NAME CALLING COWARDS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

ANONYMOUS COMMENTS ARE GUTLESS AND WORTHLESS

When I survey the racist crap, political lies and evil exaggerations in the unsocial media, I yearn for more of the cocky flamethrowers to be burned alive by their own rhetoric.
Whenever some vile commentary from the past takes down another candidate or self-appointed leader, I cheer.
It's just more proof, as if it were needed, that the world will rue the decline of conventional media.
We have descended into a bloggers'  swamp where any chucklehead who has learned to type thinks they can say whatever they want about anything, or photoshop the crudest deception, or lurk in anonymous ambush, and they are safe from criticism or even legal action.
I just don't pay attention to anyone who hides their name (or their face for that matter.)
 Now readers will know there are exceptions to my rule. When I had a police or political source who had to be protected - or an experienced journalist explained the cloaking of identity in the story - I would accept that, especially since people have been fired for what they told me and the bosses  guessed they were my source.
But if some clown down the street, with a flimsy grasp on real life, wants to conceal their name, then I just don't listen.
That sniggering Twitter twits and farcical Facebook flimflammery are considered clever by so many  is just more proof that screaming has replaced cleverness in debate, and many no longer know what to say about anything if separated from their brain now located in their smart phone.
No need to learn the background about anything when you can Google opinions, stir with some dim misconceptions, and produce the mangled result as if you really knew what you were talking about.
I read many blogs with interest. Obviously the writers have something to say, and have the background and brains to make their observations interesting. Not for them the trolls in their sick search for any target who will feed their desire to seem important. They're not the cowboys of comment's  Wild West with no laws and a gunslinger's contempt for decency.

I write the same way as a blogger as I did in newspapers or in appearances on TV and radio. I know the laws of libel and slander and have been sued often but never successfully, mainly because I believe as a commentator and editor that I had a responsibility to be fair no matter how much I dislike my target. Yet there isn't a day that I don't see or hear savage hurtful nonsense that is not fair and dangerously actionable.
I have a friend who has a major government appointment. He often emails me racist crap and political lies. The mildest stuff has Obama as a corrupt Muslim monkey born in Hell.
I have told him several times that he better be careful to whom he sends this malevolent garbage because if someone were to send a copy to the government, he would be asked to resign within minutes.
His defence is that he is just forwarding stuff he received from other people. I then reminded him that he can't hide behind that. Can you imagine me arguing in court when I was the Sun Editor that a columnist was allowed to say that the premier stole some money because he heard it from some source?
When you write an email or a letter that can be read by a third person, then you are responsible legally for the contents, whether you dreamed it up or are just repeating. I can assure you as someone who supervised letters-to-the-editor sections that we used the same legal rules on readers' comments as we did for our columnists or stories.
Why do you think phone-in shows have a five second delay before the caller is really on the air? It is to try to catch the jerks who just want to say that Harper is a crook.
So my friend may be a decent man who has been a community leader but he has this huge blind spot that may well in the end bring him. down.  He just hasn't thought it through. You are responsible for the garbage you spread, as well as the insight.
I hate Muslim terrorists too but the contrived humour against the entire religion that is so common these days on the Internet often doesn't have even the excuse of a giggle.  It is so easy to ridicule what Muslim extremists say that there is no need tor justification to cheat by smearing all of them.
Since I have a lot of friends who winter in Florida, I often receive emails which are produced by the Republican propaganda zealots and the southern nuts and then have been Canadianized. Except some of the language and examples are still stuck in the U.S. And too much of it reeks.
 I am a compassionate conservative who is as mad at those who rip off the system in welfare and unemployment insurance and grants and immigration as any Canadian. Yet what bugs me is that so many of the rants against the frauds that I am sent are filled with inaccuracies and exaggerations when the bull's-eyes of the issues are gigantic. You don't have to hunt to find the flaws. Yet the inaccurate rants circulate for years.
I have phoned StatsCan and government ministries to get what the real figures are and find that often the blogosphere isn't even close.
I worry and wonder about all the inventions in rhetoric because it is so easy to live within the rules of decency and make your points. I realize most people in North American are fedup, if not sickened, by their politicians at all levels, and that the anti-politicians, like Donald Trump and Rob Ford, have prospered no matter what nonsense they utter.
But the way to cleanse the system is not by throwing more bloggers' muck on it. Just because you can type better than a chimp doesn't mean you have to act like one when you inflict your anonymous opinions on us.

