In writing my post from a couple days ago I, like the mayor, lost control of the narrative. It occurred about two-thirds of the way through, I turned from a critique of Mayor Ford to a blast at voters. Perhaps I was feeling a little misanthropic. But the wind just kind of pushed me that way.
What I really meant to say was…
How does a politician proceed to govern when everything he stood for as a candidate, every claim he made, every promise he pledged turns out to be a total fabrication, flight of fancy, complete and utter bullocks?
The list is long. The examples plenty.
Boatloads of gravy turn out to be merely dribs and drabs of the stuff. No Service Cuts Guaranteed means the exact opposite of what the mayor seems now determined to carry out. Cuts to the TPS and the TPL have been re-labelled ‘efficiencies.’ A $774 million operating budget deficit? What’s that you’re saying now? A $139 million surplus? Respect For The Taxpayers with an open and transparent process becomes this.
Mayor Rob Ford claims to have a mandate from the people of Toronto because he was elected by them last fall. But what sort of mandate is it when he’s proceeding to do the exact opposite of what he promised the voters he would do? That’s less a mandate and more of a con job.
The 47% of Toronto voters who put Rob Ford into the mayor’s office wanted gravy found without cuts, major or minor. They wanted a say in the decisions City Hall made. He promised no pain. His mandate consisted of an easy-peasy nip and tuck at the supposed excesses of municipal politics.
That’s not what he’s delivering. Nowhere on the campaign trail last year or in his Ford For Mayor literature did he tell the people of Toronto he would shutter libraries on Sundays or remove cops from the street. His spiralling favourability numbers indicate as much. 
Mayor Ford does not have the authority from the people who elected him to do what he’s now attempting to do.
A politician with no authority has forfeited his right to govern. It would do well for many of those on council to remember that the next time he and his most avid supporters wave around the mandate canard. It’s baseless. Mayor Ford is nothing like candidate Ford. What we saw is not what we’re getting. The promises he made have all been broken. Whatever there once was of a mandate has now sunk out of sight into the quicksand of empty rhetoric and crowd pleasing cant.
— more to the pointedly submitted by Urban Sophisticat
Hey Cat; in Ford’s Toronto adding 100 officers may come after retiring a few hundred. They may be needed this weekend if the media focuses on those wearing black. The post I got is to meet at 10am till Dec. 31?! on King St. to start… Occupy Toronto!
The critique is right on the mark but who writes headings that make no sense? Isn’t the expression “Hoist by his own petard” because, after all, a ‘petard’ is a bomb?
Dear Mr. Philcox,
You are absolutely correct, sir. The headline writer here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke is an idiot and doesn’t know his/her way around even the most hoary of cliches. Clearly he/she has been hoisted with his/her own petard.
Your blog is starting to lack any solutions to the situation, just complaining and lots of arm chair quarterbacking.
Lots of gnashing of teeth, but no steak to chew on.
Sounds to me like you are frustrated in the way the Mayor, and council, are handling the press surrounding all these “cuts”. I think we all are. I voted for Ford to cut, cut, and cut all the crap that Miller brought in, like the bag tax, increased property taxes, the extra $60.00 to renew my drivers license (he did that) and I truly expected other stuff to go.
But then came the left-wing show at City Hall when droves of characters came to be “heard” dressed in costumes, wasting councils time to talk about their Toronto. In their Toronto you spend, spend, spend and while increasing taxes everywhere, you pick on the mayor for being overwieight. I’m sure Ford decided the public attacks were too much (he did receive that death threat – not from Margaret Atwood) and I suspect he’s going to lay low and then slowly cut costs and find inefficiencies.
I can’t think of any other situation when a group of people were so nasty to an individual and have been able to get away with it… Even the media takes part ie/ NOW Magazine’s cover of him naked.
I sit we sit tight and wait to see what will happen next.
Dear Urban Daddy,
Thanks for taking the time to weigh in here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke with your thoughts and different perspective. I hope it wasn’t a one time thing and that you’ll stick around for an continued discussion while we sit tight and wait to see what happens next.
Let us ask you this. You said you voted for Ford to ‘cut, cut, and cut all the crap Miller brought in…’ By crap, clearly you meant taxes, user fees or other revenue generators. Did you also vote for Rob Ford to cut services like library hours, police and various transit routes? None of which he said he would do. Guaranteed it wouldn’t happen, if fact. (We can send along some links to sources for that if you haven’t seen them.)
While you say we picked on the mayor for his weight, you seem to skirt the only criticism of him that we levelled in this post you’re commenting on. That he lied. He told us he could cut and freeze our taxes, find all this gravy without cutting any of services. That all turned out not to be true. There wasn’t as much gravy as he claimed there would be and in order to balance the budget in the face of the taxes he cut and froze, he’s demanded a 10% cut to all city departments. Is that what you voted for?. That`s fine if you did. We’re just suggesting that if Rob Ford had been a little more forthcoming about his intentions while campaigning last year, he probably wouldn’t be mayor right now.