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Newsstand: July 14, 2011
Another Thursday steps up to the plate, who cares what you’re wearing, just get some coffee and hold on tight: the City service review now takes aim at children, the elderly, and trees; the library union has secret weapon; CUPE leader predicts a lockout; and bike lanes are dead, long live bike lanes.
Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of civil servants? The RoFo knows. (Or is that an old Orson Welles? Hard to tell in the shadows.) Responding to the mass buyout announced earlier this week (and the proposal to merge EMS and fire workers, and the garbage privatization, and so on and so on), CUPE local 416 president Mark Ferguson predicts a lockout by mid-January. The CUPE contract with the City expires on December 31, 2011. Welcome to 2012, everyone.
Let’s continue with this theme, shall we?
Rob Ford and his ghostwriters at KPMG hacked out the third installment of their apocalyptic novel service review. The year is 2012, some paramedics are trudging toward a feral elderly colony to answer a call from eight days earlier, but first they have to traverse rogue kid territory with no trees for shelter. Finally, the paramedics arrive at the doors of the abandoned rec centre. If not for that double shift they took on last night, the dedicated civil servants never would’ve made it. But man, those firefighter boots from last night’s fire sure come in handy when the city is blanketed in seven centimetres of that new ultra-heavy snow with nary a plow in sight.
Hopefully, RoFo’s tale of municipal carnage and treeless streets will be available at the Toronto Public Library—that is, if the library union has anything to say about it. The union commissioned a survey and put out a report of their own telling councillors to watch their backs when it comes to cutting library services. According to the survey, half of the city’s residents say their vote in the next election would be affected “a great deal” if a councillor supported the closure of a local library branch. We know that this is meant to be threatening, but that docile library parlance might not cut it.
And what work of contemporary literature would be complete without some easily detectable literary devices that teachers can parse into exam questions for standardized evaluations? So, here you go: A cyclist was side-swiped by a car on her way to City Hall yesterday to watch council light a pile of money on fire vote to remove bike lanes. Patting himself on the back for a city well-fucked, Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East) declared Wednesday “a really positive day for individuals who believe we need more safety in the downtown and that cyclists need more safety.”
Ivor Tossell at Toronto Standard even has some suggestions for titles for this modern-day Gone With The Wind.