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Rob Ford's Toronto

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Riverdale Rink Rat said:
Homogenous was not a brain cramp. Calgary is an ethnically diverse city and there are lots of newcomers from everywhere in the world. But to say that, politically, there is a range of opinions is absurd. The political spectrum in Calgary, at any level of gov't, runs from right-centre-business-friendly to far-right-social-conservative. As you say, Nenshi was in many ways elected by 'mistake' due to vote splitting and many feared his 'socialist' views, and he's a friggin' management consultant! A union-friendly NDPer wouldn't get his mother's vote in Calgary, much less his father-in-law's.

BTW, having a coherent idea of how you would like your city to run and the intelligence to figure out which candidate would best do that is meant as a compliment in comparison to Toronto's divisions. Calgary had another 'Nenshi moment' back when Klein was elected, e.g., but what the city needed at that time was a cheerleader to get people re-energized after a slump. This time it needed a guy who would think through the consequences of growth. Both times an almost unthinkable candidate (for the establishment) garnered enough support to get elected.
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I'm hoping though that with new seats for Calgary and Edmonton coming, there will be some more progressive politicians elected at the federal level (and hopefully redistribution of seats at the provincial level gives more representation to those growing areas). There's several parts of Calgary that really should show up as equivalents to Edmonton-Strathcona and Edmonton-Centre. Of course Calgary South-East will always vote Conservative. But the Belt Line, Mission/Lower Mount Royal, and U of C/SAIT/North Centre areas, to me, seem like places where the Liberals and/or NDP should, by all rights, be competitive.

I don't mind a centrist business-friendly conservative as long as long as they care about urban issues like transit and infrastructure, good parks, recreation and citylife, promote culture, and promote diversity in all its forms. These are things smart businesses should care about. And Calgary isn't doing too bad on those fronts (it's got a really useful LRT, even if bus service is a little crummy), it's becoming inclusive, and slowly urbanizing more areas of the city. Calgary feels like it's maturing into a real "big city", and hopefully that will mean a wider diversity of political representation.
 
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So The Star has printed at least two similar stories now (article from today) indicating that it would not hurt the project traveller prosecutions to exonerate Ford if there was no damning evidence against him. Given the discussion that's been happening here over the past couple weeks about big stories coming out in the near future, does anyone think this is The Star's way of laying the groundwork for them?
 
ChesterCopperpot said:
"Dave" suspended for a week without pay

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/201...ffer_for_phone_call_to_toronto_newspaper.html
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Now maybe Robbie could tell us exactly what he was suspended from and how much a week’s salary is.

Weird, he has never discussed staff matters before. This is pretty clumsy and transparent damage control. The comment "I don't deal with people like this" is an interesting one. I wonder if Dave Price's voice has been recorded on any other phone calls and someone is trying to put some distance between price and themselves?

Another interesting note is some of the am talk shows were speculating that rob may not even run in 2014. Would douggie step in? Part of me would love to see that goof in full campaign mode just for the yuks. There’s no way he could get elected though, right?
 
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BurlOak said:
John Tory runs for office.
Toronto votes for the other candidate.
Everyone regrets their voting decisions.
Repeat.

The cycle continues.
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I don't know about that - he's starting to seem pretty reasonable, intelligent and respectful of others' opinions at least. (This is coming from someone who found his performance as mayoral candidate in 2003 to be based largely on pandering to whatever he thought would fly with voters at any given time). He doesn't seem to lack compassion as a conservative, he's not too left-leaning on anything for most people and most of all there doesn't seem to be any dirt on him. Maybe voters are looking for someone bland and middle-of-the-road?
 
the lemur said:
I don't know about that - he's starting to seem pretty reasonable, intelligent and respectful of others' opinions at least. (This is coming from someone who found his performance as mayoral candidate in 2003 to be based largely on pandering to whatever he thought would fly with voters at any given time). He doesn't seem to lack compassion as a conservative, he's not too left-leaning on anything for most people and most of all there doesn't seem to be any dirt on him. Maybe voters are looking for someone bland and middle-of-the-road?
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Given how inept he was in his previous campaigns (and his leanings) I would never vote for him. I wouldn't vote for Rob either though, so we need somebody else. And no I don't mean someone like Karen Stintz or Olivia Chow.

Unfortunately, I'm starting to think Olivia Chow might win just because everyone hates everyone else.
 
Docking pay is ridiculous - anyone with high standards would have fired the offending party - and an individual with a high regard for personal ethics would have offered their resignation letter (though they probably wouldn't have committed the act in the first place).

But I suppose this is the "private sector way".

AoD
 
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Eug said:
Given how inept he was in his previous campaigns (and his leanings) I would never vote for him. I wouldn't vote for Rob either though, so we need somebody else. And no I don't mean someone like Karen Stintz or Olivia Chow.

Unfortunately, I'm starting to think Olivia Chow might win just because everyone hates everyone else.
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I wouldn't vote for him either - I was willing to give him the time of day in 2003 but the faith-based schools proposal turned me off and his reasoning for giving police more money (despite a continually declining crime rate) was just populist claptrap ('People don't feel safe. Do you feel safe? I don't feel safe', etc.).

I don't see what's so bad about Chow, however - she hasn't appeared to flipflop the way Stintz has, and she seems pretty consistent. According to certain foamers on the Globe/Sun/Post comment boards, though, being left of the Liberals means she'd nationalize every small business in town, impose a tax on blinking and breathing and round her opponents up into re-education camps. On top of that she has the temerity to be female and Asian.
 
I'm against Olivia Chow's leanings too, and her opposition to the Centre Island bridge really turned me off. Now she opposes jets there, and that turns me off too.

BTW, I used to live in her ward, relatively near the airport (Front and Bathurst), and my sister lives right beside the airport with a view of the runways.

And yeah, being significantly left of the Liberals is a negative for me for Toronto, and I come from a hard-core NDP family. Of course, her being female and Asian has nothing to do with it, despite the pathetic attempt by some out there to bring gender and race politics into it.
 
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