SILLY MOLEHILLS IN POLITICAL MARATHONS

WHAT IF ALL THE WINDBAGS DIED BEFORE THE ELECTION

After five decades of playing reporter, editor and columnist covering elections in Toronto, Ontario, Ottawa, United States - and wildcards like Britain, Taiwan, Israel, South Africa, South Korea, Czech Lands etc. - it is a relief to ignore the crap flowing on both sides of the border that we can't defend against BS.
When I was churning out thousands of columns and editorials, it was useful to have the same issues trodden into the mud in front of the microphones because then I could remark on even the tiny changes. Straw fodder for a relentless press!
But these days when I don't write as much, I stick with the Jays and chewing gum TV when the political fiction stays repetititious and everyone craves a new issue.
I look back to Dief the Chief and Mike Pearson and my early elections and tell anyone who actually wants to talk politics that campaigns certainly have slid down hill, along with the politicians.
When you read political histories, and I've written a couple, when campaigns were fiery - and great entertainment too - and then survey the contrived clashes of 2015, I have the feeling that this is a rare case where they really were the Good Old Days.

Look at this poster for Sir John A. and mourn the passing of the passion from our politics.
These days the leaders move around in contrived folk dances for the faithful.
Survey the wreckage of what passes for coverage and you would think that Mike Duffy's cheating and Hillary Clinton's emails daily had huge new developments that revealed new corruption as nasty and hot as the earth's centre.
Take Duffy for instance, or rather his case since no one wants the man.
Now after all the years around politicians, I got to know the players, and those clustered around them like barnacles on a ship's bottom,  so intimately that some times I could tell you how they liked their spaghetti cooked or the steak seared.
 I have stayed away from the  Duffy bog even though I knew him from lunches and bar talk. In fact, he asked my advice on how to get more out of the CBC and then used my accountant to work out a deal with CTV.
(Fans of Six Degrees of Separation would be intrigued to know that the late and lamented Arthur Gelgoot, C. A., was recommended to me by Bill Marshall of film festival fame because his boss, Mayor David Crombie, had got him from CBC giant Peter Gzowski and then gave him to the mayor of Vancouver.  Arthur's fame spread that way through the arts and media worlds. At tax time, you could meet Peggy Atwood or John Honderich in the waiting room, or other famous Canadian fauna.)
Gelgoot was an agile and aggressive fighter against the income tax hordes but schooled me on keeping track of every dollar and never cheating or misrepresenting deductions. I listened but guess who didn't.
The public impression has been left after the Senate revelations, I'm sure, that the media must be filled with expense account cheaters, that living high for free was still being done in the legendary Time-Life fashion.
Not so. As someone who has produced hundreds of expense accounts and approved thousands of the concoctions of others. I found that someone who cheated on their expenses would also routinely cheat on just about everything else - whether holidays, overtime or  facts.
And then there were the bloody newspaper accountants who once challenged my humble expense account that had been approved already by the publisher.
To me it was always obvious that the popular Duffy was only friendly with me because I was useful to him. He used politicians and the media. (And they used him. ) The only surprise was the extent of his cheating. Duffy and his fellow media senators. certainly splattered muck over their former colleagues because of the way they acted when they were gifted into the chamber of unsober second thought.
