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Newsstand: September 28, 2011
Ah, Wednesday. No week is complete without it. In today's news: Yesterday's cuts will save the city $27.7 million; Ontario's political leaders ducked, weaved, and thoughtfully read scripted lines at last night's debate; and Toronto gets slammed as a lousy sports city yet again.
The answer to the question on everybody’s mind at the end of yesterday’s budget meeting at City Hall is $27.7 million. That’s the total amount of money the cuts approved at yesterday’s meeting will save the city. It might seem like a far cry from the $774 million shortfall Mayor Rob Ford keeps bringing up, but bear in mind that the majority of cuts are still to come later this fall. The number is high enough for Mayor Rob Ford to call the cuts “a huge victory,” even if that victory comes on the backs of cute animals and underprivileged children. But to put it in perspective, the number is only slightly higher than what a local shop teacher recently won through Lotto Max without even knowing it.
If you weren’t watching last night’s leaders debate for the coming provincial election, you probably had something better to do. Well, as you recover from that epic Monopoly game, you can get a basic idea of how it went by removing your head from the sand and looking pretty much anywhere. What’s that you say? All three of those stories contradict each other? Well then, you’d better watch the whole damn thing yourself. Basically know this: nobody said anything outstanding and the TV crew realized early on not to keep any wine glasses or fine china near Dalton McGuinty.
Perhaps it’s a sharp political point about the cost of public transit or perhaps it’s just some crazy kid doing what crazy kids do best, but a teenage boy has now twice been photographed hitching rides on the back of TTC buses. Well, it’s probably the same person, unless there’s some weird new gang in town. And yes, it’s dangerous and illegal, but you totally know he’s going to get to second base with some chick for this.
Just in case you were wondering, ESPN still thinks our fair city sucks. And this time it’s not just the worst city for sports in North America, it’s the worst sports city in the world. Apparently, the reason for this is that the Maple Leafs suck, and Leafs fans suck for not telling them they suck, thus allowing them to sucker us into buying exorbitantly priced tickets to watch them suck game after game. This is also why our transit system doesn’t improve and our mayor is a buffoon. Questionable conclusions abound, as well as an embarrassing typo in the author’s assertion that Stephen Harper hasn’t finished writing his book on hockey because “he’s been busy running [sic] the country” (we assume that’s meant to be “ruining”).