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Occasional Dining Review #2 – The Mockingbird Cocktail Bar and Lounge

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Dining out, London. No Comments on Occasional Dining Review #2 – The Mockingbird Cocktail Bar and Lounge

For a second time since I started this blog, my intrepid Dynamic Dining group (only three of us, actually – the three most intrepid) went out to a new place for dinner of an evening, and I was so impressed by it that I feel the urge to write a post about it.

The establishment in question is called The Mockingbird Cocktail Bar and Lounge, located at 760 Dundas, and yes, that’s East of Adelaide. It’s been in business for at least a couple of years. In fact, another friend and I went to try it out some while back, but it was in a smaller space then. Having recently expanded into a vacated area in front of it, it now can hold a fair number of patrons – I would guess 40 or so, but that is only a guess.

This place is all about cocktails, the staff we talked to looove to make and talk about cocktails. Each of us had one that we thought was just excellent (ok, I had two, both very good). The great thing is that we just told the bartender what kind of cocktails we generally drink, and they suggested something we might like, and in each case they shot and they scored.

As to food, the menu is not extensive, but they do a great job on what they prepare. I had a meat-lovers pizza that was so good I ate the entire thing. My two dining companions each ordered the prosciutto grilled cheese sandwich, and they each raved about it, and finished them, also. (Ok, M gave me a taste of hers, it was indeed very good….).

It’s a funky little space, the interior doesn’t look like any other dining room in London, and we Diners think that is a very good thing. Really, though the best thing about the place was the staff. They were so intent on making sure we enjoyed ourselves, and so keen to talk about their passion, it was just a pleasure to be there.

Some other notes about the place. It is not, to be frank, in a good location. It is not far from the Ark Aid Mission on Dundas, and that place is simply scary to walk past, with people sprawled out on the sidewalk out front, some out of it, some in the process of injecting themselves or one another. I note a story on today’s (Oct 1) CBC-London website saying the general manager of the Old East Village Business Improvement Area is protesting Ark Aid getting another big pile of money from the city. Good for him, he is doing this on behalf of the business owners he represents in OEV, no doubt including Mockingbird, and they have every reason to be upset at what goes on in front of that organization. I do not buy the idea that those people cannot be made to stop doing drugs in front of the establishment. That is not helping them at all, and it is hard on local residents and businesses to have this going on constantly in their neighborhood. You know you would be deeply upset if this shit was happening down the street from your home or business. It is simply wrong. Here’s the first sentence from the CBC article:

“The head of London’s Old East Village (OEV) business district is pushing back against one of [sic] city’s largest shelter’s request for additional year-round funding as open drug use, garbage on the streets and crime is pushing customers away.”

However, you should not let this sad fact about our city deter you from being a patron of Mockingbird. It certainly will not deter us from going back. First, to not go there because of what those people are being allowed to do on Dundas Street (and elsewhere) is to let the clueless assholes who run London win, and we should not allow that. Second, the Mockingbird has plenty of good parking out back, as we discovered, so you can park there, or in a municipal lot that is practically next door, and in either case avoid having to walk through the tragedy that occurs daily out on Dundas street in front of Ark Aid.

The other thing to note about Mockingbird is that we arrived about 6pm, and were the only patrons. Other customers arrived later, and I say with pride that we were the entire time the oldest (but most intrepid) customers in the place. It’s how we Diners roll, but it became clear that folks tend to arrive late at The Mockingbird. Indeed, as we were getting ready to leave, a young woman with an electric guitar was setting up to provide some musical entertainment to the young(er) crowd that was now gathering. She said she played mostly her own compositions, and good for her. We did not leave because of that, we had just had our fill by then, and plan to go back later some night to have a listen. I applaud any restaurant or bar that is willing to give space and time to live music – good for the Mockingbird.

In summary, we had a great time at the Mockingbird, it opens at 6pm every night but Monday, is located at 760 Dundas Street, on the corner of English Street, and you can check it out here https://www.themockingbird.ca/. If cocktails and a passionate, attentive staff are your thing, you’ll have a great time.

It is now on the list of Dynamic Diners recommended venues; I can pay it no higher compliment, folks.

Municipal and Hospital Spending – At Your Service?

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, LBOs, London. No Comments on Municipal and Hospital Spending – At Your Service?

This article was triggered by my reading a story in the Aug 12 Freeps that had the following sub-headline:

Two city politicians want their colleagues to pull $3 million from municipal savings to slightly reduce the relatively large tax increases that will hit Londoners over the next three years

In the story itself one then finds the following:

“The new motion proposes pulling $1 million from a city reserve fund each year from 2025-27. This amount would cut next year’s property tax increase by 0.13 per cent (from 8.7 to below 8.6), which [Councillor] Pribil acknowledges isn’t much.”

No, Jerry – not much, but I know we ratepayers appreciate the gesture.

In case any of you Londoners haven’t been paying attention, the current and future property tax increases in the multi-year city budget are:

  • 2024: 8.7 per cent
  • 2025: 8.7 per cent
  • 2026: 5.7 per cent
  • 2027: 6.7 per cent

The two years at 8.7% represent greater increases than I can remember seeing in my 40+ years of living here. I do wonder how they arranged things so that the percentage increase in every year was x.7. Someone at City Hall believes in lucky 7?

