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Rob Ford's Toronto

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I just noticed the reversible lane indicators have been restrung over Jarvis. How funny that such a obscure piece of infrastructure generated so much debate.
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
No doubt true, but they may also like their current job, and not want to be Mayor. As Mr. Ford has found out, it's night and day between the two jobs.
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Exactly, and there's nothing wrong with that. Look at what a tremendous job McConnell has done in her Ward.

Jonny5 said:
I just noticed the reversible lane indicators have been restrung over Jarvis. How funny that such a obscure piece of infrastructure generated so much debate.
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They went up Wed/Thurs & Fri night. If the weather co-operates the lanes will be repainted and Jarvis will be back to a five-lane highway come Monday morning. A final protest meeting is being held tonight.
 
@RC8

Sorry I misunderstood your initial argument. I assumed it was another downtown elitist comment on how outer parts of the city are not "worthy" of being part of Toronto. I consider almost everything in the Toronto urban area as part of Toronto. Yes these areas are not again as well as the inner city, but they still are very important in Toronto's status and success.

And I also agree that there needs to be more local government representation in Toronto proper. Likewise, we need more regional coordination in our planning policy as well.
 
Jonny5 said:
I just noticed the reversible lane indicators have been restrung over Jarvis. How funny that such a obscure piece of infrastructure generated so much debate.
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What a waste of tax payers money. I use Jarvis and Sherbourne every day, just so that embarrassment of a mayor could get his way, he's spent millions to put separate cycling lanes on Sherbourne, not to mention inconveniencing everyone with the construction, which is still going on, all so he could remove the bike lanes on Jarvis so he could get his way, and tell cyclist they cant complain because he built them new lanes, what a moron! If he'd have just left the ones on Jarvis alone, it wouldn't have cost the tax payer one cent, but just to protect his over inflated ego, he's spent millions, this from Mr. End of the Gravytrain. I despise that SOB more and more every day, why hasn't he been fired yet?
 
Yesterday at the library, I picked up a book called Assholes: A Theory. It's new, was sitting on display, and the title is catchy. I probably won't read it, mostly because I'm only on page 10 and already tired of reading the word asshole. Plus it has footnotes on almost every page, and seeks to explore the nature of assholes by discussing the thoughts of Rousseau and Kant. But let's see if this early explanation sounds like anyone we know:

So, for example, the asshole is the person who habitually cuts in line. Or who frequently interrupts in a conversation. Or who weaves in and out of lanes in traffic. Or who is extremely sensitive to perceived slights while being oblivious to his crassness with others. An insensitive person--a mere "jerk"--might allow himself to so enjoy "special advantages" in such interpersonal relations. What distinguishes the asshole is the way he acts, the reasons that motivate him to act in an abusive and arrogant way. The asshole acts out of a firm sense that he is special, that the normal rules of conduct do not apply to him. He may not deliberately exploit interpersonal relations but simply remains willfully oblivious to normal expectations. Because the asshole sets himself apart from others, he feels entirely comfortable flouting accepted social conventions, almost as a way of life. Most important, he lives this way more or less out in the open. He stands unmoved when people indignantly glare or complain. He is "immunized" against anyone who speaks up, being quite confident that he has little need to respond to questions about whether the advantages he allows himself are acceptable and fair. Indeed, he will often himself feel indignant when questions about his conduct are raised. That, from his point of view, may show that he is not getting the respect he deserves.
 
If the weather co-operates the lanes will be repainted and Jarvis will be back to a five-lane highway come Monday morning. A final protest meeting is being held tonight.
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IIRC, there was a motion passed at council that the Jarvis lanes stay until the Sherbourne lanes are done. So it may be another week.
 
Rob Ford, Mayor of Toronto: Streets are for cars, trucks, and buses.

Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City: Cyclists and pedestrians and bus riders are as important, if not, I would argue, more important than automobile riders.... The streets are there to transport people. They're not there necessarily for cars, they're to transport people, and there's lots of different ways of transporting people. In fact, one of the original ways was walking. (From this link.)

I wish Toronto had a mayor like Bloomberg instead of Ford.
 
Councillor quits Mayor Rob Ford's executive committee:

[Berardinetti] said she doesn’t understand why he has insisted on pushing forward on votes he is sure to lose. And she said his senior aides are not sufficiently respectful of councillors.

“It’s the, ‘This is the direction that we’re going, just do it,’ kind of thing — and not listening to the fact that I’m the elected councillor, I’m elected by the 60,000 people in Ward 35, and I have to listen to my residents. If I say, ‘I don’t agree with this,’ or, ‘This needs to be amended,’ and that’s not listened to, then — what’s the point?”
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I guess her constituents aren't taxpayers, so he doesn't have to listen to them. Or something.
 
What distinguishes the asshole is the way he acts, the reasons that motivate him to act in an abusive and arrogant way. The asshole acts out of a firm sense that he is special, that the normal rules of conduct do not apply to him. He may not deliberately exploit interpersonal relations but simply remains willfully oblivious to normal expectations. Because the asshole sets himself apart from others, he feels entirely comfortable flouting accepted social conventions, almost as a way of life. Most important, he lives this way more or less out in the open. He stands unmoved when people indignantly glare or complain. He is "immunized" against anyone who speaks up, being quite confident that he has little need to respond to questions about whether the advantages he allows himself are acceptable and fair. Indeed, he will often himself feel indignant when questions about his conduct are raised. That, from his point of view, may show that he is not getting the respect he deserves.
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That works pretty well as a layperson's on-the-fly definition of a narcissist or sociopath.
 
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It's almost too easy to point out Ford's flip flops, hypocrisies and reversals. It's almost as if he's our answer to Mitt Romney.

The Grid: The death of Ford Nation

On his radio show this past weekend—in the leadup to a contentious casino proposal at City Hall—Mayor Rob Ford said he’d welcome a gambling palace in Toronto, and justified the decision on economic grounds: “We’re in desperate need of revenues,” he said. And just then, two years into his term in office—the halfway point to the next election—the last faint signs of life that had once animated the ideology you might call “Ford Notion” died out.
For if the mayor has been clear on one thing since the moment he started campaigning for the job, it’s that the city did not want for money. “There’s more than enough money,” he told radio host John Oakley in explaining a tax cut shortly after his election, followed by the familiar mantra: “We have a major spending problem at City Hall, not a revenue problem.”
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That is indeed a change. Odd, to see Ford crashing up against his own propaganda. Kind of makes it that much harder to believe the man on any level.

Still, as ever, nothing is Rob Ford's fault. It's always someone else. Always the victim, our mayor. Forces beyond his control. Bad guys out to sully the good guy, the one who stands up for taxpayers. Usually he shakes his head, calls it all dirty politics; hopes we'll agree and see his mayoralty in a kind of black and white, infantile way. Whereas it's really the mayor himself failing to understand just how much his politics is the very thing that's haunting him.
 
NOW: Protestors halt removal of Jarvis bike lanes

As a city-contracted crew began scrubbing out the southbound lane using a truck-mounted water blaster shortly before 1 pm, a single protestor sat down in its path. The truck moved around him and continued its work, only to be blocked by another man, then another.

The crew was halted three separate times by a half-dozen activists, before finally abandoning the project at around 3 pm. Police told reporters the work would resume at 10 am Tuesday morning. A city spokesperson would not confirm that time, however.

No arrests were made.
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