City
Morning Brew: April 29th, 2008
Photo: "man and nature" by angiemckaig, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
Your Toronto morning news roundup for Tuesday April 29th, 2008:
Details are slowly coming out and the root causes of the snap TTC strike on Friday are becoming clearer. It turns out that there are a few members of the union executive that want Bob Kinnear gone. Furthermore, Kinnear has said that he won't be issuing an apology to riders, and that the TTC Chair Adam Giambrone should have kept the ridership better informed of the threat of a strike. Kineear has shown that he's keen on collecting the bucks for union members, but when the heat's on he's quick to pass the buck.
Keep a keen eye on your money. Toronto police have issued a public warning that there are a significant number of counterfeit $100 bills making their way into the mix. If you end up with one, do the right thing and turn it in rather than pass it on to an unsuspecting and undeserving recipient (Kinnear style).
--
Someone in the Toronto area has been getting a little too entrepreneurial and skipped a few of the important, required steps (such as getting licensed). It's illegal to make and sell homemade wine in local stores, yet more than 46,000L (the equivalent of over 60,000 standard bottles) were seized by police.
The iPhone is finally coming to Canada, and it'll be everyone's favourite, Rogers, collecting your money. Announced just today, the carrier plans to have service "later this year" which is great news for the crooked-neck, gadget-loving massive.
The Raptors made a quick exit from the NBA playoffs, losing their best-of-seven series 4-1. Chin up, though, sports fans. There's always baseball, soccer, and tightslackrope-walking in Trinity Bellwoods Park to look forward to.
Discussion
24 Comments
Sort By Oldest First / Newest First
Subscribe
can't stand the very sight of him!!!!
we are not just passenger$ but paying customer$
how dare you suck off the union wages you make me sick
Awell, I really hope Sam Mitchell stays, what a great personality to have in toronto !
HELLO KINNEAR??? You do owe us an apology! You lied to the riders/taxpayers about a 48 hour notice of a strike.
Your credibility went down to the sewer for lying. You inconvenienced the millions of commuters for what? Your EGO?
iPhone launch day +1: news cycles filled with stories about multi-thousand dollar data usage bills
I find that the iphone is the most intuitive phone I have used to date (i've gone through about 20-25 phones over the years). Now if I didn't own the unit, and wanted one, I still wouldn't purchase it from Rogers. Never in a million years. I'd still go across the border to pick one up I can unlock.
1. $600-$700 with 3 year contract
2. $40-$60/m for pretty limited data plan
3. $10/m for visual voice mail
4. first born
Basically, Rogers will make sure that any pricing on it is as ludicrous as it can possibly be and still have people buy the fucking thing.
Perhaps my hands are too big or something, but I have a similiar problem with my iPod. When scanning through songs with the touch sensative wheel, I have trouble sometimes landing on a specific song.
With the iPhone I had found myself accidentally pressing the wrong buttons on the touch screen. I had trouble getting used to the lack of tactile feedback. I thought it was just me, but most people I've talked to seem to have the same problem. They have to focus more when dialing a number than they would on a normal phone.
Kinnear negotiated the deal with the city last weekend, and it was the union members who voted it down on Friday -- and possibly largely because they wanted Kinnear to look bad / eventually get ousted. So I don't know how we can hold Bob Kinnear personally responsible for what happened this weekend. It seems to me that by not apologizing, and defending the union's actions, he's actually continuing to be loyal to them, even though the whole thing's turned into a crazy political mess. I wouldn't really describe that as 'passing the buck'.
I approximate that, yeah, over the last 10 years, it's been about 2-3 phones a year. I've gone through local models, japanese models, etc etc. Buying, getting disappointed and selling it soon thereafter. I've never quite found the unit I liked, one that fit my technical requirements. The last 2-3 years I've searched for the perfect 'wifi' phone, and iphone has been the only phone so far that has worked exactly the way i wanted it to. It's the perfect size, and is functional..I'm sure it has flaws, but it works for me.
I don't have a problem with the keyboard. I find that I can type almost twice as fast as I could with a tactile BB keyboard, and my fingers aren't exactly thin. It just took a week or two of getting used to. Maybe it's just me, but for the other 2 guys that I bought the phones for, they also agree that it's much faster after you get used to it.
Also, let's not forget that there is an enormous amount of support in the community for the phone in terms of patching, software, tweaks..etc. It's a geek's wet dream.
Heck my ISP even has an applet i can use to reboot my server from the phone if needed.
Furthermore, loyalty to his members shouldn't be a reason to deflect responsibility to 1.5million transit users.
If they find this to be the case, they should take the Union to court to retrieve the money they lost as a result of the strike.
While any investigation is likely to cost more money than it should, I think it's important for the public to know. I can also see how this knowledge could help the management/city in future negotiations with them.
Which seems very scapegoat-ish to me.
I do agree that the union in general has been very unfair to the city, I just don't hold Bob Kinnear ENTIRELY responsible for that. It makes me much more angry to think that the union would screw a deal and take advantage of 1.5 million transit riders just for the sake of their internal office politics.
<i>"I would like to say that Canada is a 3rd world country when it comes to Mobile ICT, except you can clearly see from this chart that even *Rwanda* has orders of magnitude better Mobile Data service than Canada."</i>
I simply don't understand why they need a union when I look at the figures below. Admittedly I work in a profession where the concept of life-long employment in a single job is completely alien, but our work per wage ratio isn't any better. I'm sorry but I can't cry for the TTC when I see the pay chart in this article:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080429.wttc29/BNStory/National/home
Blaming all of this on one man is just going to postpone the key issues to the next (and frankly inevitable) TTC strike. The Union needs to resolve their internal issues immediately or lose any iota of public trust they have left. Once that is accomplished, City Hall can get off their collective asses and take action that to prevent this from happening again; marking the TTC as an essential service is only the start. I thought we were desperately trying to improve transit services in this city, if the union can't get on board to help that in some way, I don't see how we're going to progress.
Competitors will include the incumbent top douchebag, Rob Ford, and up and comer Bob Kinnear. Other nominees? Russell Oliver? Roberto Alomar circa 1996?
That would be a seriously tight race.
Sucks that Rogers got the iPhone... Looking forward to ending all of my service contracts with them ASAP. No handset is worth dealing with their stupendously incompetent call centre staff...
---------------
Have you forgotten Mel Lastman and most of the staff of CFRB? Oh yes, and most of the people at the Sun and National Pest.
Which is not to let Dalton McGuinty off the hook for still underfunding it, David Miller for suffocating the life out of this great city, and Adam Giambrone for working on his knees in front of Mr. Miller, but seriously, we're far beyong pathetic at this point. Dropping from 12th to 54th in desirability of where to live?
If it's true Mr. Kinnear's daughter was out after midnight Friday, as he said was the case, then not only is he an ass hole, he's the worst father ever. Which one, I suppose, could expect from a man who ascends dirt to a level of royalty.