However, we Londoners are not alone. A report from the Fraser Institute called Municipal Dollars in Ontario – Where did the Money Go?, dated April 2024, reports the following:

“Municipal budget season in Ontario recently ended and the evidence reveals some fairly substantial tax increases around the province. For example, Waterloo Region approved a property tax increase of 6.9 per cent while Toronto passed an increase of 9.5 per cent. Hamilton ultimately saw an increase of 5.8 per cent after fears of a double-digit tax increase were unveiled in the fall while Kingston saw one of the lower increases coming in at 3.5 per cent.”

Note that London’s 2024 increase came in second to only that of Toronto, at least in this group.

What I found most interesting in the report was the discussion of how the increased tax revenues are being spent. Again quoting from the report:

“So, pulling everything together, here’s the story that emerges. Municipal operating expenditures in Ontario over the period 2000 to 2022 have grown 2.5 times faster than general inflation and double that of population. They have also grown a bit faster than the province’s output.”

“The increase in spending is driven by spending on wages and salaries but not in the manner one might think. Average salaries in the municipal sector for those making more than $100,000 annually since 2000 have grown by only 8 per cent but the number of individuals making those salaries has grown in the thousands of per cent. Within the broader public sector, in 2000 municipal employees accounted for 6 per cent of individuals on the salary disclosure list whereas by 2022 they accounted for 23 per cent.”

So municipalities are not necessarily employing very many more people, as one might think they must to serve increasing populations, but rather they are paying the people they employ much better.

Now, to be fair, this could be because they are employing people with different sets of skills than they did in the past. More folks with university degrees or highly specialized (and highly remunerated) training. Another factor left out of the report is the extent to which Ontario municipalities have shifted from having services provided by city employees to having them provided by private firms that bid for the city contracts. To the extent this happens, it will reduce the number of city employees, and – I suspect – reduce most the number of relatively low-paid employees. A municipal sanitation division is going to employ a lot of low-wage workers and a few managers, so if you contract out garbage pickup to a private contractor, that takes a lot of low-wage jobs off the city books, but only a few better-paid managerial positions. The cost of the contract with the private provider then does not come under the heading of ‘employee compensation’, but rather ‘payments for goods and services’. I suspect that has happened a good bit over the last 20 years, but can’t find any data on it: the Fraser report is silent on this possibility.

If you’re wondering how much of municipal spending goes to employee compensation (and you know you are) the Fraser folks have the answer for you:

“The composition of major expenditures is revealing: 37% of operating expenses are in employee compensation, another 28% are from the purchase of goods and services to run municipal operations, and 20% are expenses associated with fixed capital-consumption costs.”

So, yea – employee wages are kinda driving the expenditure bus, but as noted above, not because municipalities are employing more people to serve you better; they’re just paying the people they employ better. Or, putting it another way, they’re just employing more people who are better-paid.

I’d guess that will not surprise anyone who has tried to get any kind of service out of London City Hall. So far as I and those around me can tell, no London City employee ever answers their phone if they know (and they do) the call is coming from outside the building. ‘Your call is very important to us, please leave a message.’

Well-Paid Bureaucrats

We live in the Age of The Well-Paid Bureaucrat. This is not just a government phenomenon. I would suggest that all LBOs (Large Bureaucratic Organizations), whether government, non-profit or for-profit, see over time an increase in the proportion of their employees who are highly paid; say $150k+.  As an org grows, it tends to increase its employment of senior management types faster than its general increase in employees. (This is absolutely inarguable for universities….) Why? Wish I knew……

An illustration of this general principle shows up in another article published in the Freeps over the weekend. London Health Sciences Centre, the administrative monster that is now being run by an ‘interim chief executive’ brought in to reorganize it (and deal with a looming $150 million deficit), has let go two of its senior administrators. According to the Freeps, the administrators are

  • Brad Campbell, corporate hospital administration executive, was in charge of overseeing the presidents of University Hospital, Children’s Hospital and Victoria Hospital
  • Sandra Smith, who was regional vice-president for the southwest regional cancer program at LHSC

The title ‘corporate hospital administration executive’ is suitably vague, and his job was ‘overseeing three presidents’. Well, that clarifies his duties, right?

For this he was paid, according to the Freeps again –  ‘$475,423 in 2023, a significant raise over the $217,007 he made in 2022’. Significant raise, indeed, but what the heck did he do to earn such a salary? What does ‘overseeing presidents’ entail, exactly? (Smith made a modest $244k in 2023. I don’t know what a regional VP does, either.)

Sadly, as high as those salaries are, eliminating them from the LHSC budget is no more than a drop in the $150 million bucket.

Of course, LHSC is not a City of London operation, and I suspect (but don’t know) that there is no one in the London City administration making the lofty salary that Mr. Campbell did in 2023 – at least I hope not. But the general principle remains. As amalgamation turned three hospitals into one giant org, the number of senior administrators – and the salaries they earn – went up, and just kept going up. It takes a lot of highly paid people to run a LBO – just ask those highly paid people, they’ll tell you its true.

