Is Jim Flaherty a hippie?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 4:50 PM - 17 Comments

First, the Finance Minister quotes Bobby Kennedy and waxes romantic about public service and “working together” for the “public good.” Now, he expresses some sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street protestors.

Jim Flaherty says he can understand the “legitimate frustration” of Occupy Wall Street protesters in light of persistently high youth unemployment … “It really is a Wall Street proposal,” he told reporters prior to flying to France for key G20 meetings on the global economy. “In Canada we have a progressive income tax and it favours people with lower incomes who are vulnerable, quite frankly, in Canadian society. Our tax system is clearly progressive. Having said that I see a point that income distribution is important and that there is a concern that a very, very small group of people have very large incomes.”

While the present circumstance may not be as dramatic, income inequality is reported to be growing at a faster pace in Canada.

Stephen Harper lectures the world

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 2:50 PM - 13 Comments

The Prime Minister calls on Europe and the G20 to get their respective and collective houses in order.

Events in the summer of 2011 have made it clear that global economic challenges are by no means behind us. What started as a sovereign debt crisis in smaller countries in Europe has now spread, causing extreme stress in the European financial sector and threatening global growth. Unfortunately, this time, the policy response to our shared challenges has not been as strong and co-ordinated as it needs to be. This slow response has resulted in missed opportunities, with each missed opportunity increasing the cost and difficulty of resolving the crisis.

We cannot afford any more missed opportunities.

Last month, Scott Clark and Peter DeVries noted that Mr. Harper was among those leaders calling on “surplus” countries “to increase their expansion of domestic demand” and thus wondered whether the Prime Minister was willing to participate in a global stimulus package (to the tune of $41 billion).

The debate around short-term stimulus: where will Canada stand?

By John Geddes - Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 1:07 PM - 7 Comments

Back in the panic-stricken fall of 2008, the G20 emerged as the saviour of the global economy, with Canada joining in as the major economies joined forces to ramp up spending and keep an international recession from deepening into a depression.

Simpler times.

In the run-up to the G20 finance ministers’ meeting later this month and the leaders’ summit in early November, there’s no sign of that sort of unity of purpose. The fundamental divide: stimulus doves vs. austerity hawks. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty this week continued to position Canada squarely in the latter camp:

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About that world debt

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 9, 2011 at 3:08 PM - 1 Comment

Scott Clark and Peter DeVries have some questions for Jim Flaherty ahead of the next meeting of G7 and G8 finance ministers.

President Obama has said that he wants a balanced approach to solving the US deficit and Debt problem. This would require both expenditure cuts and tax increases. Mr. Flaherty has said that he would never raise taxes to deal with a deficit problem.  Lower taxes are needed for growth. This sounds very Republican if not Tea Party. What advice will Mr. Flaherty tell the Secretary of the Treasury regarding taxes to reduce the US deficit?

The Prime Minister claims great success for his leadership at the G-20 in getting countries to commit to reducing their deficits in half by 2013.  What has happened to that commitment?

Why people can’t help themselves

By Andrew Potter - Friday, August 19, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 29 Comments

Jess Hurd/Report Digital/ Redux

Anyone who has ever taken part in a riot, or even just hovered on the periphery of one, knows how exhilarating it can be. Windows smashed, cars torched, stores looted—it’s like being in the middle of a video game. Yet there is a tendency to try to psychoanalyze society and interpret the mob’s behaviour as a symptom of some great underlying malaise: hockey’s culture of macho violence in the case of June’s riot in Vancouver, racism or poverty or the welfare state in the case of the looting that hopscotched across England last week.

People are over-thinking things way too much. Any proper discussion of a riot and why it happens has to start with the recognition that rioting, especially for young men, is a huge amount of fun. At any given moment, there are far more people willing to riot and loot than we like to admit, and the only reason there isn’t more of it is that if you do it by yourself or in a small group, you’ll almost certainly get caught. But if you can get enough people to riot, you can all get away with it, which is why when it comes to getting one started, what the participants are faced with is essentially a coordination problem. The trick is getting a critical mass of people willing to do it, in the same place and at the same time.

