Monday, 30 July 2012
The horror! The horror? - A reply to Councillor Holyday
Woke up downtown this morning and what did I see? The sun, a prize-winning coop garden, birds singing. But look over there: high buildings, a tidy garbage receptacle, and worst of all, no cars. How do we stand it? What will we do? Can we go on? Help needed? No, we and the kids are just fine.
Sunday, 29 July 2012
Empty seats at London Olympics - sounds familiar?
It's the Toronto Maple Leaf syndrome, soon coming to a major sports event near you, Corporations buy the seats but who wants to go to a minor (you choose which) event on a rainy - it's London so this is special to the location but not a clincher - weekday afternoon? Well not the average person, but particularly a non-sporty type whose company offers them the tickets as a corporate bribe. Sounds familiar? Been happening at Leaf games for quite some time. The corporate takeover of sports will be complete when the games are held in studios and that incidental spectator component is excluded, or piped in or, a few anyway, paid to show up. Time for some new ideas about how to keep sports in sporting events.
Sunday, 22 July 2012
Urban Agriculture Summit coming to Toronto in August
Healthy Food and cities are not contradictory ideas. There are lots of TorontotheBetter stores and services that prove it. And there is a
growing Make Food Wherever You Are [we call it MFWYA] movement.
Want to learn how? Try the Urban Agriculture Summit in Toronto from
August 15-18, 2012.
growing Make Food Wherever You Are [we call it MFWYA] movement.
Want to learn how? Try the Urban Agriculture Summit in Toronto from
August 15-18, 2012.
Monday, 2 July 2012
The real Euro soccer result?
EURO soccer championship result: Barclays Premier League:Lots - Others:less
While several of England’s premier league soccer players like Mario Balotelli, have bathed in two weeks of soccer glory, a story that didn’t initially have much media clout outside the financial pages was the demise of Marcus Agius the chairman of the British bank which “owns” the English Premier League, or, as I should properly have put it, the "Barclays Premier League". Agius was fired for fixing rates and thus, intervening in the "free play" of the marketplace, an ostensible no-no ,i.e. the non-interference, not the interference (I know it's confusing - the neo-con aka neo-liberal economic geniuses like Alan Greenspan who got us into this mess have admitted their own "bewilderment", though not their public indebtedness of course), in today’s post 2008 financial crisis environment, which has seen regulation return to the marketplace, at least for the time being, or, more precisely, at least as a topic for discussion. Less ironic than revealing, perhaps, that the value of Barclays premier league players continue to grow while the reputation of at least one of the same bank’s leaders takes a fall. At a time when irony seems quaintly outdated, the fact that Barclays started, way back, way, way back, as a Quaker bank and that Agius' manipulations likely caused his fellow 1%-ers the most immediate inconvenience, making him a kind of true believer in the dishonour among thieves code, these matters we shall pass by. In commerce, if not football, there are some teams that never lose, whatever the score. Even Spain, now victorious in three consecutive soccer championships, did, and will, lose once in a while. But with 20% unemployment, and rising, it is the people of Spain who are losing right now, even as their soccer players and teams reap even greater rewards. Are we back to the days of bread and circuses? If I were in Spain I might start to think so, even though there’s little work to whistle my victory song to.