A worthy research project, if one could get the data – and I bet one could not – would be to look at a large set of LBOs of all types and see how the number of highly paid senior administrators has changed relative to total employment over, say, 20 years. My hypothesis obviously is that proportion has gone up over time, but I wonder in which type of org it has gone up the most. Non-profits, universities,  for-profit corporations, government bureaucracies? It would be interesting to see if there is any discernible pattern. My money would be on universities as the leaders, but that’s probably because I saw it happen in one of those first hand over the last 20 years.

But I betcha $100 no LBOs of any type would give one the data one would need to find out.

PostScript

Just as I was about to post this, a story popped up on the CBC-London website, saying that LHSC had just fired 5 more senior administrators. To quote the CBC story:

“Five executives with a combined tenure of over 20 years, and a combined 2023 salary of over $1.6 million, are no longer with the organization, Musyj said. They are:

  • Abhi Mukherjee, CFO, who joined LHSC in September 2022

  • John French, clinical diagnostic executive, who joined LHSC in September 2022

  • CJ Curran, corporate health disciplines executive, who joined LHSC in September 2022

  • Dipesh Patel, capital redevelopment and environmental operations executive, who joined LHSC in July 2013

  • Jatinder Bains, corporate academic executive, who joined LHSC in April 2021

‘….combined tenure of over 20 years’? C’mon, CBC, only one of them has been around more than three years, the other four are all very recent hires. CBC did not give their salaries (I suspect the public broadcaster is a little sensitive about executive salaries these days), but you could look them up on the sunshine list. I think I know what a CFO does, but the other titles? Like, ‘corporate academic executive’? Surely they just made that up.

Let me quote once more from the article.

“Dr. Jackie Schleifer Taylor, the former CEO, left this past spring after a seven month medical leave. Her salary in 2023 was almost $804,000. ”

“During Dr. Schleifer Taylor’s tenure, president positions were created, one at each Victoria, University and Children’s, replacing the former structure which had just one one[sic] president for the entire hospital system.”

So, now we know what the afore-mentioned Brad Campbell did to earn his big salary. When Schleifer Taylor created three presidential positions where there had previously been only one, she of course had to create a fourth position – held by Campbell – to oversee those three. Now that is bureaucratic thinking par excellence.

Young and Rogan, Again

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Culture, London, Popular attitudes. No Comments on Young and Rogan, Again

London, Ontario has a number of outdoor musical events each summer, one of which is known as Rock the Park. When the line-up for this festival was announced a long time ago, it was regarded as quite the coup to have scored Neil Young and Crazy Horse as a headline performer. I’m not sure booking any 78-year-old rocker should be regarded as a major coup, but what brought this all to mind was the very recent announcement, just weeks before the event is to occur, that Young and the band have cancelled their appearance.

I wrote a post awhile back about Neil Young’s recent return to Spotify, thereby abandoning his principled position that what was being said on Joe Rogan’s podcast (streamed on Spotify) was false and harmful.

My focus there was on the fact that Young had shown, in my view, a meaningful commitment to a principle by taking an income hit as a result of pulling his music from Spotify, but that he had, in the light of Rogan’s new, wider streaming contract decided that he would not pay an even higher price by pulling his music from other platforms.

There is another, separate issue this raises, which I want to write about here. Why did Young do what he did back in 2022, rather than other things he could have done in response to what he saw as Rogan’s spread of false information? As I noted in my previous post, pulling his music from Spotify was undoubtedly costly to Young, but it seems likely it cost Spotify very little, if anything. I just don’t imagine that many people dropped their Spotify subscriptions in response to Young’s 2022 departure. But even if a significant number did, why do that?

One could imagine that Young anticipated that his departure from Spotify would indeed lead to the cancellation of many Spotify subscriptions, and that, seeing this, Spotify would in turn terminate their contract with Rogan. I really don’t believe Young anticipated that, but suppose he did. That would mean that Young’s purpose was to eliminate Rogan’s platform for disseminating ideas that Young disliked – that, to quote him, “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines—potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.” (I’m taking this quote from the original WSJ article, so am assuming it is accurate.)

This seems to me a very 21st century instinct. If someone is saying/writing things to which one objects, one should do what one can to shut them up. Stop them from saying those objectionable things. Now, the Young quote goes on to assert that if people hear these objectionable things and believe them, they could potentially die.

Certainly, preventing people from dying is a noble goal, but that is not what Young’s move would have done, had it been successful in getting Rogan off Spotify. It would have stopped people from hearing what was said there (ignoring for the moment possible other platforms), but I don’t see how one can really assert that would have saved lives. That only follows if one views exposure to what is said on Rogan’s podcasts as a disease itself, which kills people. In fact, what happens, is that people listen to it, they think about it – or not – then they take what they heard, along with all the other things they have ever heard that they think might be relevant, and they go on with their lives. They make decisions, including, presumably, whether or not to get vaccinated. Even if someone who goes through all this decides not to get vaccinated, it does not follow even probabilistically that they will die.

