One day, someone will write a book about Toronto’s demise and there will be a chapter entitled: August 26, 2010.
On one hand, this council often talks about finding new sources of revenue.
“This is not an airy-fairy, done on the back of an envelope (plan),” she said. “There is a dearth of housing in this area for artists.
“To suggest that staff didn’t come back with a positive report is incorrect,” McConnell said.
Rob Ford has a ten point lead in the polls for Mayor of Toronto. His basic platform of reigning in spending is resonating with voters who appear fed up with the sanctimonious politicians that are ruining a very broken city.
How sanctimonious?
In my opinion, if Mayor Ford is elected, city council will have a caucus meeting and they will choose their own mayor and (Ford) will be the Mayor in name.
Of course, one of their issues is that old Mike Harris, “he’s divisive,” lie.
He won’t be able to pass gas without the permission of council,” Moscoe [Councillor Howard Moscoe AKA That Fat Pantload] said.
When asked if he thinks Ford will be able to work with council, he added: “Depends how often he wants to pass gas.”
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Not unrelated:
The number one news story for Toronto - Canada’s largest city - was that a traffic officer illegally parked in a disabled parking bay…
Never mind “despite two shootings that took place in Toronto and the terror arrest in Ottawa,” what about Kyle Rae declaring council would choose not to respect the express wishes of the voters.
Kyle Rooks of TCHC (Toronto Community Housing Corporation ) said yellow tape surrounded the weeds…
Oh my God! Its Hogwood Hysteria!
After 19 years on city council, a guy can become used to the entitlement culture that is modern Canadian politics:
Kyle Rae admitted Tuesday he spent $12,000 from his taxpayer-subsidized communications budget to throw himself a “Farewell Celebration”…
Somehow, to this guy, to these people, a soiree at an upscale eatery for supporters is part of a councillors communications. Seems dodgy, you say. King Kyle, it turns out, has his i’s dotted and his t’s crossed.
Rae said he felt his constituents had effectively paid for such an event since he had handed over a $25,000 cheque to the city four years ago - money he raised that exceeded the spending limit for his re-election campaign that year.
So you see, it’s all good.
But wait a minute. If you donate to a candidates re-election campaign, and he sends taxpayer money your way to thank you, isn’t that a kick-back? Or at the very least, an election expense?
And if you didn’t donate to Kyle Rae, don’t like him and never voted for him? Not to worry, that newsletter he always sends out letting you know why your garbage wasn’t picked up - it’s in the mail.
Many of Toronto’s critics, this one included, believe they have waged a war on cars over the past 20 years. The war has been waged in the name of getting people on the TTC: give the city of Toronto a nickel, they’ll buy a quarter’s worth of bike lanes; give them a dollar, they’ll buy $10 worth of street car tracks; give them $10 an they’ll buy $100 worth of subway line. And recall, these people want to tear down the Gardiner Expressway, all the better to see all those condos that dot the lake.
The Toronto Board of Trade issued a report yesterday that says Toronto’s commute time is the worst in 19 major urban centres, including the notorious Los Angeles, and that is a “glaring downfall” in the city’s economic picture.
The Board of Trades solution?
Building the city’s public transit infrastructure is critical to improving productivity, Ms. Wilding [Carol Wilding, head of the Toronto Board of Trade]…
In other words what we’ve been doing the last twenty years isn’t working, but if we do it faster…
Challenged? She screamed like a petulant child at a taxpayer, concerned about ever more taxes. And the citizen was right, she damn well ought to be fired.
But don’t believe me, listen to the audio here.
Ladies and Gentlemen, your elected representatives.
Faced with increasing criticism after a spate of pictures and videos showing TTC employees not doing their job, operators at the public transit syndicate have decided to fight back:
This is a group where Operators can give suggestions on how to fight back to the recent photo and video harassment from passengers just looking to make trouble for us.
I work in the semi-real world of a private company with a big union. The previous actions of TTC employees, sleeping on the job, stopping for coffee, going to the bank are all discipline offences. With the exception of the guy who stopped for coffee in the middle of the night and left his passengers unattended, all are minor offences and a verbal or written warning would be sufficient for somebody with an otherwise clean record.
