I have a higher tolerance than some for Toronto Maple Leafs management, but this… this:

“We think John [Ferguson Jr.] has lots more upside,” says [Richard] Peddie. “He’s got the potential to become a very, very good general manager one day — an excellent one. And we think he should get some help. We talked to John about that and he embraced it enthusiastically. So we’re considering that and we’re talking to people. Nothing is imminent but we are looking for someone to help.”

Pardon my French, but that’s fucking demented. If Ferguson’s not capable of being a “very, very good general manager” right now, then demote him. Make him head pro scout in charge of unsung third- and fourth-line talent — there’d be few better. Or fire him. Whatever. Just put this Svengali-esuqe “help” you’re looking for in charge of the goddamn team, like every single successful hockey club does. Christ!

This space has gone after David Miller in the past for his bromidic, casually ideological and often contradictory pronouncements on various issues. When Toronto spent untold extra moneys to ensure its new subway cars would be made in Thunder Bay, rather than by beastly Germans or Koreans, he told a union crowd that he was “shocked, utterly shocked as a Torontonian, as a proud Canadian and as the mayor of Toronto, that there’s even an argument about this.”

“If I as mayor stood up and said ‘We’re going to take $500 million from the federal government and the provincial government and we’re not going to use it to create jobs in Ontario - we’re going to use it to create jobs in China’ - the federal and provincial governments would never give us another nickel for public transit,” he elaborated. This as Vancouver waited eagerly for its Korean trains, and Edmonton for its German ones. This while Thunder Bay’s Bombardier plant built rolling stock for cities around the world.

Mere months after Miller issued his convenient manifesto for municipal federalism, he declared his support for allowing non-citizens to vote in municipal elections on the grounds that they have no significance outside city limits. “It’s not like a national election; you’re not determining issues of what this country should do or shouldn’t do,” he said.

Recently we saw this most dedicated believer in “root causes” urban crime-fighting immediately blame American guns for the death of a Toronto teenager at his high school. And last week, we saw Miller declare his disquiet with the larger, potentially pro-war message “support the troops” ribbons carry with them when you stick them on the city’s emergency vehicles.

Now, even if these ribbons unequivocally indicated political support for the Afghanistan mission, it would be a little odd for Miller to object to the fire fighters’ union purchasing them and affixing them to their trucks. Making political statements that have little or nothing to do with the rank-and-file is something that good Canadian unions do, after all.

But with their abrupt change of heart this week, Miller and various city councilors pretty much shat in logic’s bed. Presumably their misgivings about the war have something to do with Canadian casualties. We know their opposition to the ribbons is based on the idea they might indicate support for the mission, rather than simply the troops themselves. And yet having learned that the mission had resulted in three more Canadian deaths, they voted for the ribbons! This after Miller and others had insisted the stickers were only supposed to be there for a year anyway!

This is the stuff that weakens reputations, or it would be if anyone here gave a crap about these contradictions, or Afghanistan for that matter - and pretty much no one in Toronto does. Bromidic, casually ideological statements will do quite nicely, thank you very much. I’m convinced this city will vote in 50 more mayors based on pie-in-the-sky waterfront redevelopment scenarios before it’ll install one with a feasible plan that includes a tiny little airport in the middle of it, let alone a tiny little bridge to afford easier access to the tiny little airport.

Last night, a 14-year-old was stabbed in salubrious midtown Toronto, apparently because he wanted to sever ties with a gang. In the interests of consistency, David Miller should by now be declaring war on knife manufacturers.

I won’t wait up.

In recent weeks, three notable Canadian columnists - names of Travers, Walkom and Wente - have gone on record against Canada’s no-fly list on the grounds that no self-respecting terrorist would travel under his own name in the first place. With all due respect, they’re making asses out of themselves. That’s the subject of my latest “Fact Check” - a bit of a gimme, really - at Macleans.ca.

Rod Liddle on the London Olympic logo and Wolff-Olins, the “branding” wankers who came up with it:

[D]elve a little deeper and you will find that our design, our little logo, gives you a pretty good flavour of Britain and its delusions and confusions. Not that harmless little image itself, but the fatuous rubbish which lies behind it. … [C]heck out their website, enter the Wolff-Olins house of cards, where there’s much, much more of this pretentious, chest-beating drivel. They offer companies ‘potential platforms for action’. And then — God only knows what this means — ‘We think brands need to be less controlling, more generous.’ How precisely will they do this? ‘We help you invent new ways that move the world forward.’ Oh, good, many thanks for that, gentlemen. And then a rare moment of truth, or the truth as they have it: ‘Brand isn’t marketing. It’s everything.’
…
[B]oth Wolff-Olins and the Prime Minister are trying desperately to tell you that the whole event is really nothing to do with athletics; that’s why that bloody word ‘inclusive’ crops up so often. … Tony Blair has already said that he believes the Games should inspire people to change their lives. The Wolff-Olins film (which you can see on their benighted website) does not show wonderful athletes running and jumping and throwing things, it depicts instead browbeaten members of our ethnic minority and disabled communities struggling, in a very real sense, to come to terms with their daily struggle for existence, uplifted a little (not too much, obviously) by the Olympic Ideal, whatever that might be.

The notion that the Games might be a chance for us all to see brilliant sportsmen in action and thrill to the achievement of dedicated and talented individuals is here utterly subverted; the Olympics isn’t about any of that. It’s about ordinary people — quite miserable ordinary people, come to that — doing ordinary things, like riding a bicycle for a few hours every day. In other words, Wolff-Olins has rebranded the Olympics to mean exactly the opposite of what it was intended to mean. Not bad for £400,000, I suppose, all things considered.

Note to the Senators’ captain: The hockey gods tend to frown upon deliberately shooting the puck at one of their most favoured.

I stand accused of providing links to blogs of which Warren Kinsella disapproves. If that really is the extent of his grievance, then I’d have thought fairness would demand that he also level it at the six members of his own blogroll who link to at least one of the sites in question. Oh, and the editorial board of the newspaper that prints his broadly defined version of media analysis. And at least two of his fellow columnists there.

If Kinsella is trying to imply that I’m an actual bigot, not just someone who links to blogs that have contained things he deems bigoted, then I think that’s really rather remarkable. I’m not one, for starters. And never having met me, the only evidence he would have at his disposal to mount his inquisition would be on this here blog or at Maclean’s. Kinsella’s a dab hand at selective quotation, but I think even he’d have a hard time turning me into a drooling fascist.

(I say that now. By this time tomorrow my great grandfather may well have been outed as Pinochet’s loyal gardener.)

I’ve said before that I have nothing personal against Kinsella, though he’s making a compelling case for a change in policy. But if nothing else, I’m slightly fascinated to see how much time the high priest of high-stakes Canadian gutter politics really has to devote to assassinating my character.

“I try my best to be honest, too.”