Of course the Duffy affair became a mess. Yet it seems obvious that the elite Tories were as sickened  as the public and just wanted it to go away as quickly as possible, like a  dog turd on the carpet.
Just like the other parties would have done, and have done, with their messes.
So a clever and rich aide to the PM paid for it to go away. He probably would have found a way to be compensated later from the party.
And that's that. End of story. No evidence has been produced that senior Tories knew what Duffy was up to. They condemned it rather than condoned it. But the story lingers like a bathroom smell.
That's the trouble with political reporting in North America today, particularly with radio and TV. The demands of the 24-7 news cycle is such that political news is a cheap way of filling space and time. Even a raw rookie can fashion together what tries to pass as a bit of a new angle on a very old story.
For a couple of years, I had a job every evening of finding new angles to the political stories had had made the last editions. That was when it was driven home to me that most new(s) is really old,
often just warmed up from the previous day or week or month.
What bothers me in my few snapshots at these elections is that so much of the coverage has to do with process and how things were done, not on what really happened. Even with the main watchdogs, the newspapers. You don't expect much from the rest of the reporters , since radio's political coverage is skimpy and TV often settles for the same talking heads on a few main shows.
Reminds me of when Ronald Reagan was the GE spokesman and would look into the TV camera and say "progress is our most important product." Too often today it seems our legislatures and councils  act as if  their slogan is "process is our most important product." Too often the media, especially the electronic outlets, settle just for that.
I never have been a fan of the disciples of governance. I have been a director on a couple of boards where we started sinking when we talked more about governance than product, about structure more than what was actually done in the guts of the job . Enough of this talking about rules and structure and more about trevealing the essentials.
Those talking endlessly about Clinton's emails have failed to produce an intelligence disaster. Oh, they say, she broke the rule. But her "non secure" emails are actually endless trivia and quirky stuff. No smoking gun! Indeed, all the really good stuff, the statecraft, appears to have been done in the normal secure channels, and no government was toppled or war begun because she didn't lock herself inside a vault when she wanted to send a memo.
Her critics have to content themselves with dire suggestions about what could have happened because they weren't getting that far in attacking what did happen.
The popularity of such clownish charlatans as Rob Ford and Donald Trump prove just how fed up the public is with the careful brand of political puppets. The marathons of campaigns just sandpaper raw our nerves with the boring and repetitive rhetoric of our plastic politicians.
Yet the pols are spending fortune tailoring messages for the public through the media which they misuse as megaphones The reporters each day are fed what they responded to the previous day. The cycle has to be crippled.
You can blame the politicians, of course, but one reason they are acting in such an artificial fashion is that the political coverage  by the electronic media is so gawdawful.
It doesn't help that the campaigns are too damn long. It doesn't help that the leaders hide under their security blankets of aides and party guards and only appear in managed simplistic events.
Maybe the answer is just to print or say that the candidates said the same old stuff yesterday, and the photo opportunities were as phony as ever, so we have decided to reprint some humour columns or show an old classic movie.
We would return to real political news when the politicians get around to producing real political news and not just name-calling drivel.

