Categories for Musings

Thursday morning bits and pieces

  • RIM copies Apple, Apple copies RIM:  It’s just me, but I’d recommend the two companies stick to doing what they already do very well: RIM manufacturing a terrific device for email, Apple manufacturing terrific touch-screen computer thingies.  I’m not sure they advance their corporate interests by providing a pale version of what the other guy does better.
  • The Giorno Factor: I know Guy and I like him.  I don’t agree with his views on many, many subjects, but he’s a smart cat. The notion, however, that he’s really the Prime Minister, and not Stephen Harper, is mistaken.  Chiefs of Staff are important, but nobody should be under the impression that The Boss is anything other than The Boss: that has always been so.  The character and focus of the Harper government  is determined by Stephen Harper, not his employees.  It was thus for Messrs. Martin, Chretien, Mulroney et al., too.  Remember the names of all of their Chiefs?  Exactly.
  • Goofy story of the day: If John runs, does anyone seriously believe he wouldn’t have the support of his sons? Give me a break.  And, BTW, thanks for messing with the Festival of Joy, guys.  I’ll get you for this.
  • Buck-buck, yawn: The chicken suit thing is so tired and old and hackneyed, states like Nevada have even banned them near polling stations! Personally, I’m all for getting your youth wing folks to tackle the chicken and pluck off his/her outfit.  If nothing else, it’d be entertaining, and possibly provide a free lunch.
  • GritChik: Great new web site.  The fact that she says nice things about Yours Screwly may naturally colour my judgment.  Chik her out!

Johnny, come lately

Sun headline writers are the best.  No debate.

Strobel:

Johnny, come lately.

Better lately than never. But step lively. We need you, real bad.

We need your charisma. (I can’t believe I just said that. John Tory is to charisma what a Habs fan is to table manners.)

But, man, this mayoralty race sucks.

It’s silly. It’s given me a headache and a recurring nightmare in which David Miller smirks, proclaims ‘what the hell, this’ll be a cakewalk’ and rejoins the fray. I awake in a cold sweat.

So, jump in, John. The water’s warm.

Five good reasons right off the bat: George Smitherman, Joe Pantalone, Rocco Rossi, Rob Ford, Sarah Thomson. Ten others:

1. You’ll win.

2. We Canadians appreciate losers who don’t quit. Classy, likeable losers. The Jamaican bobsled team. Joe Clark. You, John.

In Toronto, especially, losing is no shame, it’s just good experience. We’ve lost more Olympics, world’s fairs and hockey games than you can shake a stick at.

Yet Ivanka Trump sashays into town this week to tour her daddy’s new skyscraper, calls us “one of the world’s greatest cities,” and we beam.

So what if you’re 0-for-3 against David Miller and a couple of measly provincial Liberals?

They sure giants compared to this lot. My neighbour’s chihuahua could be mayor in a romp, except he’s busy crapping on the sidewalk. But he would not beat you, John.

3. Run now, and Rob Ford can gracefully bow out and retake his council seat in Etobicoke.

We do not want Mayor Ford. Sorry, Rob. It’s just not your schtick. Your destiny is to be our civic balloon-pricker, our ant at the City Hall picnic. Boss of a megacity? Uh-uh. Keep pricking.

Mayor Tory would actually heed you, not sneer at you like Mayor Miller’s pinkish mob.

4. Headline writers will love you, JT. “Tory.” It’s short and snappy and has many rhymes. Gory, sorry, glory, quarry, lavatory. John Tory Is Hunky-Dory.

Smitherman? Too long. Here’s the headline: Furious George Fizzles Out.

Plus, a skinhead hasn’t won anything meaningful since Mussolini. That also bodes badly for bald Rocco Rossi. Sarah Thomson? Or is it Thompson? Ford’s a good headline name. In the car section.

5. You’re media savvy. (Let’s ignore your PR pratfall on religious school funding from Queen’s Park).

Your radio spot is good training. We know we’ll hear your calming voice in times of crisis. We haven’t heard from the incumbent since, oh, last fall, which is maybe just as well.

6. Sandra Bussin. Remember her “anonymous” crank call to your show to defend pal Miller? I would pay to see her face at your first council meeting.

Mayor Tory: “Chair recognizes ‘Sandra From Toronto.’”

