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Rob Ford's Toronto

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Eug:

Knew this is coming. No, what I am saying is this (and in general I am not a fan of Hume's rants - which is more opinion than news) - if one is so uptight on the matter of integrity, one better be ready to uphold it regardless of context, otherwise one can rightly question the integrity of the individual making these complaints. Plus while I am fairly certain Hume's comments will probably make it through industry standards, his subject's behaviour over the year has failed the equivalent test quite a few times. If one is to complain about integrity, would it make more sense to start from that point?

AoD
 
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I had an interesting conversation with another father at the younger Ratling's hockey game Sunday. The guy's an actor, so not necessarily a natural conservative, but he was quite interesting in his attitude towards Ford. Things like the garbage strike and therefore the contracting out of some of the garbage removal struck a chord with him. He basically said, "The problem with Ford is that he's a boor, so he's making conservative policies look bad."

I pointed out the idiocy of burying the Eglinton LRT beneath Sunnybrook and the Don Valley, and he said, yeah, whatever. It was interesting. Ford's support is dented, but not necessarily broken.
 
I've always failed to see how the garbage strike helped Ford for Conservative voters.

The mayor pushed against the union for concessions, and we got a strike. The same would happen if a Conservative mayor pushed against the unions (instead our Conservative mayor has folded completely to the two unions he's had to deal with, offering the police a massive raise, and making TTC an essential service, which eliminated the cities ability to play hard-ball and get any concessions).

Privatizing doesn't make strikes or unions go away. If anything it will increase the possibility of an extended strike, as it puts an extra layer of bureaucracy between the people/government and the union. We've already seen this in Region of York where the municipal transit operators are privatized (are there any other examples of this in the GTA other than GO?) and the transit strike has been going for 6 weeks already.
 
^There's no doubt Toronto voters were angry about the strike, so they elected someone to slap the unions around. Makes perfect sense. Whether Ford can deliver lower labour costs or not, he is certainly going to slap the unions around.

Trouble is, Ford thinks his mandate extends to derailing waterfront development and derailing transit expansion. As I read it, Ford's transit plan wasn't on the minds of anybody when they voted, excerpt a few poor benighted fools up in Scarborough. But he thinks he's got a mandate for this nonsense.

AlvinofDiaspar said:
bobbob911:
Why be so upset about the "lack of journalistic integrity" when the subject in question is the epitome of behaving with integrity in general? ...

And yes, on that matter, we'll discuss the Sun and the Post.
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You've noticed that the City desk at the Post has been taken over by a bunch of left-wing pinkos, no? I remember Peter Kuitenbrouwer when he was spraypainting anarchist slogans on walls in the Plateau Mont-Royal. Sometimes I feel sorry for Matt Gurney, he must be lonely there.
 
CapitalSeven said:
To call anything terrible writing in such a terribly written post is a bit rich.

True, Hume can be repetivie in his jeremiads, but the point of wailing and gnashing your teeth is to gnash until what you're wailing at goes away. I am sure he is sincerely distraught at the idea of three more years of Frod nonsense. I know I am. The piece referred to is one of his better plaints.
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I can't stop giggling at this :D What's a "plaint"? is "repetivie in his jeremiads" some kind of olde english expression?
 
voxpopulicosmicum said:
^I, too, got shades of the Nixon obit from Hume's column. I forget if it was that or another where HST quotes from someone else's obituary: "Like a rotting mackerel by moonlight, he shines and stinks".

I'm so past holding anyone to any standard in their treatment of the Fords. Others may deserve fair treatment, or even benefit of doubt, but the Fords are so far past that. Yes, that's probably not the correct attitude to have for a forward-looking person with a vested interest in the continued prosperity and civility of this City, but why do such considerations not also apply to the Fords and the peiople who elected them? Why must the rest of us turn the other cheek?
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Yeah, I was thinking Nixon's obit in particular when I brought up HST.

The point I was trying to make is that the Star is not the Sun, that having such a public war with such columns (though so much better written than the opposing dreck at the Sun) could drag the Star into an even nastier battle. I could be wrong, taking a strong stand could drive readership, I'm just not convinced this is worthy of Toronto's newspaper of record, that more hard journalism exposing Ford and his allies for what they are is better in my view (which the Star, amongst others, haven't been too bad at in the last 6 months).
 
k10ery said:
Are you trying to prove his point?
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Hard to decipher what his point was - the post looked like it was typed by the monkeys at the start of 2001 a space odyssey...

