Toronto council abandoning the city's quality of life by resurrecting streetcars (called early trams in the 1900's)

It is reported that Toronto City Council have reversed their decision to place trams underground and not clogging the streets of Toronto. In addition, it is reported that the Council wish to limit certain publicly paid for roads to buses. Before you ask, or dismiss this message as a car junkie rant, you ought to be aware that I walk, bike and use the TTC every day to get to work.

The fiasco of placing streetcars above ground was to be done away following the termination of the Miller administration, but it is reported that the current Council appear to have revived this debacle on the basis of short term thinking and possibly political gain. If so, their actions do their elected office a disservice.

Let me first tell you that I have seen the devastation to a city’s quality of life that streetcars/trams and bus lanes bring. I lived through the horror of it in Manchester, England and if people think the St. Clair monstrosity was bad, they have no idea what is coming due to the councillors’ dereliction of duty, supposedly to make Toronto a wonderful place to live.

Manchester resurrected trams in the 1990’s for many of the same reasons that Toronto Council now seem to want to. They wanted to create gridlock to force people onto public transport and were short of the will to fund real forward thinking infrastructure. Like Toronto, Manchester also had limited funds due to huge labour costs of the city’s workforce, even as real services were cut (not the same peripheral entitlements that are being fought over by a small number of vocal beneficiaries in Toronto).

Manchester is a poorer city than Toronto, with significantly more amounts of street crime, which also meant taking public transport was often dangerous. Nevertheless, the driven council of Manchester pushed forward and were given a huge boost when the IRA blew up the city centre in 1996. They had a clean slate to make the city in their mind’s image. Therefore they removed road lanes for vehicles, putting in trams and bus lanes. It has been a total disaster for the whole quality of life in the city because movement has ground to a virtual halt. Street crime has always been high, but has increased due to slow moving pedestrians being exposed to the vagaries of a limited inefficient public transport system also caught up in the gridlock. Manchester has approximately 1 million people and yet this is what trams did to a smaller city.

Trams are a technology from the early 1900’s when private vehicular travel was a luxury and few roads were needed. Trams/streetcars create gridlock, are slow, old fashioned, and are limited to specific routes with no flexibility. Major cities rightfully moved away from them as soon as possible. Trams are for cities that cannot afford proper infrastructure, that have a political anti-car agenda and that have no substantial private vehicle ownership. Trams are not an option for a first world city looking to better life for its inhabitants in the medium to long term future. If density in Toronto is what is desired, then underground public transport is the only alternative for a first class city. Putting trams above ground and reducing roads by offering lanes to buses only, is a backward step for this city.

Part of the last municipal election in Toronto was about getting away from the idiocy of streetcars above ground, and to get away from the imposition of downtown councillor militant anti-car agendas on those living North of St. Clair. The apparent abandonment of the wishes of most non-radical citizens by dint of backroom shenanigans is a disgrace to the councillors’office. Due to hidden political manoeuvring to which we have no transparent visibility, it is almost certain that these idiot councillors will not reverse course and come back to sanity for the benefit of Toronto.

Nonetheless, I wanted to register my outrage at their contribution to the destruction of quality of life in this city. It could have been great, but if the reports are accurate, then Toronto will now degrade into a second class mediocre humdrum workaday city because of the councillors’ petty thinking for short term political gain.

The best place for trams is to be buried underground and that they should never see the light of day again.

Absolutely disgusted by Toronto council’s reported short sighted behaviour.

What Ontarions appear to be voting for. Incompetence.

There's a list of lies that Dalton McGuinty has committed in recent years. Worse for me was his manisfesto claim of no new taxes, then literally on the first day in power instigating a tax of more than $800 per person who worked for a living. However, he called it something other than a tax even though it is deducted from my pay and given to the provincial government. There's a list of incompetence ranging from eHealth ($1Billion wasted), to reversal of eco tax, to reversal on power stations and his use of racism in the last campaign. 

All of this was not technically illegal or wrong, other than lying to gullible voters and appealing to base instincts. Yet, I have never been able to figure out how Dalton McGuinty’s provincial Liberal government saw fit to pay out $25 Million of Ontario tax-payers’ money directly to the pockets of tax collectors who remained in their jobs, essentially performing the same duties with the same benefits whilst collecting HST instead of GST.

What happened to the concept of “successor employer liabilities”? Severance payments are for people who lose their jobs. In this case, no one was terminated and the government employees did not lose their accrued benefits. When a company buys another one, a purchaser is responsible for the employees’ rights, seniority and benefits going forward. In this case, the new federal employer is on the hook for future liabilities arising only if they terminate their "new" employees, yet there was no current cost being transferred. In any event, Ontario transfer payments would compensate the rest of Canada should the federal government eventually decide to get rid of tax collectors (fat chance!)

Obviously, we all love tax collectors and want to reward them with gratuitous payments for their good work. However, financially and legally, this act by McGuinty’s crew made no sense. 

