Photo of Howard Moscoe at March's OCAP protest by Miles Storey. His forty-six friends include Adam Giambrone, Bob Rae, Adam Vaughan, David Miller, John Tory, Dalton McGuinty, and the Ottawa Citizen. His political views are "Left wing and a prayer." He's interested in "Friendship" and "Networking." His lone activity is "sculpting wooden birds." He cleans "council furniture with the Mayor's toupees at the start of council meetings." His favourite TV show is the Glenn......

Following the unveiling of the EcoCab in Toronto last week Torontoist spotted the pedi-cab being presented to councillor Howard Moscoe outside City Hall yesterday. Moscoe, chairman of the Licensing and Standards Committee, turned down the offer of a ride around Nathan Phillips Square, but got a complete tour of the $13,000 vehicle's features as a small but curious crowd gathered. EcoCabs are expected to roll out on downtown streets Thursday.......

The proposal: With the U.S. greenback falling in value, Councillor Howard Moscoe wants to ban the use of American coins in parking meters and on the TTC. The stupid statement: "The city's going to lose millions if it continues to accept them." The upgrade cost to reject non-Canadian currency: $450 per parking meter (there are 3,000 of them). The likelihood that TTC employees are going to sort through the fare box: No chance in......

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......

From mid-September through year-end, all City Community Centres will be closed on Mondays. Skating rinks won't open until January. Fewer potholes will be repaired. Snow won't be cleared unless there is at least 15 cm of it (the current minimum is 8 cm). New materials from Public Health will only be available in English. Welcome to the new Toronto, where you get what you (and the provincial and federal governments) pay for—or won't get what......

City Council plans to create as many as 21 new leash-free areas for dogs by the end of the year. Councillor Howard Moscoe calls for fences to separate people and canines, saying, "The problem is the dogs can't read the signs. We'd lose control completely unless they're fenced areas." Alarmed local media dub 2007 "The Summer of the Dog." 24 people, including a Toronto police officer, were arrested yesterday and charged with being part of......

It's something that usually only comes up during election time, but in the City of Toronto, wards are designated by numbers. For example, the area bounded by Dovercourt Road to the west, Christie Street and Bathurst Street to the east, the CPR tracks to the north and Lake Ontario to the south is officially known as Ward 19. Nobody really calls area by its numerical name (hey dude, let's party in the 19th tonight!), but......

Howard Moscoe proposes a licensing fee or tax on temporary downtown parking lots with the revenue directed towards building more commuter parking lots at public transit hubs. Moscoe argues that this would induce more people to take transit and encourage temporary lots to be redeveloped more quickly. Iranian refugee Zahra Kamalfar and her two children arrived in Vancouver yesterday after spending 10 months stuck in an airport terminal in Moscow. Everything you ever wanted......

Howard Moscoe to jerks: "Hey, stop abusing disabled parking permits!" Bill Gates and Stephen Harper have pledged millions of moolah to the Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative. Polls suggest the Conservatives have taken the lead in public popularity, but Harper claims he's in no rush for an election. Today in City Hall: a $6.2 million renovation is rejected and nobody wants to sit nicely for the class photo. Fiddler extraordinaire and Toronto resident Ashley MacIsaac......

North Korea agrees to shut down its main nuclear reactor and "eventually" shut down its nuclear weapons program. In exchange for a million tons of fuel oil, of course, but frankly nobody so far has come up with a better plan regarding North Korea than "keep bribing them to do nothing," so it boils down to a no-score win. Opposition parties charge that the Tories are stacking judgeship selection committees with conservative partisans to drive......

blogUT has stepped into the crowded Toronto blogosphere (blogaverse? blorld? blearth?) to fill an as of yet uncovered niche: everything about the University of Toronto. Though they've only been around since the beginning of this month, the site -- edited by Jingping Ji, a Masters student in Electrical Engineering -- is already generating quality event listings like you wouldn't believe (see, for instance, dinner with Howard Moscoe, free cookies, and a weekly film finds......

It seems its website isn't the only thing embarrassingly behind the times at the TTC these days: the above scan is of a current January Metropass. (Councillor Howard Moscoe was TTC Chair from 1998-2000 and 2003-2006; his successor, Councillor Adam Giambrone, was elected by the Commission as its Chair on December 6 of last year.) What makes this a particularly odd error is the fact that it's not simply a case of the TTC......

Toro Magazine, free to Globe and Mail subscribers, released its Men of the Year issue yesterday. Featured honourees include Steve Nash, Brian Mulroney, Paul Haggis, The Trailer Park Boys, Kiefer Sutherland, William Shatner and sweet, hot luscious Ryan Gosling. Torontoist favourites like Final Fantasy and Lukas Rossi were runners up in the music category, but how do you compete against Neil Young? Evangeline Lilly was named Woman of the Year, because she runs around the......

Some game system made by some game company named Sony launched today. And sold out in about five minutes. The jury is still out on whether this will be a bigger letdown than The Phantom Menace was. Famous conservative economist Milton Friedman died yesterday at 94. Since John Kenneth Galbraith died six months ago and these things traditionally happen in threes, you'd better be careful if you're a world-famous economist! Re: Toronto traffic: we're......

When the feds handed out $37 million for improving security on transit systems nationwide yesterday, Go Transit received $5.3 million, $4.3 million went to Union Station, but the TTC received only $1.46 Million, just shy of the $17 million it asked for. "It's like handing a bum a dime and saying, `Go buy a cup of coffee,'" said Howard Moscoe, distractedly pushing a rusty shopping cart full of discount surveillance cameras. Meanwhile, federal Finance Minister......