FIXING ROADS AND RUINING TEMPERS

A LESSON ON HOW NOT TO FIX THINGS

It was just an ordinary drive back from the cottage one weekday evening when Mary said I think there was a sign three lanes over saying the two left lanes are closing.
There are only three lanes, I said. That will be chaos. Surely the sign would have been a prominent one, not just a minor one stuck on a shoulder.
A few minutes later, Mary spotted another such sign in between the walls of tractor trailers. And then traffic stopped.

About 45 minutes later, a wasted costly 45 minutes for hundreds of drivers and truckers, we emerged from the Ontario Government's stupid chaos in resurfacing major highways and were headed again to Toronto.
You know, I said, Mark may be right about all this. My youngest son lives and works in China and cringes at how inept Ontario is compared to China when it comes to the length and upset of roadwork.
His theory is that our road repairs last so long and are done in such a poor fashion because of corruption. The contracts are stretched out and supervised ineptly because the various companies make more money this way, and thus have more money to lavish on the politicians they like in an election.
It may sound laughable that we are doing so poorly compared to the China that is certainly having its financial problems lately but I have been to China and know that their major highways make 400, 401 and the QEW look like cowpaths used by sick livestock.
It used to be that we envied the autobahns of Germany and northern Italy and thought the Chinese good only for rickshaw paths and junks. No more, but we're still stuck in 1930.
If Mark had been with us, we would have had the smartphone app which would have warned us of the monstrous jam and allowed us to avoid it. Soon we will all have to carry electronic surveillance just to move down a street.
 I do tune in to 680 all-news radio but I find their traffic reports suspect especially when I am sitting in the jam on the street where they say traffic is moving well. I also find huge gapes in their coverage and if you happen to be on 401 east of the 35/115 interchange you might as well not exist.
There is more traffic roaring to Toronto each night from the east than there is from the north. It used to be said that the heaviest truck traffic in all of Canada was found Tuesday night between Montreal and Toronto. But according to CFTR, it's no man's land. Ted Rogers would not be pleased at how his baby stations have grown.
I was also struck about how the OPP avoided showing themselves. I imagine they were there, hidden in groves, but they sure managed to avoid a lot of work by their absence.
I was reminded of one Friday evening rushhour in Paris when I drove around the Arc de Triompe three times. Believe you me, only the first circuit was intentional. The traffic wardens stood outside the circling chaos and just waded in when the accident was more severe than just a fender bender.
It was anarchy at 10 p.m. on the westbound 401 just before the over-priced highway service station. In fact, truckers and the more irate of the drivers roared into the station and immediately out again, hoping to leapfrog a few hundred metres by going around some of the mess of metal on the station's roads.  Then they butted back in, assuming that most people would avoid a dented fender if they could but they didn't care themselves because they were cowboys who just didn't give a damn.
At the very end of the chaos, when the lanes squirted into two and then just one, there were so many examples of dangerous driving that it's a miracle there weren't fatalities.The jungle still lurks in the DNA of many of our drivers.
I suppose this is another example of what Sam Cass, the legendary traffic guru who was honoured throughout the world (but not in his home Toronto) said was so dangerous it was safe.
There was an intersection north-east of the old city hall where Cass had no traffic signs at all. He said drivers crept through as a result.
But with such huge numbers, it is just madness to take three lanes of a superroad and jam into one lane and do it in the dark for hours. Surely there should be a few OPP officers and a couple of temporary traffic lights supervising the blending to bring some order out of the madness.
The fact that this isn't being done now by our transportation ministry is just another example of how we are lucky to have some of the lowest accident stats in North America.
No thanks to Queen's Park which couldn't even run those special HOV lanes for the PanAm Games without them becoming a confusion. For that matter they can't even supervise driving schools. Just look at all the lousy product on our road. I wonder whether many are still buying their licences under the table as happened for years.
You would think for all the taxes that we still pay on our gasoline that we would get something more resembling reasonable service from the chuckleheads  who supposedly run our roads. As it is, we have road repairs that last for years, probably even longer than the civil servants who approved them and should have been retired years ago because the horse-and-buggy procedures on Ontario roads should have died in the last century.

DERWYN SHEA: CHRISTIAN POLITICAL WARRIOR

THE CHURCH AND TORIES LOSE A CHAMPION

Derwyn's voice was ravaged by pain and medication a few weeks ago as we chatted about events but there was still the flash of wit and insight from my favourite Christian critic.
It was an honourable 77 years before cancer took him down.
He may have had a lovely home high above Grenadier Pond and looked like a comfortable Anglican priest with his beloved cats.
But there had been difficult times.
Like when the landlady gave him some cigarettes and kicked him out to walk the streets of Hamilton on a cold Christmas so the kid didn't interfere with her family's celebration.
Like when he and Julia had company only after 9 pm. when he was a young poor priest in a western railway town because they had to go downstairs into the funeral home to borrow chairs for guests.
Like when church leaders really didn't like him being such a politician. Keep City Hall out of Christ!

