From Cork to Toronto

So the provincial minister in charge of TVOntario just showed up, split the company in two, dropped a bundle of promises of cash at the front door and ran off (figuratively speaking). Just afterwards, TVO announced the end of Studio 2 in favour of "The Agenda" , a show which is going to be all about citizenship - whatever that means. Anyway, it's all totally unconnected. Really. Studio 2 looked budget but then you have to consider their actual budget - not much, and with old school equipment. Meanwhile the Tories and NDP are muttering about the Liberals neutering TVO's political content . It also combined a wide range of stuff, not least Steve Paikin's slightly bizarre interview with Ricky Williams during the week. Yes it's great that TVO will get new kit which will make those union members better able to move to CanWest or CTV and use that newfangled equipment for more money. Yes it's great that the teachers unions are salivating over "digital...

because if I don't blog after that, it will be because I'll have expired from cardiac arrest... I will be participating in the Bike for Tykes event at the TD Centre Courtyard in Toronto along with some work colleagues. It's in support of Bloorview Kids Rehab so any donations towards my goal figure would be gratefully accepted - Canadian donors get tax receipts :)

Apparently the Provincial Liberals are on a war footing. Now, in most political regimes this might not be altogether surprising if you didn't know two things - 1. The Libs have a comfortable majority 2. They know exactly when the next election will be - October 2007. They know this because they passed the legislation fixing the date. At a time when the OPP have told certain Caledonia residents that they will not respond to calls, the "fiscal imbalance" negotiations, the urgent need to get the Golden Horseshoe urban development plan finished before developers like the Sorbara Group pave over everything and now the electricity plan which is taking fire from all sides, you'd think McGuinty would have to enough to worry about without taking electoral strategy sessions - especially since he's cooking the books this year to declare a miraculous budget surplus next year.

The Irish Times reports on the Irish TV licence fee today . Some of what they report is not news, like the substantial "evasion". But now the fee, a subvention in respect of public service broadcasting, is to be taxed. This will only be grist to the mill of the private broadcasters, who believe the licence fee merely allows RTE to overbid them for soccer and Hollywood movie rights. Even An Post, who historically collect the licence money, don't want to collect it. Some in RTE are also surely looking at the UK who are claiming a requirement to pay a licence fee for cellphones which can now receive video . I've got a better idea - let's pick a figure of say, 155m Euro. Let's add in the fee payable to An Post for administering the system and for paying "licence inspectors". Let's write a single block grant cheque from Dept of Finance to RTE. Note to Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen - it would be about as popular as Jack Lynch abolishing rates bu...

Apparently the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence are finalising their procurement requests for Cabinet . Procurement is a vexed subject in Canada as orders are made and then cancelled (Chretien and the EH-101), or equipment sold that it turns out we're now borrowing from others (Mulroney sold CF Chinooks to the Dutch, who are currently providing airlift to Canadian Forces in Afghanistan with the same aircraft). There seems to be a political consensus now that having the Canadian Forces abroad is a good thing, although there is some dispute about where they should be - the NDP and Lloyd Axworthy wants them in Darfur (where they're not wanted by the Sudanese government) and the Tories and the Ignatieff wing of the Liberals want them in Afghanistan (where they're not wanted by western college students and by the Talibs - though apparently not all of the latter ). In any case, Rick Mercer put it best when he said "if you want people to leave the best...

Apparently Ruby Dhalla and Judy Sgro have been approached to join the Tories . I could possibly understand Dhalla - she's young and a qualified chiropractor, not just a political hack from birth. Harper seems to have great "faith" in building ethnic minority support, thinking they have predominantly conservative social positions on same sex marriage and so on - the rush to apologise over the head tax is another clue. The Tories sudden love for minorities is plainly strategic. She's also easy on the eye and maybe the Tories wanted an Ontario version of Rona Ambrose for the Blogging Tories to put on their bedroom walls. But why would the Tories want Sgro when " Strippergate " showed her poor judgement, not least in her choice of staff. Supposedly it was a Tory Toronto Councillor - it wasn't Rob Ford after a few beers surely? In any case, Dhalla should name the people who approached her, as should Sgro - what is the public interest in not doing so? ...

This template is a modified version of newsline but mostly in terms of layout - I need to get the css and host it myself so I can adjust the fonts which are a bit iffy, especially the quotes.

