Newsstand: November 23, 2009
The Making of a Medley
The Daily Photoist: November 23, 2009
Televisualist: A Kinder, Gentler Televisualist
Equal Voice, a group which advocates for more women in government, reports that there are 22% more women running in this year's provincial election than in 2003. However, they also note that because many women are competing in ridings where they have no hope of winning, the numbers may not translate into more female legislators. You know, rather than spending time and money trying to elect more women, the whole inequity thing could be solved through a program of gender reassignment surgery on sitting MPPs.
Bell Canada has had to apologize for a billboard for cell phones which included a reference offensive to Holocaust survivors and probably a lot of other people. The posters showed a young woman wearing punk gear, including a button reading "Belsen Was A Gas," a title of a song by seminal punk band the Sex Pistols. Bell did not apologize to the Sex Pistols.
Former TTC chair Howard Moscoe has another entry in the "who should pay for the TTC" sweepstakes: developers! Moscoe has renewed his 2006 push to change city zoning laws to require anyone building a condo within 500 metres of a subway to provide a Metropass for each unit. The plan should draw broad support because everyone already hates developers anyway.
Throat a little scratchy when you woke up this morning? Does your kitchen smell like a bus terminal garage? Yep, summer is back, so get outside and and enjoy what could be the last smog alert of the year.
Photo by Patrick Metzger from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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I don't think Moscoe understands that a lot of people don't take the TTC because it's frequently slow and unreliable and they can afford a better way ... not because they don't get free Metropasses. The TTC is already cheaper than a car, so drivers are obviously sticking to their ways for other reasons.
Why not provide Metropasses to people who already use the TTC and rely on it but don't have the money to spend on a condo? Come to think of it, why would we provide perks to people who already live so close to a subway line and need little more incentive to use it?
Gloria - I agree with your logic about condo owners and why they do or don't use the TTC. Moscoes' proposal is about grabbing revenue for the TTC, not encouraging ridership.It would be a lot harder to justify forcing developers to subsidize free transit for people who actually need it.
I wonder if the women at Equal Voice would articulate their demand as more "chicks" in politics? I somehow doubt it.
Bell never really explained how the button got there in the first place. Sure, they are quick to say "not our fault!! the approval was done on a small poster!" but where DID it come from?
Was it a wardrobe thing or bad a graphics edit or something secretly placed by a disgruntled employee? I wanna know!
(also, bets on how many people from which departments were fired?)
i'm sure the pin was in a box full of clothes labelled "punk" because somebody thought it looked cool. no conspiracy theories necessary.
Does anyone have a link to a picture of the billboard in question?
What kind of person thinks Bell Canada would intentionally claim gassing Jews is a good time? Sure someone should have caught the button (I read somewhere it was shot in Japan, but I have no idea) before it went to press, but if anyone should be apologizing it's the Sex Pistols for introducing the phrase to the punk scene, not Bell for making a punk inspired ad.
Here's the button in question from the poster. I'll bet that everyone who came across that ad in the approval process didn't even know what Belsen was, sadly. Also, Belsen didn't have gas chambers—most people there died from starvation and disease.