You get the strongest sense from Toronto Star writer Desmond Cole that if you are white, you are wrong. And the Toronto Star editors allow this form of discrimination? It might surprise Mr. Cole to find that there are people who do not approve of discrimination in any form. And
Continue readingTag: Municipal politics
Babel-on-the-Bay: Coddling the Cyberphobic.
Why are we doing this? Why are we catering to the cyberphobes among us? Why should they dictate progress? Or lack thereof? After a career in computers with a side interest in politics, it should be easy to convince the politicians and their retainers of the ease of computer voting.
Continue readingScripturient: Dividends for dummies
A dividend, as defined by the Business Dictionary, is “A share of the after-tax profit of a company, distributed to its shareholders…” This is reiterated in the description from the Oxford Dictionary: “A sum of money paid regularly (typically annually) by a company to its shareholders out of its profits
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Is this Toronto’s coming of age?
In a scholarly work this past week from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, we learned that the City of Toronto is ready to cut the parental apron strings of the Province of Ontario. If you have never been involved in Toronto politics, you might even
Continue readingScripturient: The Blame Game
Remember The Name Game – that song from the Sixties that had those crazy lyrics: Shirley! Shirley, Shirley/ Bo-ber-ley, bo-na-na fanna/ Fo-fer-ley. fee fi mo-mer-ley, Shirley! Not the most intellectual lyrics of the era, I admit, but not forgotten and clearly suitable for local tastes. In Collingwood town hall, for
Continue readingScripturient: The OPP investigation after 48 months
Forty-eight months ago a very small group of disgruntled, angry residents – some with burning ambition to take a seat on council themselves – complained to the OPP, allegedly about decisions made by the previous council. Decisions and people this group didn’t like. Decisions they thought – without any proof –
Continue readingScripturient: Budget Bullshit
The first question you have to ask after following Collingwood Council’s sloppy and inept budget process is “Where did the money go?” Then the second question you have to ask, “Are they really that dense?” Yes, but let’s start with the first question. Back when he promoted dismantling the water
Continue readingScripturient: Empathy and The Dog Allusion
Empathy, writes Martin Rowson, is one of the things that make us human, make us civilized, allows us to interact without tearing one another’s throats out. Without it, we’d have no civilization; we’d be like the beasts of the fields. And we’d have no dogs or gods, either. Empathy is
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Pride Falls.
Torontonians of all stripes and types have always been proud of their Pride Parade. Originating in 1981, the parade has cheerfully acknowledged the growing acceptance of diversity in a polyglot city. Today it is one of the largest events of its kind in the world and brings more than a
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: For whom the Tolls Toll.
The premier’s office at Queen’s Park in Toronto has many roles. One of those is as a woodshed wherein one disciplines recalcitrant municipal minions who fail to realize that the provincial party in power makes all the rules. There was an awkward bit on a news clip last week of
Continue readingScripturient: Committee system still broken, still in use
“A committee,” wrote Sir Barnett Cocks, former Clerk of the UK’s House of Commons, “is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.” How very appropriate those words strike us as we gaze at Collingwood’s ineffective, severely broken standing committee system. The brainchild of the interim CAO,
Continue readingScripturient: Will the Block’s hypocrisy never cease?
Last term, when they were raising their pitchforks to storm the bureaucratic castle, the members of today’s Collingwood Council – those we disparagingly refer to as The Block – were loudly castigating the former council for having once done a sole-source deal with the company that was the only Canadian
Continue readingScripturient: Collingwood’s casino roulette
I want you to read the following motion carefully. Take your time. It was passed by the former council in March, 2013 in response to the Ontario Lottery & Gaming Corporation (OLG) coming forward with a proposal to locate a gambling (“gaming”) facility in Collingwood: WHEREAS a properly developed Integrated
Continue readingScripturient: The Block torpedoes the hospital, again
When their sole-sourced consultant’s report failed to give The Block the high ground to oppose the Collingwood General & Marine Hospital’s redevelopment plan, the weasels on council and in the administration decided to undermine the hospital from a different direction. And they hired another consultant. That’s right: wasting $30,000 of
Continue readingScripturient: Collingwood Council’s missed initiatives
The word initiative derives from the Latin word initiare “to begin.” Since 1600, it has meant “introduce to some practice or system,” “begin, set going.” While any sort of action or engagement, positive or negative, can be classified as an initiative, generally one refers only to positive enterprises when describing
Continue readingScripturient: Council is privatizing our utilities
Collingwood council and its administration are planning to privatize both our water and electricity utilities. All, of course, without consulting you, the public. Some members of council have even stated – with a straight face, mind you – they would ask for your input at a later date. A date
Continue readingScripturient: The PowerStream deadline looms today
Big day for Collus-PowerStream today: the deadline for acceptance of PowerStream’s sale offer for the remaining share of our utility expires this afternoon. And of course Council will finally deal with it at the special meeting called for noon, today, mere hours before it expires. Nothing like waiting until the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: St. Albert Mayor Nolan Crouse says he won’t seek fourth term in surprise announcement this morning
PHOTOS: St. Albert Mayor Nolan Crouse at a Remembrance Day ceremony (Alberta Native News photo). Below: Councillor Cam MacKay, Councillor Cathy Heron, former deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk and former Wildrose candidate Shelley Biermanski. ST. ALBERT, Alberta In a lengthy statement on Facebook posted early this morning, St. Albert Mayor Nolan
Continue readingScripturient: Thank you and Happy New Year
Twenty seventeen will arrive one second later than expected, thanks to the addition of a leap second added to balance the atomic clocks with the Earth’s actual time. One more second for my readers to browse, I suppose, although 2016 was such an awful year that few folks want it
Continue readingScripturient: The vulgar crowd
Profanum vulgus. The vulgar crowd. Not, however, as you might suspect, an apt description of the remaining few supporters of The Block that rules Collingwood Council. While perhaps appropriately described, to me that small handful are better described as naïve, gullible and even intellectually vulnerable, moreso than merely vulgar. But
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