Proof that pop stars are interchangeable

I was flipping channels this morning and landed on much more music where, for once, they were actually playing music videos. Being into Indie music I don’t tend to follow pop music though I know who most of the big pop stars are (They’re so over-promoted that it’s hard not too!).

There was a new video by Beyonce, it looked like. Though the vocals at least weren’t as annoyingly whiney as her lst video which had roughly the same effect as fingernails on a chalkboard or squealing brakes.

Then I was thinking, she kinda looks like Shakira – never noticed their resemblance before. Wait, that is Shakira – or is it? In the latter part of the rather creepy video the two of them appear together – done up to look identical. The video pretty much proves what I’ve suspected all along – with any pop song you could switch one girl for another and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

It’s also becoming harder to tell Ashley Simpson and Avril Lavigne apart…

Everybody Hates Toronto? Oh well…

There’s a movie showing at the Hot Docs festival next week called “Let’s all Hate Toronto”. I might see it, or I might, as in the case of most movies, get too lazy…

I actually have lived in a lot of different places in Canada before plonking down here five or six or so years ago. I know they hate Torontonians. Most of the people I met from ‘Toronto’ before I moved here were often deserving of the antipathy other Canadians have towards them – they were rude, obnoxious, arrogant, selfish, I could go on…

But a funny thing would happen once you asked them what part of Toronto they were from. They were never from downtown. They’d never say “High Park” or “St. Clair and Oakwood”. It was always Oakville, or Newmarket or Pickering, or even one of the countless small towns within a couple of hours’ driving distance.

Damn suburbanites.

People I’ve known who are actually from Toronto proper don’t tend to be like the stereotypical ‘Torontonian’ so loathed in the rest of Canada.

And having spent a chunk of my adult life in both Vancouver and Toronto, I think that the stereotypes of each city are actually the oppposite. I have found that people here, whether I meet them in the bars, at work, through friends, and so on are for the most pretty friendly, laid back and amiable. Sure some of them might be a little whacked, but never in a particularly disturbing way. The crazy crack-berry obsessed yuppies are the ones that commute on the Go Train two hours each day.

Oddly, it was Vancouver, where I had lived before coming to Toronto that surprised me. I’d moved there expecting the stereotype – relaxed, friendly laid-back people – kind of like a slightly colder and rainier California.

Man, was I ever wrong. I found it cliquish – as in grade 6 – and the people were often pretty obnoxious. There were a lot of crazy people. I did meet some truly wonderful people there too – don’t get me wrong – but it took a LOT of effort to find them.

To be fair to Vancouver, though, most of these people were not from Vancouver. Just like most of the ‘Torontonians’ that the rest of the country hates aren’t necessarily from Toronto. But Vancouver does seem to be a magnet for the dregs of society.

Vancouver’s the only place where I’ve met people who moved there because they’d lived in another city previously and had burned there bridges with so many groups of people that they had to move.

I’ve always thought of the Globe and Mail as like that Conservative uncle – he might be intelligent and have a lot to say about everything, but tends to be rather dull and humourless.

I did have to laugh at this comment in an article by R. M. Vaughan this morning:

Vancouverites, people who spend a suspiciously Macbeth-ish amount of time protesting their calm, forgiving natures, turn positively apoplectic at the very sight of the word Toronto. I suspect this is largely because Vancouver is where failed Torontonians go to die. They have good reason to be bitter, stuck as they are, huddled and wet under the ass end of a mountain, forgotten and lonely, with only the faint hope of a devastating avalanche to get them through the night.

Now it is true that there are plenty of “soulless, one-eyed corporate zombies” in Toronto. (The words of a member of a Vancouver punk band who evidently doesn’t know where to hang out in Toronto). But there are plenty of those types in Vancouver, in Calgary, in Ottawa, and so on. There is in any big city. And know why these ‘Corporate Zombies’ don’t tend to be found in the smaller towns? Because those people move to the cities. It’s the same reason there tends to be more gay people in cities than small towns. They move.

Don’t forget that next time you’re tempted to knock Toronto. The people you’re complaining about might just be your former neighbours.

Where can I apply for that $100K position?

Yesterday the Ontario Government released it’s list of individuals earning over $100,000: now nearly 34,000 people, and reportedly a 24% increase over last year. This might go some way towards why taxes always seem to go up while services go down. The Conservatives will just say they need to cut services that help the poor while the NDP will say more (tax) money is needed.

Ironically, the Ontario’s Public Sector Disclosure Act was passed presumably because public scrutiny would force public employees to rein in their pay demands.

Guess it didn’t work.

The Toronto Sun outlines the pay of some people in 1996, when it was first introduced, and this past year. Even factoring inflation and rises in the cost of living the increases in both salaries and those earning above the threshold are out of whack.

One explanation could be that with people now knowing what their co-workers, or their compatriots in other departments made, they actually increased their demands. And when year over year there didn’t appear to be the supposedly anticipated public outrage, they perhaps realised it was quite easy to get away with. Sure, there will be the flurry of critical articles that will be buried within a couple of days, or commentary from the odd blogger or taxpayers’ group, but for the most part, people don’t seem to get all that upset. Certainly not enough for anything to change. Perhaps with an estimated 300,000 people working for the provincial or municipal government or crown corporation in some capacity, some presumably with the hopes of promotion (and counting their dependent family members too) there may just be too many people whose insterests are more in line with keeping the salaries high or increasing them over those whose interests would be in restricting them.

Perhaps the Tories figured that all along when they introduced the Act. It would make them look good – fit with their image of looking after the taxpayer, fiscal scrutiny and so on, but meanwhile accomplishing the reverse of what was supposedly intended.

Here’s has a handy link to the list itself. Some of the salaries for some of the job titles seem reasonable. If someone doing a job is compensated similarly to how they would be in the private sector, fair enough. But a look through some of the job titles leads me to think that’s possibly not always the case.

For example, read through the list, and look at the number of jobs for Executive Director. Funny, I always understood that Executive Director was mostly an admin position requiring a college diploma. Now it can be hard work (I filled in briefly as one about eight years ago) and there’s a lot to juggle, but it does it warrent six figures? Especially if those six figures are paid for by the taxpayer. To see how compensation for this title compares to the non-profit sector in the US, I took a look at a website called Payscale.com. The median salary for an Executive Director in the US with more than twenty years experience was $73,000.

We’re always told that schools never have enough money. Kids are stuck out in drafty portables, after school programs are closed due to lack of funding, basic building maitenance is neglected. Perhaps the money might be well-deserved for the odd inner-city principal, but for managers and administrators?

Another area that is always supposedly underfunded is healthcare. Now running a hospital might be a very demanding, challenging job. But Dalton McGuinty runs the whole province on $147,000. Meanwhile, the Hospital for Sick Children chief executive earns $563,061.

Some of these jobs listed probably do demand a high level of skill and specialisation. Heck, there’s probably a few who are underpaid for what they do. But others might just be the right person’s brother-in-law or old college roommate.

Keep in mind, that this is only the salaries that pay over $100K and are required to be disclosed. It would be interesting to know the number of employees and their job descriptions in the $90K salary range and are kept under the threshold. It would also be one thing if the top paid officials were doing an excellent job. But that’s not always the case, as this article in the Toronto Star points out.

I encourage everyone to look at the list for themselves and the sometimes dubious job titles. And think about it the next time there’s a hospital fundraiser, or a rise in energy rates or cries that there’s not enough money to fix a crumbling school or improve hospital wait-times. Afterall, you and I are paying for them.