Certain events, like game seven of the Stanley Cup final, have become reliable opportunities to riot—a bunch of people show up precisely because they know that a lot of other people will also be showing up to riot. Another reliable opportunity is any sort of anti-authority protest, such as a meeting of the G20 or—what sparked the events in Tottenham—a demonstration against police violence. No matter how peaceful the initial gathering is meant to be, it is easily overwhelmed by those who are there just to smash stuff.
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System overload

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 11:35 AM - 12 Comments

Darryl Dyck/CP; Global News

In the wake of Vancouver’s riots, B.C.’s populist premier Christy Clark was quick to read the public pulse. “We will hold you responsible,” she said the morning after the mayhem. “You will not be able to hide behind your hoodie or your bandana.” A special team of experienced prosecutors, she said, would work with police to ensure swift, severe punishments for rioters—jail time, she made clear, sounding more like an Old West sheriff. The public roared its approval. The riots touched a raw nerve in Vancouver, where 19 of every 20 residents want the troublemakers prosecuted to the full extent of the law, according to a new poll by Angus Reid.

The reality of prosecuting the mess, however, will soon sink in. The premier is “out of touch with how our courts are operating,” Vancouver criminal defense lawyer Jason Tarnów tells Maclean’s. There is “no way” riot cases will get preferential treatment just because politicians are asking for it; that would be unconstitutional. Rioters will be processed by a justice system hobbled by judge, sheriff and prosecutorial shortages and a legal-aid system that no longer meets even basic needs, according to a recent report. “Justice will not be swift,” adds criminologist Robert Gordon, of Simon Fraser University. “This will be a long, drawn-out process.”

A week before the riot in fact, five Vancouver trials were ordered shut down after judges deemed courtrooms unsafe to proceed due to a shortage of sheriffs. More than 2,000 criminal cases, meanwhile, are at risk of being quashed over delays. In the past year, a range of cases, from drunk driving to drug dealing have been tossed because it took up to two years to get to trial. “It takes 12 to 18 months to get a single-day trial in Vancouver right now,” says criminal lawyer Michael Shapray. “What will happen if police suddenly lay 300 criminal charges? How are you going to find the judges, sheriffs and prosecutors for this?” In an eye-opening report released last fall, the provincial court warned that 17 new judges must be hired just to bring B.C. back to 2005 levels and slow the backlog. Instead, B.C.’s spring budget approved cuts totalling $14.5 million to the judiciary, court services and prosecution services. (In the wake of the riots, funding for sheriffs was quietly restored.)

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Why the Vancouver rioters won’t be punished

By Nancy Macdonald - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 8:35 AM - 0 Comments

Darryl Dyck/CP; Global News

In the wake of Vancouver’s riots, B.C.’s populist Premier Christy Clark was quick to read the public pulse. “We will hold you responsible,” she said the morning after the mayhem. “You will not be able to hide behind your hoodie or your bandana.” A special team of experienced prosecutors, she said, would work with police to ensure swift, severe punishments for rioters—jail time, she made clear, sounding more like an Old West sheriff. The public roared its approval. The riots touched a raw nerve in Vancouver, where 19 of every 20 residents want the troublemakers prosecuted to the full extent of the law, according to a new poll by Angus Reid.

The reality of prosecuting the mess, however, will soon sink in. The premier is “out of touch with how our courts are operating,” Vancouver criminal defense lawyer Jason Tarnów tells Maclean’s. There is “no way” riot cases will get preferential treatment just because politicians are asking for it; that would be unconstitutional. Rioters will be processed by a justice system hobbled by judge, sheriff and prosecutorial shortages and a legal-aid system that no longer meets even basic needs, according to a recent report. “Justice will not be swift,” adds criminologist Robert Gordon, of Simon Fraser University. “This will be a long, drawn-out process.”

