By now so much has been written and blogged and tweeted about today’s clusterfuck at Toronto Council that there’s no point in rehashing it. Go read Matt Elliott’s summary at Ford For Toronto if you want a recap.
For Christ’s sakes. This isn’t just about the lack of any coherent policy justification, or the Machiavellian political gamesmanship, or the schoolyard-bully dynamic evident on the council floor, or the Speaker’s obvious bias and procedural cluelessness. It’s about all of those, but something worse as well.
Here we are, moving into a world beyond peak oil, facing the need for a fundamental rethink of both the way we design our communities and the way we move people and things around so that we’re not so dependent on the private automobile any more, and what does Team Ford do? It goes the exact opposite direction, and not on the basis of any well-thought-out rationale, but simply out of spite.
You want further evidence? Turning down funding for public-health nurses, on the basis of … what, exactly? Anti-government ideology is too kind. Even the most destructive and reality-challenged ideology requires a consistent theoretical underpinning.
This isn’t just stupid, spiteful and counterproductive. It’s positively atavistic.
Related posts:
- Core Services Review: Rob Ford is a hazard to Toronto’s public health / #TOpoli
- ‘Respect for Taxpayers’ is a load of crap
- Can we stop talking about taxpayers?
- Ford’s ascendancy, explained
- Ford’s right-wing governance: no vision, no soul, no future
