Pretty fair and refreshing editorial from the ol' Toronto Sun:
http://www.torontosun.com/Comment/Commentary/2007/10/04/4548334.html
http://www.torontosun.com/Comment/Commentary/2007/10/04/4548334.html
Nuggler sounds strangely like a complimentary term:smile:
Hampton offers apology for rant:
Travel expense story hurt me, NDP leader says
By Joel Ruimy Toronto Star
701 words
27 June 1998
The Toronto Star
SA2
A3
English
Copyright (c) 1998 The Toronto Star
NDP Leader Howard Hampton was picking up the pieces yesterday following a bizarre end-of-session episode that saw him cry on the evening news and angrily confront two Queen's Park journalists in their own offices.
"I've had better days," Hampton ruefully told The Star yesterday after personally apologizing to one of the two journalists, a CBC-TV producer.
He insisted his reaction, including the tears, came in response to what he says his staff are calling "assassination."
"They're (the media) out to stick you with a moniker, no matter whether it's justified or unjustified, (that) you will never live down in politics," the 46-year-old lawyer quoted NDP staffers as saying.
The affair began Thursday, the last day of the session before the Legislature's summer recess, with the release of a report of MPPs' expenses for the 12 months to March 31.
The report details taxpayer-funded spending on travel and accommodation for each of the 130 MPPs. Hampton, whose Rainy River riding sits on the Manitoba border, was first on the list with a total of $118,556.
…reporters questioned Hampton on his first-ranked position - and on the fact that his wife, Sudbury-East MPP Shelley Martel, also claimed $34,292 for travel and for accommodation in Toronto, bringing the couple's total to $153,000. That includes $22,000 for a downtown Toronto apartment.
MPPs are allowed a dozen trips a year each between their ridings and Toronto for family members. Hampton claimed 11 of them, most with the couple's children, and Martel all 12.
When a reporter suggested that Hampton and Martel, who together earn more than $180,000 a year in salary on top of the travel allowance, were "double-dipping," Hampton seemed to lose it.
Tears welling in his eyes, he angrily asked reporters, "Surely you won't deny me the capacity to take my 3 1/2-year-old daughter home with me . . . surely you don't deny me the opportunity to take my ((baby) son home with me."
That night, TV newscasts across the province showed clips of a distraught Hampton talking emotionally about his young children. The reports also listed his and Martel's total travel costs.
Minutes after CBC-TV aired the story, an angry Hampton, followed by four nervous aides, strode the brief distance between his office and that of CBC-TV, where producer Rita Tonelli was working alone.
"It became very clear, very quickly, that he was upset," Tonelli told The Star yesterday. "And at that point, when I noticed there was an entourage with him, I started to feel quite intimidated."
Tonelli said Hampton "wasn't verbally abusive (but) . . . did use the f-word . . . in a rant."
Hampton also grew teary-eyed in her office and accused the producer of treating his wife as an "appendage" instead of a "duly elected member in her own right."
Minutes later, Hampton and his aides visited the office of Richard Brennan, correspondent for Southam News and a nine-year veteran of the Queen's Park press gallery who serves as its president.
"I was half-way or three-quarters through (writing) the story and out of nowhere, Howard Hampton, leader of the third party, the New Democratic Party, shows up, standing over me, glowering down at me, and says, 'Can I read your story?' "
Brennan said no and asked Hampton to leave - twice. The NDP leader did.
Tonelli accepted a Hampton apology call yesterday. Brennan didn't get one.
Hampton admitted using a profanity in Tonelli's office.
"Yes, I said it was f---ing gutter journalism and it was."
Asked if the story damaged him, he said: "Absolutely."
Can Ontario handle a Premier who says it like it REALLY is?
The second he started to push the $10 an hour minimum wage, any semblance of credibility he had with anyone making more than minimum wage was flushed away.
I'm surprised so many people in Southern Ontario are pro-Howie. Howie Hampton would sell you out for the interests of the North the second he could pass legislature. Cheaper power, transfer of offices, special grants to promote industry, disproportionate representation, disproportionate funding, take your pick. It would all be great to us up here, but I digress.
Hows about you getting the unions to back off on their own membership wage and concession demands so costs didn't climb beyond the reach of non-union folks, minimum wage earners - and ESPECIALLY those of us who have to get by on ODSP?
So what's wrong with the North getting a little of its due? South has done quite well off us. ONR would never have been built had there been no gold to inflate Toronto's worth. Lakefront land would be reasonable if Toronto people didn't feel the need to pee in our pools. Howie has a temper? There's a problem with that? I can think of a few Toronto asses I'd like to boot too.