I had an intense Baptist boyhood where the Bible was read after every meal. It left me with a lot of complaints about religion mixed with Bible verses branded on my memory.
This led to great debates with Derwyn which I will recall this Christmas.  I will take a card around to Park Lawn Cemetery after I have removed one of the Wise Men or added one because of course our Bible does not give the number of Wise Men who travelled to the manger.
Derwyn had forgotten that in his voluminous knowledge and I never let him forget  the three kings reference isn't in the Bible.  He came for New Year's Eve dinner and I swear in revenge gave such a long blessing that it lasted from one year to the next.
This year I will raise a glass of his port, or one of his rare single malt scotch whiskys, in memory of the politician and priest who was happy to swim against the popular tide and thought the politically correct activists of church and state generally were really in hiding from real thinking about the issue.
He was a voice of common sense on the police commission and planning board and as an alderman, councillor and MPP could be counted on to deliver useful insights mixed with gentle sarcasm and a glint of an Irish smile.
He was a vigorous opponent of the regional Metro council getting involved with a domed stadium and the proof that he and a few others were right came after SkyDome ended up costing $629 million in public funds, a huge wound on the taxpayers' purse.
In the crucial debate, Metro chairman Paul Godfrey accused his usual ally of leaning on figures gathered by me to try to kill this great idea which was then said to cost ONLY $250 million. Ironically, shortly afterwards I became Editor of the Toronto Sun reporting directly to a new publisher called Paul Godfrey. And Derwyn became the CNE president fighting a radical corporate change at the Ex that has never worked after it was forced on us by Bill Davis and Godfrey. (I went to the opening of this Ex as another past president and thought of Derwyn's battles on behalf of the thinking man's fair.)
I quote Derwyn often about how to give a good speech or sermon. Derwyn thought the best length was 18 minutes. You tell them what you're going to tell them, then you tell them, then you tell them what you told them.
Pick only one message or theme, he said, and stick to it. He could be counted to stick to his causes  no matter what. He kept the humble parish of St. Clement's open in his spare time when the Anglican Church wanted to close it. Indeed, I suspect his church often found him as difficult as his Progressive Conservative party did on occasion. Indeed, one bishop told me his early religious  commitment had been doubted. until they were doused by the fire of his faith. No doubt the politician willing to take a stand made other clerics uneasy.
After all, Derwyn could be tough, especially at election time. He gave David Miller one of his three defeats before Miller  went on to become mayor. He defeated Elaine Ziemba, a former cabinet minister, to become an MPP.
I think Mike Harris should have had made him a minister and not just a parliamentary assistant. After all the former premier trusted him enough later to have him perform his second wedding ceremony which was a titch controversial.
At the last, he was a founder of the Association for Former Parliamentarians because he said that some who had retired or been defeated as MPs and MPPs really found life to be difficult and should not be forgotten because they had worked hard for decades in public service.
Of course Derwyn was never forgotten.  After the political wars that swirled around him in the westend ceased, he was the Canon running St. Hilda's and its three buildings for seniors, Hardly retirement stuff!
At the visitation on the day the Ex opened, an irony he would have enjoyed, an illustrious political past - former  MPPs,  MPs, mayors, councillors, cabinet ministers, Speakers, and Metro chairmen - mixed with Derwyn's foot soldiers from past campaigns, like his companion, Christine Schubert, who was an election worker for Derwyn in his first one 33 years ago.
There were baskets of city and provincial crest and flag pins at the door, just like Derwyn handed out for decades. There was even election chatter and some old issues uprooted for the day. I half expected Derwyn to get out of the casket and join in, after taking a few digs at all of us, when Godfrey and I talked again about very expensive stadiums.

DOWNING TRIES TO THROW A PARTY

SLEEPING WITH 80-YEAR-OLDS IS GREAT

When the last friend disappeared into the evening along with the beer and wine and food, and all the ice had said to hell with it and become water in the heat, I decided Mary Downing's 80th birthday party was the best event ever in our backyard.
I've been working up to it for the 50 years since we bought our starter house and never got around to moving.
Why we even had our three sons there. That is quite an achievement, since Mark lives in China, John Henry in California, and Brett says he has a home two blocks away but seems to spend his time in Thailand, Abu Dhabi and whatever exotic destinations his wife can wangle a pass for.