How Britain's Colonial Office messed up the Middle East

There has been recent correspondence and articles in the media about the creation of Saudi Arabia as a country in 1932 when the "kingdoms" of Nejd and Hejaz were united, and the odious effect of its Wahhabist theology throughout the globe. However, all seemed to miss one major negative spin off from the dealings of perfidious Albion in the area. So much of the Middle East's problems are due entirely to its handling by Britain (and to a lesser degree, France) and especially the double dealing between the British Colonial Office, which is the forerunner to the current Foreign & Commonwealth Office, and the Hashemite clans. 

It's a complicated history, but suffice to say, that during World War I, France and England conspired to take over substantial parts of the Ottoman Empire which stretched from Turkey Eastwards across most of the Middle East. The short story is that the ibn Saud clans drove the Hashemites from Hejaz and Hussein bin Ali (Hashemite king) lost his stewardship of the "holy" cities of Mecca and Medina. 

Further back, the British had encouraged an Arab revolt of sorts against the Ottoman Empire during World War I, although the success and actual results of the revolt are not recalled with great esteem. Hussein and his son Abdullah played both sides of the Ottoman and British support. With the help of British meddling, one of Hussein bin Ali's sons, Faisal became the king of Iraq after he had been deposed as King of Syria by the French. 

In the region known as "Palestine" since the Roman renaming nearly 2 millennia before, Britain had been given a League of Nations mandate to create a Jewish National Home in 1922. It's important to note that this named area of "Palestine" was not a country, but merely a region such as one might call the Rocky Mountains in Canada or the US, or the Lake District in the UK. There never was a country called "Palestine”. The area comprised the lands of Judea and Samaria, and the coastal strip near the Mediterranean together with substantial lands to the East of the River Jordan. In fact, the lands to the East made up 78% of the land mass that was intended to be used for a Jewish National Home following on from the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Many Arabs did not even consider the region a separate entity and, Syrians especially, simply regard the whole area as Southern Syria. 

Anyhow, the British colonial office undermined the intention of the Balfour Declaration and decided to use it for their purposes, thinking a sympathetic puppet would be useful to the British Empire. So, as an additional sop to the Hashemites after being driven out of what was to become Saudi Arabia by the ibn Sauds, Britain gave 78% of the land allocated for the Jewish National Home under the League of Nations mandate to another one of Hussein bin Ali's sons, Abdullah I bin al-Hussein. In the remaining 22%, when Jews were struggling to leave the Europe that would be their death bed, the British admitted more than 5 Arabs for every Jew during the 1920's and 1930’s. Vast numbers of Arabs were drawn to the Jewish-created prosperity and health services in the Palestine mandate area. Not only did the Arabs flock from Transjordan but also from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and even from as far away as Italian conquered Libya. Emir Abdullah of Transjordan (as he now was) complained that he was fast becoming a king without subjects. 

General McMahon, the British chief of staff in Egypt, who gave Transjordan to Abdullah I bin al-Hussein stated that there was no intention to give the 22% remnant to create an Arab independent state. William Ormsby Gore, a McMahon staffer in 1916, stated to the House of Commons in 1937 “that it never was in the mind of anyone on that staff that Palestine, West of the Jordan (river) was in the area within which the British Government then undertook to further the cause of Arab independence.” 

Today, thanks to British perfidy, the 22% land remaining is Israel including Judea & Samaria (i.e. the West Bank of the Jordan river) which is currently being rent by the UN to include another Arab run entity in addition to modern day Jordan and Gaza, and to create yet another Arab run entity for the descendants of immigrants from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya that the UNRWA has defined as being refugees. The UNRWA's definition of refugees is a singular definition for Arabs if they had any ancestors residing in the 22% area between 1946 and 1948, and the definition is the only instance of a refugee status being one that can be inherited. The approximately 800,000 Jewish refugees who escaped with their lives and not much else when ethnically cleansed from Arab lands after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 are, of course, not recognized as refugees by the UN and certainly not their descendants. 

There are some interesting side items to note. Abdullah actually wanted to call his country, "Palestine", but was dissuaded by his British advisers because it would undermine the argument to drive the Jews from the area if there already was a country called Palestine. The West side of the Jordan River was called the CisJordan and the East side, Transjordan. When the British commanded Arab Legion conquered most of Judea and Samaria, and part of Jerusalem including the Jewish quarter, they ethnically cleansed all Jews from the land. Abdullah was then advised to change the name of Transjordan to Jordan, to reflect his rule over both sides of the river Jordan. Finally, the father of the notorious British traitor Kim Philby, was chief representative of Transjordan upon its creation in 1923, which shows the calibre of the person in Colonial office. Even though I am also British, I am under no illusion as to whether or not Britain has rightfully earned the moniker "perfidious Albion".  