This is not an unusual line of thinking, however. A similar perspective leads most auto commercials these days to have written in fine print on the bottom of the TV screen the words “Trained driver on a closed course. Do not try this yourself.” Just seeing a driver put his Nisan Rogue into a four wheel drift on TV is like a drug, and viewers who are exposed to this commercial will thus be induced to drive to a spot where they can do the same, if they are not warned away from this.

What seems odd about this to me, even on its own terms, is the belief that people are not clever enough to realize that putting their Rogue into a high-risk manoeuvre might get them hurt, but that they are clever enough to pay attention to the warning in tiny letters at the bottom of the screen not to do that. What fundamentally lies underneath this is a view that people will do foolish things unless they are instructed appropriately – by, you know, us smart folks. Or Neil Young. [I am also well aware that this is to some extent driven by lawyers, trying to prevent their employers from getting sued successfully.]

The attitude is that people who roll their Nissan Rogue over doing four-wheel drifts and get injured or die have been inescapably driven to do that by seeing a commercial, just as people who listen to Rogan’s podcasts are driven to not get vaccinated and thus will die.

It’s a very 21st century perspective on human behavior, and I have no use for it. People have, and deserve to be given, agency. They gotta decide how to live their lives, and if they decide to go out and roll their Rogue over, that’s on them.

Here’s a different thing Young could have done. He could have mounted an info campaign to counter the ‘fake information’ that he felt Rogan was disseminating, in an effort to keep people from being swayed by it. His quote suggests he is quite confident that said information is ‘fake’ so he is presumably in a good position to explain to listeners what is fake about it, and, as the WSJ article says, he had 2.4 million followers on Spotify in ’22 before he left. That’s a decent audience. Of course, Young might well think his followers were not the audience that needed to have Rogan’s info countered, but as a famous rocker with plenty of resources (i.e., wealth), Young could surely have come up with many other ways of reaching people. Hell, tell Rogan you want to come on his podcast and have it out with him and his dangerous views. I suspect Rogan would have jumped at that opportunity if Young had offered it.

So, if it was true that Young was hoping to get Spotify to drop Rogan, then my point is that seems childish to me. Stand up and confront the guy if he’s so dangerous. That’s a response to perceived misinformation I could support.

That all being said, I don’t really believe that was Young’s motivation. According to the WSJ article

“Rogan’s show has been Spotify’s most listened to podcast for the last four years, according to the company.”

Young’s no fool, he didn’t expect to get Rogan’s podcast terminated, but if not that, what? What was Young trying to do?

People in the 21st century often talk of ‘taking a stand’, which I take to mean stating in public that they find something odious…or admirable, as the case may be. An overwhelming example of this can be found in all the demonstrations going on regularly around Canada about the Israel-Hamas war. The people who are engaged in these on both sides do not, I hope, think for a minute that their shouting and carrying signs around in Canada will have any impact on the decisions being made by the leaders of Hamas or Israel. And, if they think they can influence the government of Canada to change its position on the conflict in some way, then I again hope they don’t think any change in Canada’s official position on the war will influence anyone in Gaza or Tel-Aviv.

But, they clearly think it important to ‘make their voices heard’, to ‘call out____’ or ‘show their support/outrage’. Such declarations are another 21st-century fixation, one I suspect is facilitated by the existence in wealthy societies like those of Canada and the US of too many people with too much time on their hands. I mean, do the people in the UWO campground really believe they have moved forward some good cause by chanting in the face of a class of Ivy grads? Really? People like that could do some actual good in the world. London is chock full of people who are struggling, with poverty, addiction, poor health. If any of those campers were to sign up to work for Meals on Wheels, or volunteer to drive seniors who live alone to their medical and other appointments, they would make the world – locally – a better place in a clear and concrete way. But no, they find it a more valuable use of their time and energy to camp out and chant slogans about something that is happening thousands of miles away.

Coming back to Young, whichever of these two motivations might have lay behind Young’s 2022 move, neither seems one an adult should follow. If he thought to shut Joe up, I find that an admission of contempt for one’s fellow humans’ thinking. If you think Joe is full of shit, do something to convince folks of that. If, on the other hand Young just wanted to ‘call out Joe (or Spotify)’, to say ‘That is wrong’, then ok, I guess. It’s your time and energy (and money) to use as you like, Neil, but I can in turn think of no reason to change what I think about anything because you did that. As I said in my first post on this, the fact that Young took a financial and artistic hit to make that statement does convince me that he is sincere about it. And so what? Many people have sincere beliefs about many things.

Smiling – and Paying – for the Camera

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Government, London, News Media, Safety. No Comments on Smiling – and Paying – for the Camera

A short article by Scott Kitching appeared on the June 11 London News Today website letting us know that London City Council has authorized adding another 15 redlight cameras to the 10 that are already operating around the city. Our illustrious Mayor was quoted:

“More Red Light Cameras help limit dangerous driving behaviours at more locations in our City, and address a widespread community concern,” Mayor Josh Morgan said in a statement released by the city.

This statement can of course be used to justify putting a red light camera at every intersection in London, so stay tuned, folks.

Kitching also included some ‘statistics’ – reportedly provided by ‘the city’. That’s all the detail regarding the source of said stats we get. Quoting from the article:

“Since the red light camera program began in 2017, the number of collisions at intersections with signals has fallen by between eight and 11 per cent, according to the city. The number of collisions involving injury or death is down by 40 per cent over the same time period.”

