COP THIS!

There he was, with his arm draped around the crooked lawyer who boasted no judge could touch him. This was before the lawyer was found guilty but Julie was there to show his support. Is this the kind of person you want to trust as your police chief? Julie Fantino is a cop with a troubling past filled with unpleasant accusations of racial and gender bias. He seems to believe cops can do no wrong, only us common as muck civilians are capable of breaking the law.Now he is the new head of the Ontario Provincial Police Force. I don't expect him to come intimidating us meek, cowering village folk of Dwight or stomp on other turf in rural Ontario...he'll leave that to others, But I must admit to being just a touch fearful of Julie who appears to have the humourless demeanour of a dyspeptic, cane-cracking Victorian schoolmaster.

But what brains! His first order was to change the colour of the OPP cars to black and white-far more police like than than namby pamby white cars with blue and gold stripes. This move will surely terrify every perp in Ontario into going straight

And talking of straight, there will be n0 more laughing at Sgt Cam Wolley's jokes! They are not funny! We are not funny!

No. You are ludicrous.

Perhaps, if we are lucky, the metaphorical Ides of March will come sooner than Julie expects.

I FEEL A SURGE COMING ON

"Surge" is the new in-word. I used to think it meant to thrust forward, as in:"So I put my foot on the gas, surged from 80kph to 140 and made it from Dwight, Ontario, Canada, to Huntsville, 23 ks away in five minutes. The cop car surged, too, and now this is coming to you from the local slammer."

But there's something coined in Washington called a "troop surge,"sending another 20,000 soldiers to Bagdhad immediately. The aim is to win the war. Perhaps in years, or even months to come the word "surge" will be defined as "catastrophic stupidity" or "how to become bogged down in the mother of all quagmires."

As a journalist, getting to that quagmire is dangerous, especially for the accountants. The latest rate for a ride from the airport to the Green Zone is $10,000. That's right, ten thousand dollars. And there are no discounts if your vehicle hits a landmine, or roadside bomb.

BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE --A QUARTER??

Great news for the new year. The minimum wage in Ontario, Canada, has soared 25 cents to a sizzling $8 an hour. Man, that extra 25 cents will send stampedes of over-paid cashiers, fast-food friers, dish-washers and students to the chic local galleries, golf clubs and gourmet gratification centres, revelling in their new-found wealth, enabling them to avoid forevermore the greed machine created by Jesus-and-money-loving Sam Walton. Even my own cramped, dowdy, now-friendly Dwight corner store could be transformed into a pleasure palace the likes of which have not been seen outside of the Arab Emirates.....unless you include that brown and down Muskoka structure that passes itself of as an upscale resort , Deerhurst. No doubt they are preparing to be swamped with bookings from the newly-wealthy minimum-wage earners of Ontario.In monetary terms,the percentage rise is just over three. And what did our heroes, members of the Provincial Parliament just give themselves? A raise of over 20%.. Of course it's fair. And I'm a ham sandwich.

...MINIMUM RAGE
...by the members of the board of US Home Depot who fired their CEO of one year because of his catastrophically inept performance.Severance package awarded to him by outraged board? $210 million dollars



COOL-HAND STEVE
Another note of new year comfort comes from Steve who shuffled his cabinet as opposed to his wonderfully co-ordinated feet, The great news here is that Steve, with his steel trap of a mind, read opnion polls that concluded Canadians care about climate. (I can see a very bare Hidden Valley ski run from where I'm typing and the only snow I've come across this week is a dubious brown heap near my driveway), So Steve's brilliant gesture to save the world and Dwight from Farenheit 451 was to fire the hapless Ms Rona Ambrose and replace her with an unspeakably loud-mouthed robot called John Baird. Word has it, Baird is not to help the environment, and therefore earn the wrath of big business, but to shout down all those pathetic tree-huggers and naysayers who worry when huge chunks of the Arctic break off and see no snow in winter.

ALZHEIMER'S + A PLUG
One of the local rags has a whole page devoted to the mind-bogling complexities of tax breaks for folks who look after Alzheimer's patients at home.I have read the thing three times and I still do not understand who gets what. It's as though the plan were designed by a bureaucrat who did not want to give these brave, unsung caregivers a hope in hell of collecting what seems to be a pittance, anyhow.
Now the self-serving bit about Alzheimer's.. Next month, 360 Vision, the Vision TV current affairs programme nominated for a prestigious Gemini Award as the best current affairs programme in Canada, will run a powerful, provocative 20-minute story on Alzheimer's.
360 Vision's new season starts on Wednesday,January 17, at 10pm, with an explosive investigative documentary that should scare the hell out of you, the cops and the churches. The following week, a gripping, vitally important story about women leading a revolt in Islam right here in Canada.It is a revolt with world-wide ramifications.
For more details: http://www.visiontv.ca/