A week before the riot in fact, five Vancouver trials were ordered shut down after judges deemed courtrooms unsafe to proceed due to a shortage of sheriffs. More than 2,000 criminal cases, meanwhile, are at risk of being quashed over delays. In the past year, a range of cases, from drunk driving to drug dealing have been tossed because it took up to two years to get to trial. “It takes 12 to 18 months to get a single-day trial in Vancouver right now,” says criminal lawyer Michael Shapray. “What will happen if police suddenly lay 300 criminal charges? How are you going to find the judges, sheriffs and prosecutors for this?” In an eye-opening report released last fall, the provincial court warned that 17 new judges must be hired just to bring B.C. back to 2005 levels and slow the backlog. Instead, B.C.’s spring budget approved cuts totalling $14.5 million to the judiciary, court services and prosecution services. (In the wake of the riots, funding for sheriffs was quietly restored.)

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Nearly 60 per cent of G20-related charges withdrawn

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 12:54 PM - 3 Comments

Of the more than 1,100 people arrested during last year’s G20 summit in Toronto, just 317 were ever charged with any summit-related offences. Charges were eventually withdrawn against 187 of those, and only 24 have pleaded guilty. The rate at which police have dropped charges against G20 defendants is more than double the normal rate of about 30 per cent, according to University of Toronto law professor Kent Roach, raising questions about whether police were too heavy-handed during the summit. Toronto police deny they were reckless in laying charges against G20 protesters.

Toronto Star

Byron Sonne gets bail. Finally.

By Jesse Brown - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 59 Comments

Yesterday, Byron Sonne, the only person still being held on G20-related charges, was finally granted bail after spending almost a year in jail. The Crown is prosecuting Sonne aggressively, and will characterize him at trial (to begin no sooner than this fall) as a dangerous radical as they attempt to prove explosives charges against the Forest Hill computer security expert.

Sonne, with whom I’ve corresponded throughout his time in prison, sees himself as a civil libertarian who tested the billion dollar “security theatre” protecting the G20. Sonne says he wanted to see if and how it worked, and to see if any citizen’s rights would be violated in the process.

Details of the courtroom proceedings in Sonne’s case are subject to a publication ban. As such, coverage of his case has been limited. Toronto Life published a cover story giving many details of Sonne’s life and activities leading up to his arrest. But once the ban is lifted, the real questions won’t be about what Sonne did—they’ll be about how the police and the Crown have behaved in this extraordinary case.

'Clearly erroneous'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 11, 2011 at 4:33 PM - 62 Comments

Greg Weston obtains a letter sent by the Auditor General to the government operations and estimates committee in regards to a supplemtary report issued by the Conservative members of that committee.

The Conservatives’ report, presented as a dissenting opinion to the Commons the morning Parliament was dissolved last month, quotes Fraser giving high marks to the Harper government for prudent spending on the summits. The report quoted the auditor general as saying: “We found that the processes and controls around that were very good, and that the monies were spent as they were intended to be spent.”

But in her letter addressed to members of a Commons committee on Friday, which was received by the clerk and members on Monday, Fraser said the quote had nothing to do with the summits. Instead, the Conservatives falsely recycled an old comment she made on security spending by a previous Liberal government after the 9/11 terrorist attacks a decade ago.

The Bull Meter: Michael Ignatieff on what got done at the G8/G20 summits

By Alex Derry - Friday, April 1, 2011 at 3:57 PM - 12 Comments

"Name one thing that got solved at the G8/G20 summit. We got nothing done. It wasn’t just that it cost a billion dollars, it wasn’t just that it shut down a whole city, it was that we didn’t get anything done for Canada, for the people in the world who look to our leadership to get something done."

- Michael Ignatieff
March 28, 2011

Okay, we’ll bite. In fact, we’ve got two things for Ignatieff: there was progress, however modest, on both maternal and child care efforts and with fiscal reform.