Starting a Facebook page, however, which is dedicated to how much your customers suck, is a fire-able offence. Contributing pictures of the customers sucking is suspend-able (fire-able if the picture was actually taken while you were supposed to be on duty).
Deputy Mayor (Joe Pantalone) Eyes Curb on Media:
“I’m not advocating restrictions (on media reporting of city hall) at this moment in time”
Running an operating deficit of $500M, with a $460M sick day liability to employees after a strike to solve that one problem, the City of Toronto has found $30,000 for a poet laureate.
I won’t go into detail all that’s wrong with this picture, Marni Soupcoff has done the job of deconstructing this lunacy. Instead, let me offer a conversational bon mot from Dionne Brand, Toronto’s new poet laureate:
Toronto… “in its multiplicity … is constantly rich and surprising. I’ve written this about it in thirsty — that wild waiting at traffic lights off the end of the world, where nothing is simple, nothing, in the city there is no simple love or simple fidelity, the heart is slippery.”
Why do I get the feeling I haven’t written the last of Ms. Brand?
And good luck to you John, because your a three time loser
Sandra from Toronto ended her call on CFRB radio last Friday afternoon with those rather mean spirited words for show co-host John Tory.
“Do you work for the city (of Toronto)” Tory’s co-host Tarek Fatah asked Sandra three times during the call.
“I don’t work for the city,” Toronto councilor and council speaker Sandra Bussin told Fatah.
Bussin denied, for five days, that the caller was her then yesterday, when the jig was clearly up, called CFRB again and admitted that yes she was Sandra from Toronto. She did not lie, however (other than denying it was she who called from Friday until Wednesday), she does not work for the city, she works for her constituents. That is what she told host Bill Carroll yesterday. “I don’t work for the city. I work for my constituents.”
With any luck at all, she won’t be working for anybody come Nov. 2010, and then she won’t have to split hairs when she’s ambushing someone.
Toronto Councillor Michael Walker wants to force Toronto cyclists to get licences for riding of said bikes. Adults, as well, should have to wear helmets, lest they crack their pretty heads open. Free choice? Not in Michael Walker’s city!
It is, however, the licence issue that’s most troubling. It may be an excusable request if the problem was rampant bikers who don’t know how to ride their bikes. A course, plus a test for every body’s safety, perhaps. But listen to Walkers reason for wanting licensing:
Currently, there is no requirement for a cyclist to carry personal identification…
Micheal Walker doesn’t want you riding around in his city if he can’t tell who you are and, we presume, if you belong.
Car, motorcycle, boat, sitting beside a pond fishing, all require a licence. Now Michael Walker thinks cycling should require a licence, at the same time as the City of Toronto is trying to get more people to ride bikes - a conflict of priorities if ever there was one. However, Walker’s stated reason, because you should have to carry identification, is chilling. If he gets his way there will be one method you can go to leave the house that wouldn’t require handy identification: walking. How long before the likes of Michael Walker decide that’s not safe enough, and identification is required, so it is not “difficult for police?”
At that stage, you can no longer go under the mantle of free citizen.
Toronto: Not in a Death Spiral, freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy, pimply minions of bureaucracy
After six years of hard-left winger David Miller’s reign, there is signs that the people of Toronto are looking for some change. So who do they get coming to the plate?
Provincial cabinet minister George Smitherman, from the leftern most reaches of the Liberal Party.
One question for George Smitherman: what would you have done differently you had been in charge the last six years?
Two years ago, almost to the day, I made an off-handed remark about Toronto being in a death spiral. This somewhat offended James at The Progressive Right, who both commented on it, and had his own post. I let it drop after that, bringing up only once about six months later. In retrospect, I should have made it a series, the way Kate does Not Waiting for the Asteroid or Y2Kyoto. However, never too late as they say:
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Toronto the Not in a Death Spiral
The mayor of Toronto this week is refusing to force striking City of Toronto workers to allow members of the public to access the garbage transfer stations, as they are legally obligated to do. Citizens, however, who do not stand in long lines to be graced with the privilege of being allowed their legal right, and leave their garbage say, outside the transfer stations will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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Addendum: memo to the Toronto Sun: this is not a waffle, this is picking sides and he sided with the law breakers.
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Additional: anyone out there know how to add a little swirly effect to the above picture?
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