Counc. Bussin: “Actually, I don’t work for the city.”

“Then what the heck you doing here?”

“Beats me. But good luck to you, John, because you’re a three-time loser. And I don’t see you being successful in the future.”

“Next.”

7. I just can’t take another TV debate with these idiots. They wail, moan, gnash teeth, throw napkins and gang up on each other. Which is fine, if you’re running for mayor of your daycare. I can’t imagine you sticking out your tongue, John Tory.

8. You’re not a bully like Smitherman and that incumbent guy. You’re not a tax-and-spend zombie like Joe Pants. You’re not a slob like Rob. You’re not a backroom boy like Rocco. You’re not a…whatever Sarah Thomson is.

9. I know you’ll reverse those moronic bike lanes on Jarvis St. and Eastern Ave. I just know you will.

10. Mike From Toronto will vote for you.

Run, Johnny, run.


A case of importance

Full disclosure – I have a personal interest in this case, which involves abuse going back many decades.  But I think the hearing tomorrow will be quite important.  Also worth reading: this Globe story, from this morning.

Canadian Press:

Lawsuit alleges people abused, held in toilet at Ontario institution (Institution-Abuse)
By Ciara Byrne
THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO _ As a little girl in an Ontario institution for the developmentally disabled, Pat Seth was turned upside down in the toilet as staff poured cold water on her face after she refused to eat her porridge, the now 52-year-old said Tuesday.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Maurice Cullity is expected to give the formal go-ahead to a class-action lawsuit Wednesday involving Seth and thousands of others who are suing the provincial government.

The former residents of Huronia Regional Centre and family members are alleging systemic neglect and abuse at the facility for more than 100 years.

The allegations have not been proven in court and the Ontario government has not filed a statement of defence.

“We got sentenced. We are the disappeared,” Seth said during a phone interview Tuesday, comparing her childhood years at the Orillia, Ont., facility to a prison term.

“(We were) isolated from the outside world. We were sentenced for being mentally handicapped and it wasn’t fair,” said Seth.

The institution opened in 1876 under the name Orillia Asylum for Idiots, and became “a prison for individuals with disabilities,” said David Rosenfeld, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs.

When the facility closed its doors in March 2009, Huronia was the oldest institution for people with a developmental disability. In 1971 the facility housed 1,875 residents.

Over the years, there were allegations of neglect and abuse made against the institution. There were also several deaths.

In the 1960s, an article described the facility as overcrowded, with beds so close people were lying head to head.

By 1971, a report by Walter B. Williston sponsored by the Ministry of Health, condemned the institution, describing situations where adults were left rocking or aimlessly walking the halls, while others were organized into work gangs. The findings eventually led to another scathing government-sponsored report in 1976, which led to the replacement of the administrator of the facility at the time.

“These class members were put into this institution, almost like a prison, and forgotten about by the rest of society,” said Rosenfeld.

Marilyn Dolmage, who worked at the centre between 1968 and 1973 as a social worker, is acting with her husband Jim as a litigation guardian for the lead plaintiffs Marie Slark and Pat Seth.

Both Slark and Seth were admitted to the institution in the 1960s at the age of six and seven, as wards of the state. At 16, Seth was placed in a group home on the premises of Huronia until she was 21.

“It was an awful place to live. It was like living in jail. It was restricted there was no freedom,” said Seth.

Seth alleges residents were hit with brushes and fly swatters.

“We weren’t allowed to retaliate, because if we did we would be dragged across the floor by the hair of our head,” Seth said.

Dolmage said she remembers the institution operating like an “army camp,” children and adults lined up and followed orders.

“There was a constant fear, especially little children like Pat, I recall her as a very cute little girl _ tiny,” said Dolmage.

“They told me about their fear and suffering and the kind of punishment they had.

Ontario was once home to 16 institutions. Beginning in 1987, the province moved to close them and place residents in community settings.

The Huronia of the past few decades was a very different place than it used to be, advocates have said. They were vibrant communities where the residents had dances and parties, they say.

But Community Living Ontario has said while the institutions became cleaner and better maintained, residents were still subject to isolation and separation from society, therefore necessitating the institution closures.

