Shoppers Drug Mart on Eglinton Avenue West. He bought a card for the bar mitzvah of a family friend. Then he got back in the car, driven by his press secretary, Don Wanagas, and went to the bar mitzvah."
Questions about this amazing display of hypocrisy where rejected by press secretary, Don Wanagas as "petty", who said there was nothing wrong with the Mayor's actions, which are after all, just "symbolic".
One question then - why haven't we been able to find the YouTube video posted by the Mayor's office? It hasn't been pulled by them, has it? Like a gun used in a hold-up thrown in the river?
If anyone can find it, let me know, and I'll post a link.
So sleepy...
There are so many metaphors I could use... The poetic and heroic one is King Arthur being awoken on Avalon where he sleeps until such time as he is needed by a nation in trouble. More appropriately, I'm probably more like a bear awaking in the spring wondering what the heck has been going on during hibernation.
Okay - so its just a pretty way of saying I've neglected my blog and now I'm back, and the last thing you need is one more Blogiste opining on how hard it is to keep at one these things. After all, 12 year olds can keep a blog going, and in the words of Zap Branagan, "they seem pretty sharp".
Plus I lost my password for a while.
So what has escaped my facile interpretation and glibly snide comment in the past few months? You name it. The TTC, pool closings, yapping city councillors - the list goes on. It helps that it is the same list from before.
Read on, and all will be revealed.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Spend while you can?
I've noticed for the past couple of days that some of the city services that are being cut by Mayor Miller are out in full force. I've seen a city truck with the required 3 people (driver, worker, guy who goes to Tim Horton's) parked beside a stop sign on Mortimer cutting small tufts of grass growing around the base of the sign with a weed whacker.
Next I passed a crew out picking up a few stray pieces of paper at the side of the DVP.
One of the city parking lots on the weekend had five city guys building a flower box off the Danforth.
What gives? Could it be that city departments are doing their best to spend their budgets in a hurry before the cuts come down, defeating any cost saving?
Just wondering.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Let's Go To The Ex
I was at the CNE this weekend. Unfortunately I seemed to be there on Half-Price Hillbilly Saturday.
If you want to spoil a white supremacist's day, just take him to the Ex. You won't find a more disappointing collection of Aryan genetic material anywhere. I felt out of place being the only man without a blue Celtic tattoo on my neck and five children at my ankles, each kid about eight and a half months older than the next.
The least popular food there was corn on the cob, because to eat it everyone would have to line up to share the family tooth.
Somehow, everyone had cell phones and someone to speak to, since a lot of the mothers entertained themselves by staying on the phone while the children tried to climb under the tilt-a-whirl and their husbands / boyfriends checked out the passing trailer park talent in the Paris Hilton Does Walmart clothes.
And there's no better place to have a public fight with your husband than on the Midway, where you have to shout extra loud to be heard over the guy calling "Doggie, doggie" into the microphone.
At least there's one thing you can say about the crowd - it helps the carnies with their self-esteem issues.
