Britain is banning plastic straws — and asking Canada to join

spaminator

spaminator

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 26, 2009
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FAST FOOD FIGHT: McDonald's customer charged with battering workers
Associated Press
Published:
January 2, 2019
Updated:
January 2, 2019 4:46 PM EST
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A man is under arrest after authorities say he grabbed the shirt of a Florida McDonald’s employee and tried to pull her over a counter.
The employee responded by punching the customer several times in the face at the St. Petersburg restaurant on Monday.
A witness who posted video on Facebook says the fight started when the customer asked for a straw.
St. Petersburg police say the video shows Daniel Taylor grabbing Yasmine James’ shirt. James responded by hitting him several times.
Police say Taylor is charged with two counts of simple battery for grabbing James and for kicking another worker in the stomach as he was being escorted out.
Taylor is white and James is black.
Taylor is being represented by the public defender’s office, which didn’t respond to a request for comment.

http://torontosun.com/news/crime/fast-food-fight-mcdonalds-customer-charged-with-battering-workers
 
S

spilledthebeer

Executive Branch Member
Jan 26, 2017
9,296
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spaminator said:
FAST FOOD FIGHT: McDonald's customer charged with battering workers
Associated Press
Published:
January 2, 2019
Updated:
January 2, 2019 4:46 PM EST
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A man is under arrest after authorities say he grabbed the shirt of a Florida McDonald’s employee and tried to pull her over a counter.
The employee responded by punching the customer several times in the face at the St. Petersburg restaurant on Monday.
A witness who posted video on Facebook says the fight started when the customer asked for a straw.
St. Petersburg police say the video shows Daniel Taylor grabbing Yasmine James’ shirt. James responded by hitting him several times.
Police say Taylor is charged with two counts of simple battery for grabbing James and for kicking another worker in the stomach as he was being escorted out.
Taylor is white and James is black.
Taylor is being represented by the public defender’s office, which didn’t respond to a request for comment.

http://torontosun.com/news/crime/fast-food-fight-mcdonalds-customer-charged-with-battering-workers
Click to expand...




And now for some hard news..................................



Here is an article illustrating how badly our stock of so called affordable housing is being managed. With some comments of my own in brackets):

TCHC homes sit vacant in the Beach

By Sue-Ann Levy, Toronto Sun. First posted: Sunday, June 26, 2016 09:47 PM EDT | Updated: Sunday, June 26, 2016 10:37 PM EDT

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It was a beautiful morning to take a trip to the Beach to see seven Toronto Community Housing Corp. (TCHC) properties, with million-dollar views, many of which have sat vacant and unsold for five years.

The sun was shimmering off of Lake Ontario Friday and the view was spectacular from 3 Hubbard Blvd., where an older woman was sitting in her Muskoka lawn chair.

That’s until I knocked on the dust-ridden door of the vacant property beside her and she came around to see who was knocking.

Joyce Tait, a widow, was promised by TCHC in 2001 that she would never have to move from her 900-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment and pays about $1,200 per month in rent.

But the only other signs of life I saw, or rather heard, at the seven TCHC scatter homes was at 2 Wineva Ave., where CBC Radio was blaring. The tenant or tenants did not respond to numerous knocks.

TCHC has been selling off its stock of single-family homes since 2010, following years of controversy over what to do with some 158 valuable but often run down and even vacant dwellings.

(At last count the city owned over 700 single family dwellings- and one has to ask WHY TCHC would hang on to such valuable dwellings when they firstly cannot rent them out for anything close to the true value of the property and secondly- they have a huge pile of multi unit buildings ROTTING and in need of repairs before the buildings are CONDEMNED! Toronto Silly Hall first started selling off empty and dangerously dilapidated single family dwellings after being shamed by Rob Ford. Since then TCHC has done everything it can to STALL any more sales even though a rising proportion of the single family houses are reaching the point of being un-liveable!)

(Yes- TCHC hangs on to building that cannot be lived in and yet cannot be repaired either as they have no money for that- though they CAN always find gravy for fine bonuses and wage raises for the civil service union Hogs! But that is the constant complaint- there is just not enough money both for gravy AND for repairs - and we know which one Hogs focus on!)

Since then, the public housing agency has sold off 138 properties for $76 million (an average of about $550,000).

There are 20 properties still unsold, according to a May committee report, worth $13 million. Of those, 16 are “not targeted for sale” at this time “due to regulatory restrictions” which “will take an extended period of time to resolve.”

