Jack Layton, former Toronto Councillor and deputy mayor (and most recently leader of the NDP), lying in state at City Hall on Friday night was surrounded by an outpouring of support.

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Sarah and I went to see Jack Layton on Friday evening as he lay in state at City Hall. The outpouring of support was impressive.

So there’s this guy I’ve been chatting with on Twitter over the last couple of days named Troy Oakley (@OakleyInc) who convinced me that maybe, just maybe, not all conservatives are heartless jerks.

Okay, so it might seem like I’m name dropping here — Troy did after all manage to land country-wide headlines today over this little bit of body art:

…but that’s not the case. You see, our discussion started around the awful direction that the conservatives seem to be heading in in this country. Everyone from Rob Ford to Steven Harper come across as callous axe-wielding maniacs bent on destroying every vestige of humanity in this great country.

Then, almost as if by magic, Troy stepped out of the Twitterverse and agreed with me, all the while claiming he was also a conservative. He even admired the recently departed Jack Layton of the NDP party (the mainstream Commies of the Canadian political spectrum) — someone almost anathema to the Progressive Conservatives.

I was, like, come again?

Yup, seems like you can still believe in not wasting money, being responsible, and all that other stuff without being a bloodthirsty bureaucrat. In fact, the final words Layton wrote as he was on his deathbed resonated with Troy so much that he had them tattooed on his arm. And I gotta say, despite being generally averse to marking up my own flesh, this is something I could never fault anyone for etching on their skin. Beats the hell out of meaningless Chinese symbols or fancy geometric patterns.

And holy fuck if it doesn’t give me hope for the future.

If you happen to be around tonight, tune in to Newstalk 1010 at around 9:45 to hear an interview with Troy, or just pick up a paper tomorrow and read about how the world may not quite be ready to go to hell in a hand basket just yet.

Here’s what the mayor’s office has to say about a national day of mourning for the recently departed Jack Layton:

Thank you for your email.

As I promised during the mayoralty election, I am dedicated to delivering customer service excellence, creating a transparent and accountable government, reducing the size and cost of government and building a transportation city.

I will continue to work on behalf of the taxpayers to make sure you get the respect you deserve.

This note is to confirm that we have received your email and that we are looking into your matter.

Please feel free to follow up to check the status of your email.

Thanks again and have a great day.

Yours truly,
Mayor Rob Ford
City of Toronto

Brimming with commitment! Contextually insightful! Not an automated response at all!

But if you doubt these statements, perhaps enough people signing on to the petition might do the trick:

https://www.change.org/petitions/mr-harper-ndp-leader-jack-layton-deserves-a-national-day-of-mourning

A pleasant view from work.

As a source of information, I’ve never been a huge fan of the Sun newspaper, a tabloid rag that panders to the lowest common denominator with a few blurby bits of print parading around on each page awash in seas of advertising. The vast majority of their content comes in off the wire via AP or Reuters, often to the point where you can read entire articles — verbatim — in other local papers.

The Sun “newspaper” carries skimpily-clad Sunshine Girls on the back page, features way more sports coverage than international news, and is filled to the brim with bright, colourful photos, eezee-to-read sentences, and sensationalist headlines up the wazoo.

Basically, if you want to have your news predigested and regurgitated for mindless consumption along with a heaping bowlful of red-blooded stereotype, the Sun is for you!

Normally, I wouldn’t give a toss about the Sun. Live and let exist to wipe my ass with, I say. But recently it’s become painfully clear that this “newspaper” is a reflection of the myocardial infarction we currently have sitting in Toronto’s mayoral chair, as well as his ruddy-faced lap dogs like Giorgio Mamolitti who whine like little girls whenever their precious feelings have been hurt by public opinion, contradictory free speech, or that terrible terrible thing we call a democracy (I’ll have to post his bitchings during the last marathon depositions on YouTube).

And to be honest, I’m getting fucking sick and tired of hearing clamoring idiots calling for myopic, one-dimensional, all-pennies-and-no-brains bullshit with which to fix this city’s problems with.

Most meat-headed partisans like to think they’re in the clear, the “he was voted in so he must have majority support” fallacy. Except that only 47% of the people who voted actually voted for Rob Ford. That means that less than half of the people who voted directly support His Rotundness. Moreover, only about half of Toronto actually voted, so the bellowing loudmouths milling around in Ford Nation account for only about 25% of Toronto. And guess what, most of downtown didn’t vote for Ford — the people who will be most affected by his actions are the ones who can’t stand him the most.

The other fact that Fordites continue to forget is that there are 44 councillors at City Hall which must approve stuff before any of Ford’s ridiculous plans can ever come to fruition. “But Ford is going to do blah blah blah…” Yeah, no he’s not, because he’s a bully and he can barely make friends with a fire hydrant let alone a thinking councillor.

Fordites also can’t seem to come to grips with the fact that their portly hero is full of shit.

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There are some who think that what’s been happening in London over the last week or so couldn’t happen here.

Well, last year’s G20 fiasco notwithstanding, the doubters really should think again. The many parallels are hard to ignore:

The Toronto Police Service launched their social media initiative this afternoon with a live presentation from Deputy Chief Peter Sloly.

In a nutshell, they’ve put  / will put a few services online that were traditional in-person — background checks and such — but mostly the announcement was about the TPS’ now-official use of social media like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Chief Bill Blair was a bit more detailed:

Despite having more people on the force with Twitter accounts that you can follow, the police are still saying that you have to call 911 for emergencies or get a hold of a specific division if you have less serious stuff to talk about, but this will allow you to follow what cops are doing on the streets as well as giving you a more direct channel for general questions. I’ve chatted with a few of them via Twitter over the past year and they definitely are approachable (and they respond!), so that could work out real well in the community relations department.

The only concern I’d toss out there is in seeing these new channels become saturated and eventually becoming stagnant as responding to everything becomes impossible (you can see this with very popular Twitter accounts). Guess only time will show how prepared the TPS is for this possibility.

The really sad part about this story is that for Rob Ford, it’s not out of character, not to mention that he neither denied the allegations nor the claim that he was driving while talking on his cell (illegally).

Here’s an encounter between Robbie and Ottilie Mason, as posted on her Facebook page this past Saturday:

“ROB FORD, MAYOR OF TORONTO SEEN TALKING ON CELL PHONE WHILE DRIVING THEN GIVES CITIZEN THE FINGER I N FRONT OF HER 6-YR. OLD DAUGHTER.

I was driving east on Dundas St. last night at around 9pm. towards Spadina Ave. and who should I see driving beside me but our new mayor, Rob Ford, talking on his cell phone while driving !!! My 6 yr. old daughter and I have a game of thumbs up or thumbs down when we like or dislike something, so when we get to the intersection at Dundas and Spadina, we aptly give him a thumbs down and say, “get off your cell phone!!” Rob Ford, our mayor, then gives us the finger, I roll down my window and again shout, “get off your cell phone!” He keeps giving us the finger and I can see him mouthing swear words through the window.I only wish I had taken a picture with my camera but as you know that would be illegal while driving a vehicle! I find this kind of behaviour really unbecoming of a mayor who not only is in charge of the largest metropolitan municipality in Canada, is supposed to follow the laws of that city, set an example, and serve and respect the rights and lives of it’s citizens. It is appalling that we have a mayor like this who so quickly resorts to this kind of infantile responses to his constituents. I have witnessed first hand just what an embarrassment he is to us all. My advice to the very porcine-looking and acting Mr. Ford, hey get off your cell phone and on your bicycle, you need the excercise and we would all be much safer!!”