Ok, the first stat seems like it is perhaps relevant to understanding the impact, if any, of the 10 existing redlight camera set-ups. Nothing is said about controlling that 8 to 11 percent drop for changes in the volume of traffic through intersections with signals, but there is a more important issue with it. That is an 8 to 11 percent drop ‘at intersections with signals’. Not  at intersections with red-light cameras, but rather all signaled intersections.

So; does this mean there has been a general trend down in collisions at signaled intersections? If so, that cannot possibly be attributed to the 10 (out of hundreds) of intersections that have the cameras. What we need to know here is what has been the trend in collisions at the camera intersections compared to the trend over the same time frame at all the other (non-camera) signaled intersections. The stat as quoted tells us precisely nothing about the impact of the cameras on collisions at signaled intersections.

As to the second sentence in the quote, I have no idea what that tells us. The number of collisions involving injury and death is down 40% – is that throughout the city overall? At signaled intersections generally? At signaled intersections with cameras only?

That second stat as stated tells us nothing about anything related to the impact of existing or planned red light cameras on traffic injuries or fatalities in London.

Ah, but who needs evidence, really? According to a CBC.ca London article on this City initiative, these cameras make money (for the city, not you fine folks). CBC London quoted London’s Director of Transportation and Mobility, Doug MacRae, thusly:

The cost of operating the new red light cameras for one year is approximately $1 million, MacRae said, but notes that they pay for themselves through the fines issued.

Per Inspector Brackenreid: Follow the money, Murdoch.

Immigrant Discrimination and the Freeps

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in London, News Media, Research. No Comments on Immigrant Discrimination and the Freeps

The media these days like to publish stories about academic research but as a rule, they do a bad job of it, and that is particularly true of my hometown paper, The Freeps.

An article published in the Freeps on July 31, 2023, headlined:

‘Alarming’: Study reveals hostility toward immigrants in London, region’

illustrates well what I mean.

The line under that headline read: “The study, funded by the London and Middlesex Local Immigration Partnership, surveyed the experiences of 30 London and Middlesex County immigrant and racialized people.”

Now, hold on. What can one possibly conclude about anything that might be happening in London-Middlesex after talking to 30 people? The immigrant population in the areas is, according to Stats Can figures reported in the actual study (more on it below) was around 90,000 in 2016, no doubt higher than that now. 30 is a laughably small sample of that population. However, reading on, the article goes on to say that this was ‘….a followup to a survey conducted by the same team that found about 60 per cent of those who identified as immigrants in Southwestern Ontario said they experienced some level of discrimination or racism in the last three years.’

Ok, so this suggests that at least two studies were done, a survey plus interviews of 30 local immigrants. The writer for the Freeps claims that 60% of immigrants reported discrimination in that survey. I determined to go find the actual studies to sort all this out, partly due to my reading this sentence further down in the article:

“A group of Western University researchers led by Esses heard newcomers say they were overlooked for promotion and their work was underappreciated.”

Ok, how many of your peers report being overlooked for promotion,  or underappreciated at their job? Maybe everyone? What makes that discrimination?

My curiosity fully aroused, I found the two studies on the website of the sponsoring organization mentioned above. You can, too, at this link

The first study, which surveyed 829 L-M residents in March of 2021, is written up in the paper dated August 2021. The second is indeed a report on interviews with 30 immigrants from the L-M region, and is dated March, 2023. This is the study mentioned in the tag line, and it is worth noting that all of the 30 people interviewed for that study reported being immigrants  and reported experiencing discrimination. Anyone who did not report those two things when first contacted to be interviewed, was not in fact interviewed. So the rate of reported discrimination among the interviewed group was 100%, by design.  That’s not what the article’s tag line would have you think but…ah, details.

As to the first, much larger survey, that’s where the Freeps reporting gets worse and the research gets, well, interesting. The 829 respondents to the survey were contacted by a hired polling company that used random-telephone-number dialing to collect its sample of respondents. Those who were actually given the survey to respond to were put into three groups, which the researchers titled Immigrants and Visible Minorities, Indigenous Peoples, and White Non-Immigrants.

Now, if one is trying to understand discrimination experienced by immigrants living in London-Middlesex, it seems very odd to include Indigenous Peoples in the survey. If anyone is 180 degrees different from being an immigrant, that would be indigenous folks.

On the other hand, including a set of White Non-immigrants in the survey makes sense. Whatever you learn about discrimination among immigrants is pretty meaningless without a point of comparison: the White Non-Immigrants can be considered the analog to a Control Group in a drug study. It’s like if someone tells you that The Bismarck displaced 41,000 tons when it was built, that doesn’t tell you it was one huge battleship unless you also know how big were other ships of the era.

Below are the self-reported rates of discrimination of these three groups – that is, the percentage of survey-takers in each group who reported being discriminated against – you can find these numbers on p.20 of the 2021 report:

Immigrants and Visible Minorities: 36.7%

Indigenous Peoples: 61.6%

White Non-immigrants: 44.4%

Which brings us back to the Freeps writing that “…60 per cent of those who identified as immigrants in Southwestern Ontario said they experienced some level of discrimination or racism in the last three years.”