John Henry did arrive late but Paul Corey was still there to represent the guests who had vanished like the blooming ice that kept drooling and melting like my firiends at the old press club bar.
Of course the prof was still busy sampling the wine. I leaned on him for a recommendation for my white wine (or so I thought.) Mary deserves champagne but some friends consume that bubbly like Diet Coke.
I bought a case of his suggestion, only to find out later that he really didn't know because he only drinks the red and not the 2014 California Chardonnay that is produced by Berringer under the Stone Cellars name.
Went well with the sandwiches from Sanelli's Cookery. All the smart people in our area, whether they're the NOBs from North of Bloor or the SOBs from South Of Bloor,  see Adriana on Dundas St. W. for their festive food.
(I hasten to add as a reputable journalist that these are not paid plugs for the wine and the delicious food, but if the LCBO and Adriana do want to make a deal, I would be happy to be compensated in product.)
Of course, the piece de resistance was the birthday cake. I don't want to ruin Brett's gruff image around the Ex where he is one of the longest-serving employees, or with the players in the hockey leagues where Brett plays goal twice weekly, but Brett makes the family birthday cakes.
And they are great. (And I do expect goodies.)
Four years ago, Mark started egging me into a special party for Mary for our 50th wedding anniversary.
It was along the lines that she had put up with my guff for five decades and the occasion should't be glossed over with just a few friends in for drinks. Of course he was right!
Unfortunately, two things happened to ruin that date. I then went to four hospitals for three months and had to learn how to stand and walk again. That certainly put a crimp in the planning.
 And one favoured locale, the Old Mill, was busy building on its greenery, ruins, parking lot and backyard, thus ruining the pleasant Humber setting that I've enjoyed since high school dances. Turned out that other locations, thanks to the licences and rules 'n' regs of bureaucracy, are no longer simple rentals.
So the special anniversary drifted by. I felt guilty because I remember how special the golden anniversary was to my relatives and in the neighbourhood when I was a boy.
 Having a marriage that lasted that long was considered a miracle. (There have been times in my marriage when I thought the same.)
But enough was enough in procrastination.  I couldn't blow another big occasion or the sons would mutter more darkly than they do now after a few beers.
Yet there are occasions when you feel you need a good computer (and someone who can actually get the damn thing to work without hiccups) to pick a party date after you factor in troop movements, holiday plans and work schedules of friends, relatives, neighbours and the weather man.
I figured being summer and with only two weeks warning, there would be quite a few who just wouldn't be able to make it. Then there were all my Kawartha cousins and cottage friends who wouldn't want to drive 200 km. into the maw of Toronto traffic on a summer Saturday. So we figured a barbecue later for them.
I figured if everyone did show up, and brought all the tads, we could move to the Sunnylea school yard. After all, it seems many of the local kids learn to drink in its parking lot
If it rained, we would just drink quicker and save on the mix.
It went well. I knew it was going well when at least one person who dropped in for a few minutes stayed for a few hours. None of the politicians (most of whom had run for mayor on occasion) had   been attacked recently by the media so they were in such a fine mood they never even debated this fall's election. And I think the prof may actually have tried the excellent white.
Since Mark played hooky from his job in China, John Henry flew across the continent just to do a walk-on, and Brett and family were loyal butlers, I decided that the family could do all this again, and not just talk about it.
Soon!

FLIP FLOPPING ALONG

ONE HORSE THINKING

I believe that in another few years, our politicians will come to their senses and ban bikes from major roads.
Instead they content themselves with lowering speed limits when things would work a helluvalot better if we could actually move at the old speed limits.
I thought we had got rid of the lower speed limits when we eliminated the horse. Trouble is, we didn't eliminate the horses' asses, especially at their home stable at City Hall. 

It seems nonsensical that we spend fortunes on roads and signalized intersections and parking lots and then handicap the effort to move most Torontonians who travel in private vehicles by mixing in a few cyclists.

Just as we don't allow bikes on the super roads like the Gardiner and 401, we shouldn't allow them on major arteries like Eglinton and Yonge, at least during the rush hours.
After all, why ban parking during those hours, when motorists pay a fortune in taxes and fees, and then cyclists, who pay not a damn for those expensive services, are encouraged to screw up the same inner space.

There used to be an argument about the cost of on-street parking. Some transportation experts and politicians said that it was economic madness to build roads that were four lanes across and then allow two of the four lanes to be used most of the time for parking.
 After all, the roads cost a lot more to construct than parking lots. And to give the freeloaders part of that road access seems contorted urbanology.
But that's a sermon for another day, even though I was contemplating the wording for it the other day as I observed a large young man sprawled with his bike and huge back pack across a subway aisle and a couple of seats.

