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Newsstand: December 1, 2011
It's Thursday and it's December and that means moustaches and the lovers who love them must go back into hiding for another year. In the news: City's mass layoff plans revealed, privatizing the Eglinton LRT, backyard chicken farmers are free to coop, Skyping with Santa, and the Star tries to get fairness.
Specifics for the City’s mass layoff plan were revealed yesterday, with 1,200 actual workers and 1,148 vacant positions being eliminated. More than half of those laid off will be union members from City divisions; beyond the walls of City Hall, TTC and library staff face the largest layoff threats. And although technically, technically, the budget and its proposed lay offs won’t be passed till January, it seems layoff notices have already been issued to some temporary staff.
Let’s talk about the pros and cons of making the Eglinton crosstown LRT a public-private partnership . Pro: Metrolinx wants to. Con: the TTC does not. In all phases of the project, from design all the way to operation, provincial transit authority Metrolinx is looking for a helping hand. A warm, sometimes scaly, usually astringent-y smelling hand known as the private sector. (That is a comment on hands, not private-sector funding.) TTC people say intersecting a private line through so many public routes will be difficult to manage. Most importantly, in that case, who will provide shuttle buses when the thing breaks down?
You see, there’s a “growing urban chicken movement” afoot in this here town, and the City was out to stop it, you see. But now the foxy City is staying out of the people’s henhouses for a few months. Keeping cool. Laying back. Dealing with a little cluck and flap. So the chickens can roost easy, for now.
The Eaton Centre has re-jigged Santa’s job. Instead of kids lining up for some knee-time, they’re offering reservation-only group Santa sessions on weekends (which are already full) and booking Skype appointments with the jolly old man. Presumably Santa will have tech-savvy elves on hand to avoid the foibles that come along with old people using webcams. The move is being billed as a way to save busy parents the hassle of waiting in three-hour lines or getting their kids dressed and out of the house. If all this is too weird, you can always take the youngsters to somewhere called Planet Santa in the Scarborough Town Centre.
Before getting into the next, and final, instalment here, we just want to say it’s a total coincidence that all the stories used today were from the Toronto Star. Without further ado, another Star story: the paper is taking their issues with the Ford administration to the integrity commissioner. Since Mayor Rob Ford was elected, he has refused to communicate with the newspaper out of spite for a story they ran during the campaign about Ford’s football coaching. Star journalists have to rely on colleagues at other outlets to get press releases or hear about press conferences, and the paper is saying enough already on what they, and others, are calling an abuse of power.