Clearly that’s just wrong. Inaccurate. (See why I love the Freeps?) Indigenous peoples most certainly do not identify as immigrants. Count on it. The self-reported rate of discrimination among the immigrant group was 36.7%, which is way less than 60 in anyone’s arithmetic.

So the Freeps got the facts wrong, and they erred in the direction in which the Freeps always errs, in my experience. The Freeps has become The London Alarmist, always making things seem as bad as possible, so here they report the biggest, baddest number, even if it’s the wrong number.

However, I cannot let the researchers off free on this one, either. The word ‘Alarming’ in the headline is accurate, in that researcher Vicki Esses did use that adjective in describing the stories they heard in the interview study. But, of course, in the 2023 interview study the interviewees were pre-selected for saying they had been discriminated against. The earlier 2021 survey study could then be viewed as an attempt to understand how representative those stories are of the general experience of immigrants in the area.

But here’s the thing, which you alert readers likely have already noticed. White non-immigrants reported being discriminated against at a higher rate than the immigrants. As my foul-tongued friend Hugo might say – WTF?

The Freeps reporter did not question Esses about this finding from the survey, and I would bet a buck said reporter did not read either report. I mean, who has time to learn about the things one writes about? I would bet a lot more than a buck that had Ms. Rivers turned in a story to her editor headlined ‘Immigrants less discriminated against locally than white non-immigrants’ she would not have gotten her byline into The Alarmist.

A final note on the research, specifically the survey report. As the researchers write on p. 51 of the 2021 report – “Nonetheless, because participation was voluntary, it is likely that interest in the topic had some influence on whether or not eligible individuals participated, leading to some inevitable potential biasing of the samples.”

Yea. Likely, indeed. They note that the use of random-phone-dialing to get initial respondents helps work against bias, and that is only partly true. The researchers don’t tell us much about that respondent recruiting process, and were this study being presented in a seminar, here are just a few of the questions I would ask:

Did the phone-calling include cell phone numbers or just land-lines?

Was there a set text the callers used to screen potential survey-takers, and if so, what did it say?

Given that the survey involves unconfirmed self-reporting (the results from which should always be taken with a grain of salt) what reason is there for confidence that the reports of discrimination correspond to actual discrimination?

The reasoning behind the first two questions is simple: if only land-lines were called, as used to be the case, a whole swath of Canadians, mostly younger, who have no landlines anymore, is left out of the pool of potential survey-takers. How that might bias the results I cannot say, but it seems it must to some extent, so this is important for understanding the survey results.

And, if the callers doing the recruiting let out the fact- or even the possibility – that they were asking people to participate in a survey on discrimination, then my Spidey sense goes into full vibration mode. This will attract people who feel discriminated against disproportionately, and renders the ‘% experiencing discrimination’ statistic unrepresentative of what happens in the general L-M population. It is not reassuring that the researchers say so little about the respondent recruiting process.

The third question is prompted by the fact that White non-immigrants reported more discrimination than Immigrants. This makes it very difficult for me to believe that these responses tell us much about discrimination against immigrants.

To go back to the Random-Controlled Drug Trial analogy above, if the group you gave the drug to (the white non-immigrants) is more likely to get the disease the drug is supposed to cure than the group that did not get it (the immigrants), your drug does not work; indeed, it’s bloody dangerous.

That finding should have the researchers questioning just what the survey responses actually tell them, if anything. Do they believe that white non-immigrants are actually more likely to experience discrimination than immigrants? If so, are they seeking research funding to look into discrimination against white non-immigrants? I rather doubt the answer to either question is yes, but that’s the implication of their survey results if they want to insist that the survey responses tell us something about actual discrimination.  And that ‘Alarming’ thing kinda suggests they do.

 

 

Fast-food pricing I can’t explain   

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in Dining out, London. No Comments on Fast-food pricing I can’t explain   

Time to talk burgers again, folks.

Two facts to start with: One, I almost never eat at fast-food restaurants, and two, I used to teach two different econ courses – Managerial Economics and Industrial Organization – in which I tried to teach students the underlying motivation for a host of different pricing strategies by sellers. The basic lesson was easy: pricing strategies are implemented because they result in higher profits. The interesting part is figuring out why the various pricing strategies could, despite surface appearances, increase a seller’s profits.

A week or so ago I went into the old building to attend a workshop in my old Department from noon to 1, and afterwards, having not managed any breakfast, I was hungry. The student centre just next door has a variety of fast-foody outlets, so, knowing I planned to be around until 5pm to attend another event, I figured I should break my usual no-fast-food habit and go get a burger.

There is an outlet there called The Fixx that sells burgers, poutine and side dishes. I went to their counter and ordered a burger and some fries to take back to my office. I was asked if I wanted a beverage, I said no. When I went to pay, the nice cashier lady looked at my slip and said ‘this is going to cost you more than if you ordered a drink, too, and made it a combo. Do you want to go back and get a drink?’

I said no thanks, seeing no good reason to be induced into consuming things I don’t want. However, assuming the cashier was correct, and she should know, I am struggling to explain this pricing by The Fixx.

