On The News and Other Things

Well my letter to the Editor was not published. Shocking! Absolutely shocking! I guess members of the general public writing into the letters page, are not allowed to call city councillors chickens and thus expose newspapers to liability suits, what a horrible state of affairs eh!

Alright we all saw that coming from a mile away, but still Wong's hypocrisy is disgusting. I mean as a city councillor he should be concerned with two things above all others:

1. The state of the city.
2. The state of his ward.

Well naturally if global climate change turns Toronto into a super hot (or cold?) waste land then it would be reasonable to suppose climate change should be on the Wong agenda. (That is a reasonable supposition isn't it? Apparently not!) More to the point, as a city councillor Wong should concern himself with traffic, the disaster that is traffic in a modern first world city. But as we all know the solution to traffic congestion is not more roads. If road building were a real solution than Los Angeles would be a nice place to visit - it isn't, I've been there, three days, never going back again if I can help it, saw more of the inside of a rental car than I saw green things, like grass and trees!

The problem is, if you build roads people buy cars and drive, thus causing more congestion, so you build more roads, so people buy more cars, and repeat. Now consider another big American city, New York, sure traffic is a mess there too, but who cares? Only an idiot drives in New York! When Lesley and I drive to New York, we park the car at some lot and leave it until we are ready to go home. That is a great way to see The City, we walk we take the subway, we walk more, we see Soho, The Village, Riverside Park, the people, the smells, the sounds, New York is a truly awesome place. Ask some schmuck who got himself imprisoned in his caged killing machine what he thinks of the greatest city in the World? Something tells me he doesn't have quite the same attitude about The City that I have.

Yes but Michael when you go to Gotham you are a tourist, the natives of The Big Apple... Oh yeah, never mind. Residents of Manhattan do not, in general, drive, to my understanding most don't even have a drivers licence, why bother?

Silly question here but do we want Toronto to be more like New York or Tinsel Town? I like New York, but hey that's just me, maybe Wong is right, maybe we should pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

Except Wong still has to answer a really fundamental question about motor vehicles, with what source of energy does Wong propose to use to power his car going into the next couple decades? It seems to me that roads, not paved bike trails, bike are too light, but roads are a very expensive proposition to build and, critical point here, maintain. If Wong is going to sink his oily fingers on my property tax purse strings he'd better find a renewable substitute for that oil and right soon otherwise I'd have to say that spending money for motorists seems like some pretty reckless backward looking politics.

On the other hand when gas is too expensive and everyone is cycling I am going to really love hammering on the QEW all the way to Rochester - that will be plenty easier than hugging the shoulder on a service road.

There was a a blog entry today on The Huffingtonpost by Michael Moore. Although I agree with Moore's philosophy, I find his style, typically rather excruciating. Today he was writing about tearing apart GM but saving the manufacturing capacity. All pretty reasonable stuff, no trying to break down Roger Smith's door. Anyway I mention this because I responded, along with hundreds of others. Naturally I suggested beat those swords into plow shares, well car factories into bike factories. I like this post, chiefly its optimistic attitude.

Generally some good ideas, but one area that was missed, was bikes. I only got back into cycling a year ago and already my personal best for distance is 175 miles. Okay granted most people aren't in the same shape as me, but for intracity (i.e. within a city) ride is well within almost everyone ability.

America has a long history of bike making and some of the best bicycles are designed in the United States (Giant, Cannondale, Specialized, to name just three) - yet idiotically all made in Taiwan. Why not in-source all that manufacturing through tax breaks and other incentives, i.e. bikes that were made in America are income tax deductible. Besides helping to fight obesity, cycling massively reduces our carbon footprint and makes the morning commute (at least for me) at lot more pleasant.

Oh and before someone starts a complaining about the winter, I actually am Canadian, live in the home of Cervelo (best bikes in the world) and biked to work through the snow in minus 30 (-22F) weather.

It is possible, with the right attitude!

Anyway on Politics, I have seen some very quiet evidence that Beijing has been putting the screws to the DPRK. I hope this is true, sadly I believe the only viable long term solution is something along these lines.

1. The Kim Family gives up it's stranglehold on DPRK "leadership".
2. Temporarily the DPRK is put under a joint RoK/Beijing trusteeship until a new government can emerge after hopefully two to four years.
3. This new DPRK government works with Soul towards a Korean reunification program as the United States begins a phased withdrawal of of its own military presence.
4. The Kims and cronies are charged with war crimes or crimes against humanity thus ending one of the worst dictatorships since Stalin.

And if pigs had wings! I just don't see that first step ever happening and step 2. would be really messy. But something has to be done, the people of the DPRK are starving and everyone else is getting scared, for a good reason.