Toronto the Good: New Mayor: Ford celebrates 1st 100 days in office, boasts his good deeds

Mayor's email newsletter to constituents:

Mayor's Rob Ford's first 100 days 

mark improvements in 

customer service, 

reduced taxes,  

increased accountability with taxpayer dollars

Toronto the Good: Mayor: Oct25 election exposes Liberal nanny-state candidate Smitherman

Tedium, that's the single word for the mayoral candidate. Outgoing mayor whathisname angered the people as well as the overpaid, over-benefitted city outdoor employees with his allowing the garbage to p+l-up all around town during the heat of summer. It was a health hazard bar none--a tourist killer to be sure, but what of those of us anchored to this urban dwelling-place? Metro Council shoud have ordered the workers back onto the job, or fired them. Their greed and whathisname's supineness killed life in the metropolis. So, Supine fathomed that he coudn't get another term. In the last election, whathisname paraded himself in S&M leather regalia to scoop up the vote of idiot-Gays. I turned off immediately, especially after I was deleted by a Toronto blog that coudn't extend press freedom to my reportage + opinion. Toronto the Good can at times, I say regretfully, be a narrow little burg with suffocating Liberal tribal mores. I can't criticize whathisname's drag ploy?

Now, his ilk is back in the game, in George Smitherman's candidacy. He's a political hack who was provincial Minister of Health, but didn't do a thing to stop the bedbug epidemic, altho medical science has found over 40 deadly diseases in the mouths of these bloodsuckers. Think of all the money these folks squeezed out of the health system to stop AIDS, cherry-picking medical causes to drum up votes, even those causes based on undisciplined sexual adventurism, including the hateful crew who conspire to give AIDS and receive it. So much anti-AIDS money swished down a rat-hole! Still, the bedbuggers l+k unscrupulous landlords bring used, infested mattresses into the dwellings of impoverished renters. Smitherman, nor any other candidate who doesn't make bedbug extermination the prime public health issue, gets no support or good word from me.

From the political heits of the province of Ontario, Nanny left his provincial post to bedevil the city's political scene. This candidate wants to play Nanny by outlawing the eating of meat on Mondays, he's calling for gov-sponsored "Meatless Mondays". This isn't the Catholic Church which he hates so much, a denomination which before Vatican II had its non-gov rules for meatless Fridays. Nor is it the Protestant Christian schools of Ontario to which he and his double-tongued Liberal caucus denied tax-support (because the Prots lagged in the acceptance of Gay dogmas), all the while Smitherman's provincial Libs dumped millions into the Catholic school system.

Now, the Smitherman crew are trying to get restaurants, among other locations, to stop their Bacon and Eggs breakfasts for people who face a day of hard physical labour. This ham-fisted approach is repulsive. It not only announces a one-menu-fits-all approach, also it woud enshr+n a vegetarian-totalitarian ideology the Bible warns against -- Beware of those who forbid the eating of meat. Let these ideologues eat ecoli-infested bean sprouts to vegetate upon.

Apparently, Smitherman has not yet formulated for public consumption his plan to seize meat in the grocery stores, nor revealed his plan to send cops systematically into the homes, fridges and freezers of Toronto where he will seize meat at random. The butcher shops will be closed, or fire-attacked by anonymous crowds of face-masked anarchists or hordes of pre-op transgenders in burqas. I hope the voting public witholds the office from him, rather than deliver the city's leadership into the hands of another bozo, one who has never served on metro's council, and a career politician to boot. He's been in one political office or another for far too long. Throw him out before he gets in: Out with the food totalitarian!

-- Owlie Scowlie

Toronto the Good: Plague of bedbugs hits town, hurts poor most

Toronto Star (Aug6,2k10) by reporter Noor Javed and photo by Carlos Osorio.