Robert Wiszniowski gets 14 years for killing and dismembering his wife, Rose McGroarty, in Parkdale last year. Motive? She caught him smoking crack and threatened to call police. The TTC started installing security cameras on its 1,500 buses and 250 streetcars yesterday. Howard Moscoe says it's all part of a response to a "terrorist threat lingering over all transit systems," but more importantly, they're expected to deter crime and prevent driver injury. A woman was......

United Church Minister Cheri DiNovo and the NDP have taken Parkdale-High Park away from Sylvia Watson and the Liberals. The NDP won the riding with 41% of the vote, despite the Liberals summoning 11 cabinet ministers and high profile members like Bob Rae and Gerard Kennedy to campaign with former city councillor Sylvia Watson. 20,000 or so names are going to be taken off the city's voting list because the city has been unable to......

Maybe they're just tired of Howard Moscoe but the TTC committee unanimously voted to approve the Bombardier deal. The $499 million deal still has to go through council where we're sure there'll be an acrominous but ultimately futile debate. Pressure from Ottawa got an Iranian Canadian former U of T prof freed from an Iranian prison. The man had been accused of espionage and kept in solitary confinement. Ok drivers, get it while its cheap.......

Hello, class! Ron isn't here today. I will be your substitute Ron. The TTC will be reviewing a controversial no-compete proposal from Bombardier for new TTC subway cars today. An offer exists from Siemens to fill the contract for much less (we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars here); however, the Bombardier contract would mean increased tax revenues in Ontario that TTC chair Howard Moscoe argues would outstrip the additional costs. During a fact-finding......

So obviously no one listened to us yesterday and as a result we broke a power usage record. People cranking their A/C, turning on fans and sticking heads into fridges caused us to use over 27,000 megawatts of electricity. That's over 800 megawatts more than our previous record set last July. We may even break that record again today, fingers crossed that we don't. The Star notices that in two homicides last month there was......

We know it's hot out there. It's so hot that last night was on record as the hottest night in Toronto ever. According to electricity companies we were just shy of the power record yesterday so keep up the good work everyone, don't do stupid things like blast your air conditioner and open your windows. Heck, try to avoid the A/C all together. A Coffee Time in Scarborough was trashed and robbed by rowdy......

Howard Moscoe is harder to kill than a vampire. The TTC chair survives yet another non-confidence motion and pissed off councillor Mark Grimes so much that he actually quit his comissioner spot on the committee. So not only did he pass the vote he also successfuly flabbergasted an opponent into quitting. Now that's what we call a skilled political operator. In other TTC news, perimeter seating gets the thumbs down from Count Moscoe. He then......

The TTC has apparently joined the 20th century and given its customers the ability to buy their metropasses with debit cards! According to IT Business.ca, the TTC signed a contract with IBM over three years ago but has just started to roll out two machines at Finch and one at Eglinton stations. The TTC will be installing seven more machines throughout the system. Sadly only one of the three machines are currently functional. According to-oh-so......

The Coalition for Municipal Change, a citizens group that rallied together to unseat Anne Johnston and elect Karen Stintz in her place, is scouring the city for candidates to take down Kyle Rae and Howard Moscoe. We've expressed our dislike of these two councillors before. Particularly Moscoe, whose incompetence at the head of the TTC has caused numerous debacles. But if the replacement is another Karen Stintz clone we hope that the Coalition falls flat......

Cops were surprised to learn that secret cameras were installed in various areas of the Toronto Police Association HQ. They were apparently installed some two years ago on the orders of a union director. Many are filing grievances others are wondering the building should be swept for bugs and other listening devices. Police still have no clear theories about the double shooting in a Scarborough garage yesterday. They are looking for a pair of people......

For all time we spend slagging councillor Howard Moscoe even on the worst of days he doesn't come close to the Mouth of Etobicoke, Rob Ford. Many of us have been loud and boorish at a sporting event but only Rob would hand out his City Hall business card to the couple whose evening he ruined. Many councillors don't like the poor but only Rob goes out of his way to attack community grants of......

A man was stabbed to death in North York at a party celebrating Ghana's victory over the USA at the World Cup. Apparently gang colours may have been a trigger for the tragic attack. A memorial to the victims of the Air India bombing has started construction in a Toronto park. Bombardier defends itself against its rivals and their claims that they can build the TTC's subway cars cheaper. Siemens acknowledges that its estimates might......

Our favourite civic phallic symbol is turning 30 soon, June 26th to be exact. It's still the world's tallest free-standing structure (what does this mean anyway?). The Toronto District School Board is facing a budget shortfall of about $85 million. But it won't make any cuts without first holding a public meeting. In the meantime, the trustees are feverishly lobbying Queen's Park for more cash. Lots of TTC news today. First talks with the union......

An officer was shot at earlier today which prompted a manhunt in Etobicoke. Police kept a nearby school and community centre closed for safety reasons. A retired gang cop points out that Toronto had a number of great anti-gang units which were dismantled a decade ago. He argues this is one of the reasons the city has seen more gang-related violence in recent years. The CAA is calling for a ban on cellphones and MP3......

City council is debating a Sunday noise ban today but only in low-density residential neighbourhoods. Howard Moscoe, pointed out that this idea is discriminatory, "More than half the people in the city live in highrise buildings. People who have condos deserve as much right to noise protection as people wealthy enough to own a single-family home," he said to the Star. Howard we agree with you on this one. A 25-year old is clinging to......