I would say that I do not call myself a journalist nor am I paid to be one so the quality of my prose is (mostly) irrelevant
 
ShonTron said:
The point I was trying to make is that the Star is not the Sun, that having such a public war with such columns (though so much better written than the opposing dreck at the Sun) could drag the Star into an even nastier battle. I could be wrong, taking a strong stand could drive readership, I'm just not convinced this is worthy of Toronto's newspaper of record, that more hard journalism exposing Ford and his allies for what they are is better in my view (which the Star, amongst others, haven't been too bad at in the last 6 months).
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I don't disagree with you in theory. It's just that I don't think "people" like the Fords should be able to claim the benefit of any rules of courtesy or civility. This is an incorrect sentiment, to be sure, but it's how I feel. Why could their mother not have loved them more as children?
 
denfromoakvillemilton said:
The Star is the paper of record in Canada. The city's main source. Both parties need to can the kids nonsense but the Star should know better, they are supposed to be the mature ones here.
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Seriously? Did you just say that the newspaper is the adult, and the mayor of the City of Toronto gets a pass 'cause he's a dickhead?

hahahahahaha....
 
Transit City cancellation to cost $65M
The CBC. Dec 13, 2011
Paul Chiasson/Canadian Press

Cancelling Transit City in favour of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's subway-focused plan will cost $65 million, TTC general manager Gary Webster says.

The Toronto Transit Commission's chief used the figure — which is $16 million more than the previous number cited — during the city's budget committee meeting on Tuesday.

'The mayor's priority is to spend $65 million on a handshake with no input from any staff or any of the other councillors.'
—Coun. Adam Vaughan


Bruce McCuaig, CEO of the regional transportation agency Metrolinx, said in March the city would be liable for about $49 million in penalties, but said that number was likely to rise.

The province announced earlier this year that the province would support an Eglinton light rail line underground, effectively killing former mayor David Miller's Transit City plan.

When he took office last December, Ford said he would scrap Transit City because it would run at street-level and obstruct traffic.

Coun. Adam Vaughan, a frequent Ford critic, said he didn't understand the mayor's thinking, especially given the 2012 spending cuts that council has been debating.

"We turn around to the children and say, 'Sorry, you're not going to get rec programs, you're not going to get a breakfast program, the library won't be open necessarily when you go to use it,' " he said. "And yet the mayor's priority is to spend $65 million on a handshake with no input from any staff or any of the other councillors. $65 million? Just to cancel stuff?"

Council Doug Ford, the mayor's brother, countered that Torontonians want subways and the cancellation fees are worth the cost.

One change in the mayor's plan replaces a $950-million light rail extension on Sheppard that would have been built eastward from Don Mills station with a subway extension pegged at $4.2 billion.


http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2011/12/13/toronto-transit-city-cancellation-costs.html
 
CanadianNational said:
Transit City cancellation to cost $65M
The CBC. Dec 13, 2011
Paul Chiasson/Canadian Press

Cancelling Transit City in favour of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's subway-focused plan will cost $65 million, TTC general manager Gary Webster says.

The Toronto Transit Commission's chief used the figure — which is $16 million more than the previous number cited — during the city's budget committee meeting on Tuesday.

'The mayor's priority is to spend $65 million on a handshake with no input from any staff or any of the other councillors.'
—Coun. Adam Vaughan


Bruce McCuaig, CEO of the regional transportation agency Metrolinx, said in March the city would be liable for about $49 million in penalties, but said that number was likely to rise.

The province announced earlier this year that the province would support an Eglinton light rail line underground, effectively killing former mayor David Miller's Transit City plan.

When he took office last December, Ford said he would scrap Transit City because it would run at street-level and obstruct traffic.

Coun. Adam Vaughan, a frequent Ford critic, said he didn't understand the mayor's thinking, especially given the 2012 spending cuts that council has been debating.

"We turn around to the children and say, 'Sorry, you're not going to get rec programs, you're not going to get a breakfast program, the library won't be open necessarily when you go to use it,' " he said. "And yet the mayor's priority is to spend $65 million on a handshake with no input from any staff or any of the other councillors. $65 million? Just to cancel stuff?"

Council Doug Ford, the mayor's brother, countered that Torontonians want subways and the cancellation fees are worth the cost.

One change in the mayor's plan replaces a $950-million light rail extension on Sheppard that would have been built eastward from Don Mills station with a subway extension pegged at $4.2 billion.


http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2011/12/13/toronto-transit-city-cancellation-costs.html
Click to expand...

Rob Ford's gravy has been found in the money being wasted on Ford's attempts to cancel Transit City, when we already had plans for a better transit network (not just a line). In addition, with the extra $10 million needed for creating the Sheppard Subway plans, that makes it $75 million in gravy money being wasted by Ford, when we could be already constructing a Finch West LRT this year. Instead, they want to cut service, some "service excellence"!
 
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