At least he wasn't up above on Bloor St, where only a few bikes cause three times the impact of the same number of cars, yet we are supposed to scorn the cars because most have only one person. In this country, unlike in Asia where you can have a family on a bike, the cyclist is the ultimate in selfish transportation.

This chap on the subway was certainly an obstacle as passengers tried to squeeze by all his parts and corners.
As luck would have it, he lurched to his feet at my Royal York station and then pushed his way to the door, his progress being handicapped by the flimsy flip flops that he was almost wearing on his feet.
Now flips flops are for the beach or a pool, not for city streets. They may be cool and there's a nice onomatopoeia to them -- their sound is in their name - but they really are dumb things to wear if you care about fast footing.
Outside the train Flip Flop Boy was a great moving mass towards the escalator which caused various people to get out of his way much as you would shy from a mad dog.
Nothing like riding an escalator with a bike banging off the walls and your pack gouging the person behind.
Out the special gate he went that the TTC has for strollers etc.  Left it open of course.
Flip Flop Boy then mounted, got off to collect a flip flop, then mounted again, and sped down the sidewalk through the crowd.
I don't know whether people got out of his way or he blew them out of the way.
Got into my car parked behind the Shoppers - by some miracle all the cabs had left a few legal spaces - and drove along the one-way lane.
Unbelievable! Flip Flop Boy reappeared hurtling down the lane the wrong way. I screeched to a stop and delivered a shout of curses which I had to end to warn an old lady who was limping into his path.
Flip Flop Boy appeared oblivious to the chaos in his wake. It may have be an act but judging from the behaviour of some cyclists, their IQ is lower than the number of their gears. (I exempt my sons and grandsons of course.)
Later, I was making a slow right-turn at The Queensway and Royal York where the traffic lights have a timing set by the Devil. Miss your green and you wonder about getting a motel.
Suddenly, in front of me, came a very old and very feeble man who didn't bother looking in any direction. I wondered why he was moving so slowly but then thought he may be blind because he leaned on a cane and had an unfocussed expression.
Then I saw one reason why. He was almost wearing flip flops. I wondered why he didn't trip over the tiny sandals as he shuffled.
I thought later that I should have taken his picture. After all, I had just seen how Flip Flop Boy was going to look in 50 or 60 years....if he lives that long.

.

INCOMPREHENSIBLE TTC ANNOUNCEMENTS

DOESN'T INSPIRE CONFIDENCE IN SAFETY

It was 3 p.m. on the subway heading west from St. George when there was an announcement over the loudspeaker system which probably cost millions considering how transit and City Hall routinely spend fortunes on comparatively simple things.
I could give you the date but it really doesn't matter. This seems to happen most days on the subway.
I couldn't give you what was said. That remains a mystery, probably even to the guy making the announcement.
Then there were a few more pronouncements but we all looked at each other and shrugged. ' If you had mined the minds of everyone on the train and promised $100 for each word of the message,  no one would have collected.
Why the hell do we accept this nonsense from an outfit that spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year and can't even broadcast a few clear words into a subway car?
It remains as big a mystery as City Hall allowing the Gardiner and the Don Valley parking lot to be closed to vehicles for charity events. As someone who has at various times biked down the middle of super roads before they opened for business, let me tell you there is no special zing. It might as well be a wide sidewalk.
So it is just plain stupid to snarl Sunday afternoon traffic like what happened exactly 24 hours before my incomprehensible subway announcements, because the DVP was closed, and 401, Victoria Park, Sheppard and other escape routes were wrapped in construction bandages and slippery with rain.
If charities want to keep this nonsense up, we should campaign for donors to send their dollars to organizations that have more common sense.
There have been complaints for years about this and many better alternative routes suggested. But then of course the charity doesn't get its name in all the stories about the traffic closing.
People also have been exasperated for decades about muddled announcements in the transit system. It is a given that most of the time you have no idea what was said. It could be a real emergency or just the end of the world and another fare increase.
Doesn't fill me with confidence about how the transit workers do routine tasks despite the sweetheart union deals!