INDEX: NATIONAL SOCIAL JUSTICE POLITICS


Leakage

I refused to fill out the long-form census thing, as I have written below, because (a) the questions were pretty intrusive and (b) I don’t believe governments are sufficiently careful about sensitive, private and/or personal information.  They’re sloppy as Hell, in fact.

On the latter point, various commentators have taken me to task, huffing and puffing that reputable government agencies –  like StatsCan, I guess –  never, ever let sensitive info leak out.

Ever, ever!

Don’t worry, leaks like the WikiLeaks leaks never, ever happen. Well, okay, maybe 92,000 times.

But it won’t ever happened to you, or to any government from this point onwards!  Stamp out, TTT, black magic, no erasing!


Little Timmy’s Summer Tour: the reviews keep rolling in!

In case you have noticed, which you almost certainly didn’t, Ontario Regressive Reformatory leader Little Timmy Hudak has been traveling the province this Summer.

And, just last week, he and his caveman caucus held a news conference every single day. 
Most days, they got no coverage at all.  Some days, however, they have been rewarded with some boffo reviews.  A sampling:

  • Belleville Intelligencer, May 13, 2010: “Conservative Leader Tim Hudak is in town today. You may see him with a portable podium with his name and a party slogan on it, standing out front of the Local Health Integration Network offices on Dundas Street today. 

You might think there’s an election on. But, you’ll know Hudak. 

He’ll be the angry man telling you all that LHINs are a waste of money and he’s even had his staff do Freedom of Information requests to determine who spent what on a Montana’s meal while on the taxpayer’s dime…. We’ll let the politicians debate the merits or waste of the LHINs in the Legislature. A dog and pony show with e-mailed notices to draw attendance by local media outlets to score fast headlines in a hit-and-run fashion, though, smacks of cheap electioneering. 

The LHINs may very well prove to be an ineffective use of health care dollars. But, what Hudak won’t elaborate on is the fact that a mandatory review of LHINs provincewide will be undertaken in 18 months. The requirement was built into the legislation that created the LHINs and there will be ample opportunity there and in the Legislature before then to put the LHINs under the microscope. Our political process has become a series of orchestrated, headline-grabbing bits of street theatre and today’s event is a perfect example. 

Let Hudak expound on solid policy alternatives before he rolls into town with an election-style, made for photo-ops vaudeville routine. 

Show us some solid alternatives, not dog-and- pony, please.”
  • Barrie Examiner, May 19, 2010: “Ontario voters have long memories. The last time a Tory government was in power, it was the Mike Harris/Ernie Eves Conservatives — which cut welfare and all sorts of other services. 

Fairly or unfairly, Walkerton is their legacy. 

Hudak, of course, has the provincial election during the fall of 2011 in mind. He’s trying to give Ontario voters a viable alternative to the Liberals. 

But it hasn’t taken long for things to get sticky for Hudak. He needs to have more detailed answers.”
  • Guelph Mercury, June 18, 2010: “Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak was once again all talk and no promised action during a visit to Guelph. 

As he did in previous stops – Hudak has been in Guelph four times during the last 14 months – he lashed out at Premier Dalton McGuinty and the looming harmonized sales tax, which takes effect July 1. 

But the leader again failed to offer a concrete solution to the tax.”
  • Globe and Mail, July 7, 2010: “I wouldn’t have expected Tim Hudak to put forward a really nuanced post-G20 treatise on the balance between security and civil liberties. That’s not the way opposition politics tends to work. 

Still, I would have expected something a little more sophisticated than this… 

The Conservative Leader’s op-ed in Tuesday’s Toronto Sun came off like something on that paper’s letters page, or like a transcript of a kneejerk call to a talk-radio station… If Hudak and his strategists didn’t see any political advantage in trying to convince their supporters to come around to that line of thinking, fair enough. But it’s disappointing that the leader of the Official Opposition actively discouraged Ontarians from looking at relevant issues in a more serious way. 

I’m not sure if he took his position because he genuinely believed it, or because he thought it would be the easiest way to score points. And I’m honestly not sure which would be worse.”

Phoenix, Lasso

Me and Roxy heard in it on the way in. She liked it, so I figured I’d post it.

Catchier than a drawer of fish hooks.  Good Monday morning sunshine-ness.