Newsstand: February 9, 2010
Duly Quoted: Adam Giambrone
Bob Kinnear isn't Greg Kinnear
Newsstand: February 8, 2010
Scale Model City, Actual-Size Grime
Photo of the garbage bin at Queen and John by Nick Kozak/Torontoist.
The Toronto Star is repenting. On Tuesday, they published "Toronto making me mad as hell" by Vinay Menon, one of the most head-shakingly bad excuses for an article we've ever read in a major daily. To wit:
On Sunday, I returned home from a barbecue to an unpleasant discovery: A fiend had smashed into my locked shed and absconded with my lawn mower."Can you believe this?" I asked my wife, who seemed more concerned with the length of our grass than the actual theft. "Our Lawnhog was abducted in broad daylight. What is happening to this city?"
[...]
These days...everything about Toronto is making me mad: Construction, dirty parks, appalling customer service, endless fees, abysmal leadership, dysfunctional council, inept urban planning, potholes, expensive goods, dilapidated neighbourhoods, aggressive panhandlers, the ongoing futility of our hockey squad.
Toronto the Good has become Toronto the Enraging.
To which we must say, really?
The Star's star columnists have seemed to share our sentiments since: in the days after Menon's article, the paper has been aggressively targeting and undermining just that kind of frustration (a frustration Star commenters unsurprisingly seem to share), with several articles devoted to telling everyone to basically chill the fuck out about the city workers' strike.
From DiManno's article on Wednesday:
...this is only Day Three of inconvenience and certainly Toronto should be able to stiffen up a bit, faced with such urban challenges as no garbage collection, no ferry service, no daycare at 57 city-run facilities and no permits for wedding photo snapping in the park.
From Joe Fiorito's article on Wednesday:
Let's try to relax.The people on strike are our neighbours. They are not stupid and they are not evil. They are us.
From Royson James's article today:
My goodness. Get a hold on yourselves, people. If you can't do without these workers for two days then maybe they should be making three times the salaries they now pull down.
"My goodness" is right. The strike is undoubtedly a massive inconvenience for many, just as the TTC strike last year was. But the Star's now on the right track: it's not the end of the world, and won't be in another week, or another month, if it lasts that long. The pickets might continue. The Islands might stay quiet. And the streets may well begin to stink. But right now, the city reeks far less of garbage than it does of hysteric self-importance.
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"Welcome to Toronto", eclipsed by garbage. What a sight. I would really hate to be a tourist visiting this week.
Yes, it's annoying that there is no garbage collection. Yes, I'm increasingly frustrated by the garbage piles that are overflowing from the trash bins in the parks by my house, and it's a shame that I can't spend some time on Toronto Island. The reality of the whole situation is that it's just an inconvenience right now.
I can only speak to the garbage since I have no kids and no use for daycare services. Since the strike has started, I've noticed that it's not hard to be conscious of my waste output. So far, we've only missed one collection day. Is that really such a disaster? There are a number of people in this city who need to take a deep breath and just THINK for a second.
For those who want to see unions taken down a peg at City Hall, the best way to do so is to show that their services aren't needed. Making a mess of the city does just the opposite.
Besides, we are a long way from the situation Windsor is in.
Please explain the "situation Windsor is in"?
I live in, and work for (I'm non-union), the City of Windsor. I've taken garbage and recycling twice to one of two depots we have open. My kids soccer league was able to secure fields at other venues.
Windsor recently hosted the Red Bull Air Race with no problems. The fireworks went off without a hitch yesterday. The libraries are open. Downtown is fairly clean. Yes the rec centres and swimming pools are closed, but people are using alternatives for their kids.
It's a real shame you're unfamiliar with Vinay Menon's column(which I rather like), he's a *humour* columnist. Try re-reading it with that in mind.
"The people on strike are our neighbours."
It would actually help if jobs in the City were reserved for 416 residents, with successful applicants from outside the 416 being required to move to the 416 within six months. This would directly expose City staff to the service they provide.
However, that should start from the top and work down. For instance, is Gary Webster still getting the GO Train to work?
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/230289
Oh for the love of ....
Did you see how many people disagree with Royson James?
People are fed up with the strike not just because of the inconvenience, but because of the fact that we are paying taxes for a service that we are not getting.
And lest we forget, garbage isn't the only issue here. There are a lot of people who have been negatively impacted by other facets of the strike, such as child care and parks and rec.
Yes - everybody needs to calm down a bit, but you can't deny that people are upset with reason.
LOL @ this logic: "If you can't do without these workers for two days then maybe they should be making three times the salaries they now pull down."
We could certainly do without a lot of those workers, it's the services we need (or at least allow some competition.) I must have overheard a half-dozen commuters on the TTC this week saying they'd gladly take one of those jobs.
Personally, my issue is the timing. Its Pride week and I would like to show tourists and all those 'thousands of people' that come down for the parade a city worth talking about; and the streets filling with garbage doesn't do it for me.
Its not so bad yet, but I can only imagine how Church St will be like by Saturday afternoon.
Yaz, that would be easy to imagine.
I find the union and some of their behaviour fairly annoying and unsympathetic, but good grief - if you can't handle a week or two of no garbage collection without resorting to nervous breakdowns and illegal dumping in parks, you deserve a lot worse than the inconvenience of the strike.
Really, I think the garbage collection is the least significant aspect of the strike - I have far more sympathy for people who've had to scramble to make plans in the absence of day camps, and people on the island who are out of work because no one can get there.
DiManno is a hack job on a good day.
Her sports columns are surprisingly good. Her OMG columns in the main section are a horror show - especially anything to do with a criminal trial.