Drug cheats do sometimes prosper (especially in football)

In one case, cheats did prosper, in another case they did not. I have railed against the cheating play of german football teams before, both at domestic and international level. I hate watching their play, always on the edge watching for a despicable sly challenge and their rolling about on the floor in epileptic fits if an opponent invades their body space. I simply don't know how they avoided the reputation that has stuck to Italians and Latin Americans. 


Anyhow, it has now been revealed that in the first World Cup Final at which testing was introduced, 3 german players failed drugs tests. The results were not released at the time, probably because England actually won, but the players escaped any sanctions for their cheating. In this case, cheats did not prosper, but they did escape punishment for their cheating. 


Of note is the peculiar case of the West German team that beat the much favoured Hungarians in the 1954 World Cup Final. There was no drug testing.  Bear in mind, the German team was comprised of amateurs and had been beaten 8-3 by the Hungarians 2 weeks earlier. The Hungarians were 2-0 up after 18 minutes, and the amateur Germans got stronger as the game went on. Many of the W. German team disappeared to a sanatorium to convalesce several weeks after the 1954 World Cup Final because they had contracted jaundice.  Although early days for drug testing, the W. Germans are believed to have been injected  with methamphetamine, a stimulant used by nazi tank crews and pilots during World War II and which was therefore familiar to the Germans. Cheats did prosper. 

Where's the NDP? That's the real story.

Recently, 3 MPs of the Liberal Party of Canada went to vote for the executive of the parliamentary Canada-Israel Friendship Group. The Conservatives had approximately 60 MPs in attendance and when the votes were counted, all 6 executive positions went to Conservative MPs. Liberal MP Marc Garneau was particularly upset by this, although to me the vote does appear to simply be a function of numbers because the Liberal Party only has 34 MPs at this time, whilst the Conservatives have 166.

I believe Marc Garneau is sincere in wanting to be involved on the executive of the parliamentary Canada-Israel Friendship Group. He is a friend of Israel and indeed, of all democracies. However, whilst the newspapers and other media outlets have noted the inherent numerical disadvantage to his caucus they missed the more damning point. Not a single NDP MP of the 102 members of the loyal opposition chose to attend. With 102 members, should the NDP not have had at least 1 representative at the Canada-Israel Friendship Group meeting? 

My experience from talking to the NDP's national director and an MP about 18 months ago is instructive. When I have asked them why the dictat from “on high” gives no ability to reason about their party's support for theocratic, misogynistic, homophobic and tyrannical forces of Hamas and Hezbollah striving to eliminate a vibrant democracy with rights for all, their only response is that "it is a little confusing they support groups that don’t share their vision". Seriously. This is representative of my encounters with the NDP and they are stuck with a rigid ideological bigotry dictated from their head office on all matters. In addition, when one sees the historically ignorant Libby Davies remain a possible “kingmaker” in the NDP's leadership race, and she has (let’s be generous to her) has veered very close to outright anti-Semitism in her utterances, then one can easily ascertain what the NDP stands for in the Middle East.

 

I had very reasonable discussions on all issues in the past with BQ, Liberals and Conservatives, and disagreed amicably at times. Marc Garneau in particular was a pleasure to talk to, but that may be because I wanted to be an astronaut growing up.Unfortunately, I find the NDP representatives impossible to engage in discussion and stuck in pure "group-think", largely based on absolute ignorance. The NDP members are told that a stance is "left-wing" and therefore they must follow it, even if it includes support for totalitarian ideologies.  

Gilo, South Jerusalem (not a settlement)

So the US and Quartet are “deeply disappointed” that Jews will be able to build apartments in Gilo, which is actually South Jerusalem and not a “settlement” (feel free to Google Map it). Apartments are to be built on land that is still owned by Jews (purchased before WW2), notwithstanding that Jews were ethnically cleansed from that land by the British commanded Arab Legion of TransJordan in 1948. If Jews were denied planning permission in the USA on land that they own, on the basis of their religion, then the government would likely take action against such discrimination.

The Arab world know that a Jewish state is meaningless without Jerusalem and the sites which are central to Jewish beliefs. This is why they have started screeching for Jerusalem as a new capital of a never before existent Arab country, when for centuries after its conquest by Islam, it was not even a major city. It is why Sikh, Buddhist, Christian and Hindu places of worship have been destroyed, built on or taken over and converted to mosques when Islam has conquered a nation. If Jews are not allowed to live in Jerusalem, then where can they be free to live?

VE Day @ the UN

Having suffered to listen to Mahmoud Abbas’ demagogic speech bringing all the medieval anti-Semitic blood libels up to date for the modern world, yet receiving an ovation from the tyranny dominated UN, henceforth let’s declare September 23 to be our era’s VE Day (Victory Evil Day). 

In future generations, it will be fitting to note that Abbas' speech as the first UN action supporting the creation of yet another Arab Islamic undemocratic state was one of vile bile, falsehoods and hatred. Not that there was any doubt, but tiny Israel clearly has no peace partner.