July 4, 2007
No Garage For Environment Minister, Ryerson Wants Sam's, And It Was A Bad Day For Dalton McGuinty
Ontario Environment Minister Laurel Broten will not build a two-storey garage for their home after all. Not that Torontoist doesn't think that the garage was a bad idea, because we do, but one of her neighbours is trying to get the court to make her pay him back the $10,000 he spent preparing for the municipal board hearing. Isn't that kind of excessive? Dude, you got what you wanted. Torontoist does not see where in the Environment Minister's portfolio it says "recompense schmucks," so if you chose to spend the money on lawyers rather than your much needed dental work, tough titty.
Canada has lost at least 76 radioactive devices over the last five years which could be used in a dirty bomb. Whyfor all of a sudden is dirty bomb potential the new orange in Canadian news? Seriously, every day now there's a new CP wire story about how terrorists could dirty-bomb us all into a horrible panic.
Ryerson University asks the province to expropriate Sam the Record Man for its use. If Ryerson gets the building (as Sam Sniderman has said he would prefer), it will probably turn it into an expanded library. You know what would be funny? If it was an audiovisual library! Eh? Eh?
Dalton McGuinty says no to photo radar. Possibly because people hate photo radar and hate governments that install photo radar and do not vote for them. That's just a theory.
Finally, McGuinty also came under fire for the way his government is dealing with the constant care workers' strike. Tearful parents told McGuinty that he doesn't "have a heart." (Insert Wizard of Oz reference here.)
Photo by the mkt from the Torontoist Flickr pool.
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"Dalton McGuinty says no to photo radar. Possibly because people hate photo radar and hate governments that install photo radar and do not vote for them. That's just a theory."
A good theory it is, too: 'the tragedy of the commons'. However, couldn't that not only be overcome, but work for him, if it was announced that photo-radar could not be used to fine anyone going less than 130km? Write it into the law.
good policy choice, guest.
I think that would be a more fair way to implement the rule and still have safer roads.
I was thinking that they could pitch it as a green plan. (Not that motorists give a shit about the planet) Cars are more efficient at 100 km/h than 130.
Does anyone else think it is ridiculous that the environment minister has four cars? It is Orwellian.
The Minister still gets her garage. She just doesn't get a two-storey garage that will park all of her luxury vehicles. *Cue world's smallest violin*
...This has got to be close to the worst kind of press possible for a politician who is 100 days from facing the voters. She comes off as arrogant, far richer than the rest of us (a capital crime to "Joe Voter" if there ever was one), an environmental liability, a foe of trees and "unneighbourly."
The most damning quote for Broten was this one, printed in the Star: "I can't help but feel badly for Laurel," said John Sullivan. "It wasn't for us a political issue (but) it seemed to us rather inconsiderate and unneighbourly."
When the partisan spinsters speak, most people tune out. Sullivan, on the otherhand, divorces politics from the issue in the stated and, more effectively, unstated. By using "Laurel" instead of "Ms. Broten" or "the Minister," Sullivan makes it more of a human conflict. And any voter can relate to having a bad neighbour.
Whether their work was calculated or not, I award a (meaningless) gold star to Minister Broten's neighbours for their highly effective PR campaign that didn't cost them a dime.
Nobody asked that loser to spend 10 grand of his own money to hire and arbourist, an urban planner AND a lawyer to fight a garage.
I guess he'll always have his crooked teeth to remind him of what an idiot he was.
Perhaps the press have become impatient with the really poor performance that Terror has been putting in lately. There's only so long busy people will wait before taking things into their own hands — those newspapers aren't selling themselves, y'know.