Given the disgrace that Zimbabwe has become in the last decade, with the homophobia, the de facto ethnic cleansing and the political purging of the judiciary, it's odd that the Liberal Party have only recently become aware of the situation to the extent of wanting to do something about it . Obviously they weren't briefed - it's not like they weren't in power for over a decade ... or maybe they didn't see any of the frequent media coverage. With the thousand priorities Paul Martin had - this couldn't have been one? He couldn't have publicly exhorted the South Africans and Chinese to stop sending the regime aid, probably the only thing keeping Mugabe afloat? But then the Chinese might not have bought Canadian reactors - that piece of tech that gets the Chinese Government a free pass from Canada. Instead the Federal Liberals did in that respect what the Ontario Liberals are doing in Caledonia, Ontario - standing by, mouthing platitudes, achieving nothing.

Reading TTC General Manager Rick Ducharme's resignation letter and the response from Bob Kinnear (head of the union local that walked out on a smog day) I can't help but borrow my title today from Edward James Olmos .

Many (all?) of us have experienced a national crisis where the government mouths the words about how unfortunate it all is but you just know behind it all they don't give a damn. You just wish you could go up to them and ask them to at least look like it bothers them. Twenty Major does just that (well, on his blog rather than in person). The current situation may be specific to Ireland (the voiding of the statute which allows no defence to statutory rape) but it's easy to think of others for international readers. While Fine Gael's Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbite of the Labour Party rightly tore strips off you and your government you sat there looking down at the desk, maybe even scribbling on a piece of paper. You could, for all intents and purposes, have been playing noughts and crosses with yourself. Their tirades over it was your turn to speak. This is where I have the biggest problem. You stood there, again not making any eye-contact with the people you were addressing, ...

From the Toronto Star : Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker pointed out that the nine-member commission of city councillors is very much pro-union. "I'm 100 per cent pro-union, so is Howard Moscoe, Joe Mihevc, David Miller," said De Baeremaeker (Ward 38, Scarborough Centre). "The employees of the TTC will never have more sympathetic people than the commission is now. " And let's not forget TTC vice-chair Adam Giambrone, whose other job is Federal NDP President. Hizzoner stacked the TTC with his pals - it's not like he's having to deal with the Lastman rearguard like the Police Services Board in his first year as mayor. Now he's going to have to take responsibility. Sadly Pitfield in her response continues to appear no more than an opportunist rather than someone with a real alternative to offer. As for Local 113 - they walked out on a day when the humidex hit 43C - something well forecasted. There is no excuse - a couple of days would have made n...

Former Toronto Argonaut quarterback and Super Bowl winner Joe Theismann laid into the signing of Ricky Williams . He believes Williams' suspension from the NFL should have been honoured by the CFL and that Williams doesn't deserve to wear the Argo uniform because he's an "addict". I wish that Williams in the spirit of full disclosure told us what the mystery 4th test failure was for (the first three being cannabis). But there are problems with Theismann going off like this. Theismann reflects his ESPN listenership - chuck them out is what they want to hear, just like prison is the sole drug policy of the Republican party. The Canadian fanbase is not quite there yet. The CFL has been a de facto haven for the NFL unwanted a longer day than today and probably was when Theismann graduated Notre Dame and came north. I honestly believe that getting away for his Miami base will be a good opportunity for Williams to reorder his life and that Mike Clemons is serious...

According to the Star, some children born in Ontario are not being registered (up to 3% of 130,000 births in the province annually) because it costs up to $35 depending on the municipality and low income and single parents are unable to afford it. The effect of this is that deaths of these infants are not recorded either - it's as if they never existed. This is born out of the Harris era where the costs of registering children is borne by municipalities ( such as Toronto ) and passed on to the parents. I have to say am not impressed with how children's services work in this province. I'm thinking especially of child protection, a function one would normally expect to be a direct arm of government but which in Ontario is farmed out to voluntary Children's Aid Societies , some of which are denominational such as the Catholic Children's Aid Society of Toronto which failed in its duty to protect Jeffery Baldwin . It is unconscionable that children can go unregister...

So it seems Mozilla have gotten their ambition of synchronising Thunderbird and Firefox releases - let's see how long that lasts! TB1.5.0.4 and FF1.5.0.4 are out - some security issues are addressed in these releases.