Across the city, thousands like Ross, are realizing that the scourge of bedbugs is not limited to social housing, crowded shelters, or low-income dwellings. Bedbugs are quickly becoming everyone’s problem. Pest-control companies in the GTA say they receive four to five calls a week from mortified residents in swanky neighbourhoods, owners of upscale condos and helpless tenants in rental apartments struggling to cope with infestations. And in recent months, hospitals such as William Osler Health Centre in Etobicoke, the Toronto Public Library, and retail stores have joined the list of those battling infestations — which suggests that, despite the best efforts of public health officials, pest-control companies and the afflicted, the city is on its way to a full-scale bedbug crisis.

Last week, in an act of desperation, city officials in New York City declared war on bedbugs, after reports of the pests dramatically increased. In 2009, the city received 33,772 bedbug-related inquires, up from 21,922 in 2008 — a jump of 54 percent. But it has been the growing evidence of the pests in every corner of society — in the changerooms of retail stores, fancy hotels, libraries and even as plot lines in NY-based sitcoms — that pushed city officials to announce a $500,000 initiative that includes the creation of a health department task force, improved tracking tools, protocols for the proper disposal of infested items, and requiring landlords to provide information on infested units to tenants. 

In Toronto, infestation numbers are also rising. In 2003, Toronto Public Health had only 46 reports. In 2008, when TPH set up a self-reporting bedbug hotline, it received 1,324 calls. This year, the city has received 1,076 calls so far and expects hundreds more.

It's a hell of a situation here in Toronto the Good this season, and for as long as the gd bedbugs live.

-- Owlie Scowlie

Toronto the Good: Spruces up: G20 Summit is coming to town ... meantime last week we had an earthquake

Toronto is rockin 'n rollin' 'tween the arrival of Finance Ministers and entourages, some heads of govt, for the G2 Summit. Preps became controversial when the bill for an artificial lake at the Summit's location was reported as costing $20 Million Canadian, or was that $20 Billion? Or was it American dollars?

Toronto the Good, by Owlbie Scowlie

I was standing on the stair to the Second Floor, leaning against the springy wood bannister rail when I felt it. My body was shaking as the rail absorbed the unseen shaking of the whole house. The rail absorbed the differential between my body's environment shaking and my elbow on the rail, my leaning arm, and my whole body swaying ever so subtly to retain its balance. Something like that.

Read more ...

Toronto the Good: Garbage stinkpot: "Union sets deadline for deal"

Toronto Star--largest daily-newspaper circulation in town, but always struggling to keep its eroding subscription circulation and its ad revenues up--carries an article, "Union sets deadline for deal" (Jul 24,2k9) by Donovan Vincent. Of course, if you've followed the Toronto the Good series on this rW Backpage, you're aware perhaps that, after working since January with no contract, city workers went on strike. The employees are in a legal-strike period, and are witholding their human labor in order to hike up wages and benefits.

In the Canadian nomenklatura of union establishments, there are two unions on strike. One, is CUPE Local 416, whose president is Mark Ferguson; the other is CUPE Local 79.

416 is "The union representing city of Toronto outside workers," and it "says a settlement in the five-week-old strike must be achieved by midnight Sunday or negotiations will be over."

416's ultimatum woud mean that our city's garbage-removers woud be removing their negotiators from the table, ceasing to meet faces-to-faces the team that negotiates for city management and, ultimately, for the mayor.

79 groups over 20,000 City of Toronto inside workers -- 11,600 full-time inside and 12,750 part-time.

This difference between working inside and outside is so relative, that it pales into something conceptually weak when compared with the differences among these very workers regarding life-philosophy, and sometimes work-philosophy. Why not let workers freely nominate such qualified representation as they want (freedom of assocation and representation), so that each kind of viewpoint among workers on union representation can vote for the union of one's choice.

The adversarial system of labor-relations has produced a stinking city (rat-infested, I'm sure). At the same time, warnings have been issued of diseases like Swine Flu and H1N1 becoming decidely chancier with the garbage build-up, undisposed of.

Adversary anti-pluralist union/employer conflict has resulted in 33 days of plague-encouraging desperation by the citizenry not parties to their side, or this way of settling issue of public employment, paid for by taxpayers who have to live in the filth and cantagion that the unions and city management are toying with. A shame on all!