LANCE ARMSTRONG

If we are to believe the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, Lance Armstrong has been creeping around for years taking performance enhancing drugs, lying about it,  forcing teamates to do the same while he built a huge empire on the back of being a cheater.

Now it seems, Armstrong wants to come clean and quite frankly I wonder why. A man with an ego the size of the sky, a man who is fiercely competitive, finally sees the light. I am much too cynical to buy that B.S.

Whatever the reason, Lance Armstrong has supposedly come clean with Oprah Winfrey in an interview to air Thursday. The actual taping occured yesterday. Oprah later tweeted that Armstrong was emotional and that the taping lasted more than two and a half hours.

The editor-in-chief of Bicycling Magazine, Peter Flax thinks Armstrong may finally be showing some humility.

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Flax also stresses that the admission certainly will not clear the slate.

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Among the possibilities,  Armstrong could be arrested and accused of perjury on the witness stand.

 
CITY BUDGET

For weeks the Toronto Firefighters Union has been setting off the proverbial alarm bells over the planned flat-lining of the budget for the Fire Services, just like everyother city agency.

They've been telling us the proposed changes at council would increase the fire response time by 63 seconds.

The fire chief Jim Sales said on this radio station on Sunday, he didn't know what the union was talking about; 63 seconds; more like 20 seconds, no big deal.

So what is going on here?  Which one is blowing smoke?

We may get a clearer picture when city council meets today to tackle final approvals for budgets.

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When the firefighters union first launched its campaign, I think there may have been some validity to this 63-second delay but last week, thanks to Mayor Rob Ford,  there's now money in the proposed operating budget to hire 20 firefighters and 15 fire prevention officers and while the overall compliment of trucks will be lower than last year, that overall compliment doesn't mean that's how many trucks are actually in service.   Mayor Ford says that in fact there will be half-a-truck more service this year than last.

I am leaning toward Ford on this one, but if it turns out that fire response times get worse and someone dies because of it, there will be hell to pay.

FLU

You've likely heard about the 2-year-old boy found dead in his home in St. James Town, downtown yesterday and how the family had been sick with the flu.

An autopsy is to be performed today to determine if this toddler died of the flu or complications from it or whether there was another reason.

If it's the result of the flu, this would be the first child in Toronto to die from the virus this season.

We've had other deaths. Toronto Public Health confirms 14 so far classified as flu-related.

There have been more than 700 lab confirmed cases of influenza in the city so far and nearly 400 are in people over the age of 65, so if you have an elderly parent, make sure they get the vaccine.  It offers some protection and even if they were to get the flu,  the full impact will have been muted, perhaps enough to save their lives.


TDSB

This must be the understatement of the year regarding the Toronto District School Board.

Bill Hogarth, one of the two members of the provincial assistance team trying to figure out the financial woes of the board says the board "can't continue to do things the way they have been doing them."

No kidding.  Here's another outrageous example of the disregard the TDSB seems to have for taxpayers money:

The National Post has learned and confirmed through the chairman of the public school board and others that for the last 8 years, the board has given the Skilled Trades Council free-rent taking up the entire second floor of a board warehouse in northeast Scarborough. There's office space for the entire union.  The union had to build its own office walls but the space is free. The chairman of the school board Chris Bolton says that's about to change ... yeah!