No, the Menon column was dumb. If it was supposed to be a humour column, it failed in every way possible. It was the same lazy, anecdotally-sourced "this city is going to hell-in-a-handbasket" kind of journalism that columnnists get away with.
A real reporter would be required to find, you know, facts. Such as: Toronto is reasonably clean, all things considered. Toronto is safe. Toronto's plastic bag charge is less than many cities have levied, and is so far proving an effective way to curtail one of the most wasteful and superfluous consumer products in existence. Etc.
But facts can really put a crimp in one's irrational "city rage."
Say what you like about Rosie - and god knows this crowd does - at least she thoroughly reports her columns. Her conclusions may be off, but at least the facts aren't.
You really don't want that deconstructed and analysed down to the nitty-gritty, because your argument will dissolve. She ended up being a key sticking point in an investigative essay I wrote in 2008 on a series of murders. Her coverage of this triple murder in 1996, wherein she was sloppy with her "journalistic" fact reporting, refused (surprisingly abrasively) via email to clarify her points then and demonized the victims because of their marginalized socio-economic status while fawning faint praise on the murder suspect who was later convicted on a 25-year sentence. Her rationale was, "This was a nice Italian guy from the burbs with a loving family, a new child, and a wife [n.b., albeit on the way to being estranged because of his habit of being a john]. The victims were scum of the earth who were freaks anyway." And this was only in the second week after the murders while the guy was still on the lam.
It was uncovering this research when I realized just how bad she was. It speaks a lot about The Star's editorial board to keep someone like her on board. It would be like inviting Bill O'Reilly to the New York Times and refusing to ditch him when it's clear his sloppy fact-reporting is hurting the paper's reputation.
Why bring O'Reilly into it? The NYT editorial board proper has swan-dived off whatever moral high ground it once held by being unable to call torture, torture.
Oh, you mean Thomas Friedman? Yeah. Point.
There is absolutely no justification for people dumping garbage in parks, that just increases everyone's suffering. But the argument that we should be tolerant because the strikers are our 'neighbours' is ridiculous. I don't support the strike. I wouldn't support the strike if these people were literally my neighbours, or my friends, my relatives, (and as someone who unwillingly belongs to a union) or even if I was one of them. People have every right to be frustrated. Whether or not one can go a week or two weeks, or two months without garbage pick up is irrelevant. We pay for a service and I want that service.
To the commenter that mentions how the strike proves how important garbage workers are - it only proves that the service itself is necessary. It says nothing about the particular people doing it or how much they need to be paid.
Agreed. I have extended family that are CUPE members, but that in no way decreases my frustration or makes me any more prone to agreeing with them.
Re: Daycare closures. I'm an ECE, and I've got to say, it's pretty awesome to see some of my peers striking not for basic above-poverty-level wages, but to keep, gasp, actual benefits! It suggests that it's possible, in my line of work, to actually get wages that reflect respect for my work and that promise some kind of dignity.
My heart really goes out to parents who truly can't miss work, for fear of getting fired (un-unionized parents, for example!) or because they work minimum wage (...would that be, perhaps, un-unionized parents!) and really can't make ends meet.
My heart does not go out to parents whose jobs and financial stability are in no real danger if they take some time off/rejuggle their schedules (yes, I'm afraid I'm looking at you, creative classes), but are miffed because they'd rather not/are pissed off that their disposable income will dwindle/do not like spending the whole day with their 3 yr old. Organize a playgroup, cut down on the brand new artsy child-crap (banana holders? really?), and suck it up.
"My heart does not go out to parents who... are miffed because they'd rather not/are pissed off that their disposable income will dwindle/do not like spending the whole day with their 3 yr old."
Maybe they're miffed because a service they arranged in advance, planned around, and paid for, is being cancelled?
If people are ever in doubt about why most of Toronto is angry about the strike, check out the following article:
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/656721
The fact that so many Canada Day celebrations are cancelled is just sickening.
Oh, no! Not fireworks!
I will be celebrating Canada Day with my neighbours and we won't be needing the City's help to do so.
We've got to privatize some of these services. There is no need or benefit for government-run home garbage collection, for instance.
Logic exercise! Reconcile what you wrote with the following false statements:
Paul, in Etobicoke they hire contractors with signed labour agreements beyond the tender period. York had pickup last strike but the ideologues at City Hall broke the contract (with penalties) to contract it back in to find work for the overstaffed City waste department and now Yorkites are stuffing garbage bags into their cars in 30 degree heat.
You assert private contractors might dump illegally - sure, but Vaughan teaches us that public doesn't mean perfect not to mention the MFP leasing scandal right here.
What I was getting at with my second point is that a government unable to collect trash properly would probably be equally hapless to keep contractors well-behaved. IllegalSigns.ca is testament to the effectiveness of the city's bylaw enforcement.
The strike is inconvenient, but it's a lot more depressing watching the city waste time stonewall freedom-of-information requests that would show it turning a blind eye to lawbreaking by the profit-hungry.
"What I was getting at with my second point is that a government unable to collect trash properly would probably be equally hapless to keep contractors well-behaved."
LOL using the government's own incompetence as justification to keep their trash collection monopoly in place. Nice one.
Plus a healthy dose of misdirection to distract people from the issue. Classic!
If I'm going to be ripped off, I'd rather it be by someone accountable to the voting public and not a faceless company protected by contracts that outlive the terms of the councillors who entered into them.
They are not accountable. Nothing ever changes.
The best article on this whole mess is Edward Keenan's editorial in Eye this week. He's fast becoming the best writer in the free rags.