“The City requires anyone who wishes to convert six or more connected rental units to private ownership to first demonstrate that an equal number of net-new rental units is being added somewhere in the city,” said TCHC spokesman Lisa Murray.

What that means is the agency can’t sell the houses until it replaces them with new units elsewhere.

It’s the sort of ridiculous, bureaucratic red tape that has stalled the sale of single family homes that don’t belong in the city’s public housing stock.

(IN other words- Silly Hall Hogs are STILL STALLING! They resent anybody telling them how to run THEIR empire! AS Rob Ford proved- TCHC could do a LOT of repairs on multi unit dwellings by selling ramshackle their houses!)

Not because public housing residents don’t deserve homes, but because they are run down, expensive to maintain and the TCHC has a $2.6 billion and growing repair backlog.

Unsurprisingly, the report also suggested the vacant houses are now “being repaired” so they can be rented at full market rates “as an interim measure” — although I saw no indication of that when I did my tour. According to documents I found on TCHC’s website, many of them appear to have been vacant since 2011.

(And we all know that “full market rent” is still WELL BELOW the actual value of the property- especially for ones down by the beach! It is this disparity between actual cost and available rent that prevents rental properties from being built! And most of the TCHC houses are OLD- with little insulation-and high heating costs- and the heating cost impacts and reduces the rent level!)

It’s not clear now when the properties will be sold.

Sharon Hill, manager of policy in city planning, said an application to sever the properties — which are also heritage-designated — went to community council in early 2014 but was subsequently “taken off the table.”

That appears to have happened when the report was referred back to the chief planner at the February 2014 council meeting on a motion from local councillor, Mary-Margaret McMahon.

When asked about the regulations that are holding up any sale, Murray said conversion of these units is not likely to be approved by council without a demonstration that there will be other rental units to replace them — regardless of whether the units are vacant or not.

(IN other words it is union featherbedding that is the obstacle! The Hogs like their well paid little jobs- mowing grass, shovelling snow, providing security and etc for these dilapidated old properties! That Jobs for LIFE provision is serious business at Silly Hall!)

She said additional rental units are coming on stream at Regent Park and that means an application can now go forward.

“However there is still no guarantee that the sales will be approved by either community council or city council,” Murray said.

(Oh of course- why be sensible when Hog jobs and Hog votes are on the line?)

Hill said “no further applications have been made” but added that the city has “been in communication and working with TCHC” over the last while to resolve planning questions.

RESIDENTS DEMAND CHANGE! Change. Now.

That’s what tenants repeatedly told the Mayor’s Task Force on the Toronto Community Housing Corp (TCHC).

Given that 18 months has already been spent consulting, reviewing and foot-dragging, I doubt very much tenants will see tangible change anytime soon on concerns about criminal activity in buildings, drug dealing and prostitution, outstanding repairs and being ignored.

For example, whatever happened to Tory’s contentions last July 15 that getting drug dealers out of TCHC properties was his top priority? Was that all bluff and bluster?

(Of course it’s a bluff! Radicals would immediately start screaming that the city was engaged in racial profiling if they dumped the drug dealers!)

The 300 people who attended eight public consultations in April told city officials that instead of lofty ideas like transitioning TCHC to a new community-based non-profit housing corporation (in other words allowing our current mayor and council to pass the problems onto someone else), they want “more safety (fewer drug deals and shootings), better maintenance and repairs” and more accountability within the organization.

In fact, the only idea that seemed to capture the imagination of city officials, according to their report, was the proposal to decentralize TCHC operations from 931 Yonge St. — a priority, they felt, because “today’s TCHC is unresponsive ... with a lot of distance between staff and residents.”

In other words, instead of tackling what city officials call — in their usual fancyspeak — “transformative” ideas, those who attended the consultation sessions made it clear they want significant change made to their quality of life.

(And de-centralizing the control centre woukld make it harder for angry citizens to find people to BLAME! Its all about what is best for Hogs! Silly Hall should not be providing housing for anybody who is not of advanced age or suffering major long term disabilities!)

But the city’s task force review team chock full of out-of-touch leftist bureaucrats — in addition to spending six months basically to rehash what the task force said about those big “transformative” ideas — appeared not to hear one word the tenants told them during those eight consultation sessions.

(Of course no Hog listened to the tenants! Tenants are useful because gtheir votes can be bought cheaply by LIE-berals but LIE-berals scorn the idea those people should be allowed any real influence over govt- in their naivety they might foolishly interrupt the flow of gray to Hogs!)
 
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