@Roscoe He has always been very good at "small picture" issues: Office Budgets, one-off parties, individual constituent issues. Where he fall down are the "big picture" items such as the indirect implications of his decisions and building consensus. Like it or not, this just seems to be the way he is.

@len bla bla bla. Our mayor is an idiot and the world is laughing at us. It is a shame. Cut the Left Vs Right crap. We Torontonians are sick of this mayor and his thugs! In order for us to cut him a break he needs to learn to behave and get along with people. He is not the mayor of the RIGHT wing nut bags! He is the mayor of Toronto and he needs to learn to get along with all of us!
First everyone said Toronto Star was after the Mayor, then NOW magazine, and then CBC.

BUT NOW almost all the media is reporting agaist the mayor because people cant defend stupidities.

Mayors only friend is Toronto SUN and i personally think SUN is the FOX news of TORONTO. FICTION!!!

@len I never said small decisions, I said "small picture". Simple issues, straightforward decisions. I agree that he is exactly what we needed to bring the unions in check. Not everything is so straight forward though and for the most part Ford is a good guy in the wrong job. I would rather see a Hollyday or John Tory in there or maybe a centrist, if one emerges. I would, however, pick Ford over Vaughan or Carroll.

@aj I wouldn't be so impressed with NOW magazines opinions. It's certainly not a "go to" paper for anything but escorts and club listings.
Yes, certainly the Mayor has made a lot of mistakes in PR, perhaps if he had the sense to employ an entourage like Miller did, at the taxpayers expense maybe he'd have better optics.
Mind you, I'd challenge anyone to navigate the hate on that the media and the left has perpetrated on him and still be standing. People seem to be more concerned with the fact that he's fat, and blue collar looking. Torontonians want their Mayor to look like Miller. Someone who looks like they enjoy the symphony, and look good with a glass of Merlot in their hand at a gallery opening than someone who is going to make the tough decisions that need to be made for this city.
City Council are a bunch of provincial thinking, petty, pet project pushing morons. I challenge any politician who wants to affect change to navigate that group!

@len "Who do you think would do a better job? Sheeley Carroll, Adam Vaughan? HA HA HA. Those idiots would have Toronto sunk in no time and you know what? They're not goodlooking either."

I agree, mean spirited pettiness is not so great. If I want to speak out against Rob Ford, I will stick to the issues and not call names. Kindly do the same and follow your own words.

:)

@len No high horse here. Just find it odd to want people to act civilly in the same breath as calling people idiots. I agree that Ford's stature has nothing to do with politics, and it is ridiculous when people bring that up. I don't agree with it at all, being a larger man myself (man, not boy). You can easily speak out against Vaughan and Carroll without resorting to the sort of low brow attacks that you are upset at the Ford haters for using.

I don't like how Ford handles himself. I am a "lefty". I can talk about Ford without lowering myself to base insults attacking his body or intellect.

You also weren't offending my sensitivites. I was merely calling out your call for civility while using uncivil words. If you didn't ask for civility from the "Ford Haters" then I would never have said a single thing.

@len No to be honest I only called it out because it looked and read hypocritically. There are many people that champion Rob Ford on this site and many others, and many people use much more vile words when talking about those on the left or the center. If I was just commenting to you because of your views I would then by all accounts do so on many other posts.

Also I wouldn't jump to conclusions and call me a Rob Ford Hater and lump me in that group. Unless you mean that disagreeing with the way Rob Ford handles things politically and not being on the right-wing automatically makes someone a Rob Ford Hater.

Rob Ford seems like a good person. He loves helping kids and coaching football, no one can fault him for that. What I can call out (and would do so if he was on the left as well) is neglecting his duties as a mayor to go and coach football like when he left part way through a council meeting to do so.

I can call him out on not participating in the gay pride parade as a Mayor of one of the largest cities in North America. The cottage is always going to be there, year round, but the Pride Parade is once a year.

I can call him out for not realizing that he is in the spotlight as a mayor of one of the largest cities in North America and does things like reading while driving, texting while driving, talking on the phone while driving, flipping off a mom and her child when they confront him about it.

I will be honest in the fact that I don't know much about Vaughan or Carroll. I mean I am not a Torontonian, I am from the Niagara Region. Adam Vaughan does seem a bit pretentious from what I have heard from him on 1010, but nothing I have heard from Carroll makes her sound like an idiot.

And quite frankly I am getting sick of the left and right infighting as well. Neither side seems to want to try and play ball and both sides seem to hurl venom. The Ford brothers are no exception to this either.