I am aware that fast-food outlets love combo pricing, but I assumed that meant that if I ordered the drink with my burger and fries, combo pricing meant that the drink added less to the cost of my meal than the stand-alone price of the same drink. So long as the seller makes any revenue above the cost to them of the drink, this adds to their profits.  Fine, easy-peasy. I get it.

However, the cashier’s statement says that The Fixx makes more money from me if I don’t add the drink to my order: they get more revenue from me, and they save the cost of providing the drink.

How does this combo pricing increase their profits? That is, why do they want to induce me to add a drink to my order with a pricing scheme that earns them more profit if I don’t buy the drink?

One possibility is that this strategy is actually designed to induce me to add an order of fries to a drink-and-burger-only order. I don’t know that the price of a burger and drink is higher than the ‘combo’ price of burger, drink and fries. If not, then the combo pricing may just be targeted at burger-and-drink buyers, and if there are few burger-and-fries buyers like me, that could perhaps still be profitable for the Fixx.

Another possibility lies in the fact that, unlike many of the outlets in the Student Centre food area (e.g. Subway, Starbucks) The Fixx is a UWO-developed food outlet. According to this report from 2018,

“A concept developed in-house, The FIXX prepares burgers made from 100-per-cent Canadian seasoned ground beef – gluten-free and with no fillers, additives or hormones. Located where Harvey’s had been for 21 years, The FIXX is where customers can choose from a variety of toppings including guacamole, pico de gallo, caramelized onions, sautéed mushrooms or even a fried egg.”

So, perhaps the simple explanation is that Hospitality Services at UWO is not interested in profits; rather, they badly want people to drink more fluids. I kinda doubt that, but I have no evidence that it’s not true.

However, if profit-making fast-food outlets do the same kind of combo pricing I experienced at The Fixx, I am back to Square One in looking for an explanation. If anyone can tell me if that is so out there in the wider burger-franchise world, I would appreciate it; as I said, I don’t eat at fast-food restaurants much.

I certainly do not plan to go over to The Fixx again and order just a burger and drink to find out if my first explanation is plausible, either –  which brings me to the second thing I (re)-learned on my burger mission.

Staffing and quality

As the above-quoted Western Snooze piece notes, the burger predecessor to The Fixx in the Student Centre was a franchise outlet of Harvey’s. It, along with the other franchise operations on campus are not like the off-campus franchises in (at least) one important way. They use the company logos and offer (mostly) the same menu as off-campus outlets of each company, but are not staffed by pimply-faced young folk being paid the minimum wage.

When UWO decided many years ago to get rid of most of their own food preparation services and instead have franchises provide food in the Student Centre, they made a deal with the union that represented their own food operations workers. Specifically, that its union members would staff those franchise outlets that opened up on-campus.

So, I presume Harvey’s was paid some percentage of the profits or revenues of the on-campus outlet, along with perhaps an annual fixed fee. However, my long experience on campus indicates that staffing by relatively higher-paid union members results in lower quality food and service than one gets in an off-campus outlet of the same company. The burgers  put out by the Harvey’s on campus were lukewarm and chewy, as were the fries. The reason for this is clear – they cooked the burgers most of the way through, let them sit around in a warming pan, then threw them back on the grill briefly when you ordered one. Similarly, fries were mostly cooked, left lying about, and then thrown back into the fryer when ordered. (My first-ever job was at McDonald’s a hundred years ago, I know how this shit works.) This results in shorter wait times for your order, the need for fewer workers (important), and low-quality food.

This always raised for me the following question: was Harvey’s getting paid sufficiently by the university to compensate it for the bad press it was getting from the crappy food being sold in its student centre operation? These food outlets on campus have a local near monopoly – ‘near’ because there is The Wave, an undergrad restaurant and The Grad Club, which both sell somewhat better (non-franchise) food. However, students, faculty and staff do go out to eat with their families off-campus, and those people could not have a good impression of Harvey’s if they ever get food from the on-campus outlet. That’s like 30,000 opportunities for bad publicity for Harvey’s due to this low-quality on-campus franchise.

The explanation here may simply be that the people who might – unlike me – get a meal at an off-campus Harvey’s location understand that their experience at the on-campus location is not a reliable predictor of what it will be like to eat at an off-campus location. If so, there perhaps isn’t much of a bad reputational effect for the off-campus Harvey’s outlets, but in a market (i.e., franchised restaurants) in which it is said ‘uniformity across outlets’ is all-important, this is still a bit surprising to me.

What is not at all surprising to me is that the burger and fries I got from the in-house The Fixx last week were just as lukewarm and chewy as Harvey’s used to put out. I recognized the woman behind the grill who was mistreating my burger as having performed the same service for the Harvey’s outlet back in the day. No worry about off-campus reputational effects here, there are no off-campus Fixx outlets.

So, same poor-quality food at The Fixx as at its predecessor Harvey’s,  but only The Fixx is willing to pay me to drink pop. I think.

