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Newsstand: July 22, 2011
This Friday, please consider sacrificing a snowman to appease the weather gods. Because they’re pissed. In the news: the brothers Ford look to oust the TTC chief, Toronto police love to strip-search, and did we mention it’s ridiculously freaking hot outside?
It’s been made pretty clear over the last few months that if there’s anything Mayor Rob Ford hates, it’s someone refusing to do exactly what he says. Case in point: the Toronto Star reports he and brother-by-blood-and-overabundance-of-sweat Doug (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) are planning to get rid of TTC chief Gary Webster over his refusal to support the Sheppard subway expansion. We feel for you, Rob. After all, how can you implement a boneheaded policy with all these whiny Transit City folks criticizing it in public? Potential replacements for Webster include retired councillor Case Ootes, who’s getting so much work with this administration he’ll be able to put off the Wal-Mart job for years.
Now that the image of Rob Ford is fresh in your minds, let’s talk about nudity. Specifically, the Toronto Police Service’s apparent love for nudity, as evidenced by the near doubling of police strip-searches following arrests over the last 10 years. According to former mayor John Sewell, the practice is used to humiliate detainees. Police Chief Bill Blair maintains the increase is simply due to better record-keeping since 2001, and has absolutely nothing to do with the new police-produced Prisoners Gone Wild DVD series, now available in stores and online.
We promise the “look at the consequences of service cuts” stories will dry up soon, but until then, here’s another gem: cutting funding for the city’s student nutrition program, as was mentioned in the latest KPMG report, could result in more than 130,000 Toronto children going to school hungry.
The best kinds of records are the ones you can beat without having to do anything. And in that respect, yesterday was a good day, being the hottest July day in Toronto history. And, as everything outside slowly roasted like those chickens on the Swiss Chalet channel (or like a hunk of beef on a car dashboard), those lucky enough to have air conditioning blasted it, resulting in a potentially record-breaking power consumption. Today won’t be as hot, but if everyone leaves all their lights on before going to work, we should be able to shatter that record too.