Wednesday, July 2, 2008

REJECTED by Cobourg Daily Star, Jan.1/07

In the December 29, 2006, editorial, “Communities rich in 2006”, pious punditry prevailed with this assertion: “A 25-per-cent pay hike in one fell swoop is ridiculous, when the people paying the bills (that would be us) probably wouldn't see that much of an increase in our paycheques in five years, or maybe even 10, or more.”

The communities may have been rich in 2006, but editorial intelligence continues to be impoverished, and deceitful. The deceit is the deliberate avoidance of placing the 25 percent pay hike in any context whatsoever.

On December 18, Premier McGuinty was quoted in the Toronto Star, “For nine of those years our salaries were frozen and for another one of those years our salaries were cut by 5.5 per cent.” I did some internet searching to check this out, well, lo and behold, there was no deceitful omission on McGuinty’s part. I did not vote for McGuinty nor am I likely to vote for him in the future. But fair is fair, and MPP’s deserve a just pay increase and readers deserve a competent newspaper.

Is there a single editor of a newspaper who would continue working at the newspaper if they had received not only no pay increase in 10 years, but also a pay cut to boot? Not bloody likely. The performance review of this editor certainly indicates that they more deserving a salary commensurate with the editor of a high school newsletter.

-- Wally Keeler

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