New Year's Shorts

Time to start off the new year with some quickies

MEDIA JOBS AVAILABLE SOON

I saw this and decided to put in my 2 cent offer for the Star.

I know I said I do not give 2 cents for it and its opinions but I thought I would be generous to Canwest and to make sure no one bid higher. I want to keep the paper in local hands.

• "The country's largest newspaper chain, currently held by Canwest Global Communications Corp., is up for sale following a bid Friday by senior lenders made up of a consortium of Canadian banks, as well as a court filing for creditor protection.
  
  The publishing group has engaged RBC Capital Markets to seek out other possible buyers for the chain."

Hurry with those CVs.

HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN

Wow, what an election year this is going to be for the incumbents if you read what the Pizza Queen has to say. Just in the nick of time too:

• happy hassle of unprecedented myriad construction projects that will create thousands of jobs and inject millions of dollars in a city still confronting the highest unemployment in the country


• $7.2 million will be spent to dress up Pelissier and Maiden Lane


• slow but sure recovery of the auto industry.

See, it was cyclical not structural after all. Who needs to think about what comes next.

MOUNTAIN CLIMBING

A mountain from "all the surplus dirt that will be generated" by construction projects. How sweet.

Look at all of the mountains we have here already:

• Mount Francis during the garbage strike
• as one of my readers wrote back in 2007 "Convince Toronto, London and anyone else that their garbage is welcome in Windsor. No dumping fees. We need a mountain!"
• Gord's mountain of cash available for the Zalev cleanup that I could never find
• the "gorgeous mountain sunsets" that gate agents in Lynchburg, VA talk about as US small-city airports are under threat. Despite millions of dollars spent to improve Lynchburg's airport, just like Windsor hopes to do, departures have fallen from 20 a day a decade ago to just six. Airlines are so reluctant to fly here that Lynchburg can't pay them to come
• taking over the business of the Owner of the Ambassador Bridge. I have said in the past that "this molehill of an issue [can become] a mountain that leads to the further deterioration of Canadian/American relations.
• Edgar's demand that the Bridge company come to Council to beg to be allowed to tear down their homes. As I said in my BLOG "The Mountain Must Come To Eddie"
• desire for P3s for the DRIC road and bridge even though mountains of debt have sunk some major P3 players.

However, Edgar's Council microphone is the biggest mountain here. With it, he can schuss on any Councillor any time he wants.

FLORIDA RETIREMENT

Here is an excerpt from an article from Business Executive which told us what Richard Florida had to say about Windsor:

• "[Fischer's] 120-day plan included an economic development summit in August...
  
  “The amazing turnout of business leaders and leaders in the health, education, labour and agriculture fields is an indication of the commitment people here have to the future of the region.”
  
  The summit featured the internationally renowned guru of new and innovative economic development theories, Richard Florida, who now teaches at the University of Toronto. The gregarious and affable author of Rise of the Creative Class and Flight of the Creative Class, is also bullish on the Windsor Essex region.
  
  “Windsor-Detroit is part of the second-largest mega-region in the world,” said Florida. “Developing a binational economic development strategy is critical, and economic success goes to those places which are “open to immigrants, artists, gays, writers, engineers and anyone who could be considered creative.”

Mancini's gone as is Fischer and the old WEDC. Now it looks like Florida was all wrong too for cities like Windsor and Sackville, New Brunswick:

• "In February 2008 he told the residents of Sackville, New Brunswick, population 5,000, that they were in a "cosmopolitan country town" with obvious advantages over Toronto -- never mind that he had been praising Toronto to the skies since being lured there in 2007 from George Mason University with a $346,000 salary and his own think tank. "My students in Toronto are complaining about the erosion of natural amenities in Toronto. ... People are looking for places that they can go and work and chill," he said in Sackville. "What I see here is a place that's at the cutting edge."

Instead

• "Florida has been arguing that the recession has so decimated many cities and regions that it's time for the country to cut its losses and instead encourage growth in places that are prospering, like Silicon Valley, Boulder, Austin, and North Carolina's Research Triangle. And the rest? In his much-cited cover story in the March issue of The Atlantic -- "How the Crash Will Reshape America" -- he delivered the harsh news: "We need to be clear that ultimately, we can't stop the decline of some places, and that we would be foolish to try. ... Different eras favor different places, along with the industries and lifestyles those places embody. ... We need to let demand for the key products and lifestyles of the old order fall, and begin building a new economy, based on a new geography."
  
  He was even more direct in a May blog post. "We can confer subsidies on places to improve their infrastructure, universities, and core institutions, or quality of life," he wrote. But "at the end of the day, people -- not industries or even places -- should be our biggest concern. We can best help those who are hardest-hit by the crisis, by providing a generous social safety [net], investing in their skills, and when necessary helping them become mobile and move to where the opportunities are."

Get that charter service going to Saskatoon already!