 

Op-Eds in News Clothing

Written by Al Slivinski on . Posted in London, News Media. 1 Comment on Op-Eds in News Clothing

In the mainstream news media, it has long been common practice to distinguish between articles that are reporting news and opinion pieces. However, something that I see turning up with increasing frequency in news outlets are articles that are not labelled as Opinion, but are in fact mostly that. An example of this came up last year in the local London Free Press (aka The Freeps).

The article is titled “Western accused of trying to push aside women’s hockey concerns”, which appeared on page A2 of the Nov 11, 2023 paper edition of the Freeps that landed on my porch that morning. The byline is Jane Sims, a regular reporter for the Freeps.

The story out there in the world that this article refers to is the fact that the UWO women’s hockey team went through a kerfuffle involving the University’s strength-training coach (who worked with all the university’s athletes, apparently) and the team’s own coach. There was an investigation which resulted in the strength coach being dismissed but the coach of the hockey team staying on. Reports in previous editions of the Freeps indicated that not all of the hockey team players were happy with this outcome. This article of Nov 11 occupies 24 column-inches in this edition of the Freeps, making it the longest article in the paper’s Section A not covering some aspect of Remembrance Day. There is some re-stating of what had happened previously in the matter, some other material (e.g., that about 20 players were on the ice for the last practice) that may be new to readers, but what is undoubtedly new in the article is a series of quotes from Garrett Holmes, who is said to be the founder of The Canadian Student-Athlete Association. The website for this organization states the following:

The Canadian Student-Athlete Association is a non profit unincorporated association founded by Western University student-athlete Garrett Holmes on July 20, 2020.   

It serves as the only independent voice for Canadian university and college athletes. 

The article notes that Holmes had written two letters to the UWO president criticizing the university’s handling of this matter, and quotes him repeatedly.

I am citing this article not because I find what Holmes has to say about all this objectionable, but because the article is presented as news, when in fact it is to all intents and purposes an opinion piece that presents the opinions of one person regarding this matter – Garrett Holmes. There is nothing in the article to suggest that Holmes has any more information about what happened than would anyone else who had been reading about it in the Freeps. He has not interviewed anyone at Western so far as we know, nor has he any inside information not available to others. He has an opinion about what happened, as might you, but you didn’t get quoted in the Freeps. The Freeps simply inserts his opinions – and no one else’s – into what is supposed to be a news article. Indeed, the article headline – not typically written by the reporter – suggests that Mr. Holmes’ views about what happened are the entire point of the story.

So I ask, why Mr Holmes’ views, and his views only? Did Ms Sims contact anyone else to get their, possibly differing, views? Did she contact the UWO Prez, or John Doerksen, or the coach herself, or any players? Is there something about Mr. Holmes that makes him uniquely qualified to have his views aired in London’s only newspaper?  He is indeed the founder of the CSAA, and you can visit that org’s website here (link). It lists Mr Holmes as founder, has some info about him, and you can also read there its two-page constitution, and note that it’s Board of Directors is ‘coming soon’ – just as it has been since the Freeps article appeared last year. The constitution’s last line is “This constitution may only be amended by a unanimous vote of the Board.”

There is a larger point here, that ‘news’ articles in many outlets include a lot of what is said or written by ‘advocates’, ‘activists’ and ‘experts’ . If Mr Holmes is an ‘expert’, the standards for that designation by the Freeps seem kinda low to me.

Moreover, if a media outlet is going to quote such people, the outlet has to choose which of the many available ‘experts’ to quote, and doing so necessarily inserts what are most typically no more than opinions into a news article.

By the usual conventions, this article is news rather than opinion because it does not include the opinions of Ms Sims, or anyone else who works for the Freeps, such as the Editorial Board. But quoting one and only one other person’s opinions moves the article into opinion none the less, in my view. Consider that if she wanted, Ms Sims could insert her opinions into any article just by finding an ‘expert’ or ‘advocate’ whose opinions she shares and quoting only them. I’m not saying this is what happened here, but still, this news story is really mostly opinion, because it mostly ‘reports’ the comments of one person.

One response to this might be – ‘Really, all you’re complaining about is the Freeps being a bit hazy about the line between news and opinion? People can tell the difference between the facts reported in the article and Holmes’ opinions. No big deal, get over it.’

I think it’s a deal. Why did the Freep do this? Why did they not just report on the latest developments in the matter, and leave any comments from Mr Holmes or others to the Op-Ed page? There are always many motives that can be dreamt up to explain any behavior you might observe, but I will hypothesize a particular one in this case.

News media outlets, and the Freeps in particular, want controversy in their news stories, they want to report that people are upset, outraged, deeply concerned, that they are ‘calling out’ other people. Mr Holmes’ comments got in the article, on my hypothesis, because he accuses the university of treating the athletes badly. He is quoted ‘I think it’s clear that some players, if not all, don’t feel it’s a safe environment….’(ellipsis in the original)*.  Mr Holmes cites safety concerns, and that is the great contemporary trigger – there is nothing worse you can accuse a person of in the 21st century than being unconcerned about safety. However Ms Sims came to know about Mr. Holmes and his views, I’m betting that he would have found himself ignored and un-quoted had he commended the UWO admin for its actions in this matter.

*(pseudo-footnote): I would never let my students back in the day get away with a sentence that starts with ‘I think it’s clear that….’ – a topic for another post.