John Kirton, director of the G8 Research Group and an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, says Ignatieff is glazing over some rather important achievements in dismissing the summits. The G8 summit in Muskoka notably managed to secure $7.3-billion to fund the maternal and child health initiative. That figure increased to $40-billion three months later at a UN Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York. “By not spending the money on hosting the summit,” says Kirton, “we would not have raised those funds.”

Meanwhile, the G20 summit in Toronto had one job: to stop the euro crisis by convincing markets that indebted nations were serious about cutting their deficits. This was achieved, in part, with the so-called “Toronto Consensus,” which saw developed nations agree to halve their deficits by 2013. While the Irish and Portuguese debt crises that followed the summit rendered the Toronto Consensus somewhat obsolete, Kirton says “it could have been a lot worse.”

Roland Paris, director of the Centre for International Policy and professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa, is more critical of the Toronto summit. While he says there was modest progress made on global health and financial reform, the Harper government went too far in trumpeting the successes of the G8/G20 summits. But Paris agrees with Kirton that Ignatieff’s assessment is lacking. “It’s fair to highlight the disparity between the enormous costs and limited accomplishments of these summits,” he says. “It’s not correct to say that they achieved ‘nothing.’”

Heard something that doesn’t sound quite right? Send quotes from the campaign trail to macbullmeter@gmail.com and we’ll tell you just how much bull they contain.

Sources:

The G20 Toronto Summit Declaration

G8/20 Research Group (University of Toronto)

Centre for International Policy Studies (University of Ottawa)

Insurance orange alert

By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 4:20 PM - 1 Comment

Getty Images

Canada has one of the lowest risks of terrorism in the Western world, according to the recently published 2010 Terrorism Risk Index. Yet this year was also one of the busiest on record for those offering insurance against terrorism, according to Marsh Canada, the country’s largest insurance broker offering terror coverage.

Canada’s terrorism insurance industry dates back to 2001, when the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center cost insurers $40 billion. After that, most insurance companies in the Western world excluded acts of terrorism from their coverage. The U.S. and the U.K. responded by promising to back companies that continued to offer terrorism coverage as part of their regular policies. Canada (with the exception of a temporary reprieve for the airline industry) did not follow their lead. That meant worried companies had to find their own stand-alone insurance. Following Sept. 11, just over a quarter of Marsh’s clients bought the insurance.

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Ontario government conspired to keep G20 law secret

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 10, 2010 at 1:04 PM - 42 Comments

Emails uncovered by Ontario Ombudsman André Marin show Ontario cabinet ministers fought to keep a special law enacted ahead of last June G20 summit secret. Senior officials were discussing withholding information about the changes to the Public Works Protection Act as early as June 7, nearly three weeks before the Toronto Star broke the news that police had purportedly been given additional powers to arrest people near the summit site. (Dalton McGuinty’s cabinet secretly approved the changes on June 2.) Moreover, a press release saying the new law “does not authorize police officers to require individuals to submit to searches on roads and sidewalks outside the zone,” was scrapped at the last minute by government officials because, according to Marin, there had only been one media call on the matter.

Toronto Star

Nobody's fault

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 10:59 AM - 19 Comments

In regards to the sweeping police powers invoked during the G20 summit, the Toronto Police Chief points to the Integrated Security Unit, the coordinating authority established by the RCMP. The RCMP says it was “made aware” that the Toronto police might invoke the law, but “not consulted.”

The Ontario ombudsman’s report lays out a series of discussions between federal, provincial and municipal authorities starting at paragraph 117 and by that telling, it was federal legislation that was first considered.

It appears that the federal government’s reluctance to enter into an agreement under the Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act provided increased incentive for officials to look to the Public Works Protection Act.  Under the federal Act, the RCMP appeared to have clear authority to construct and control the interior security barrier for the “red zone,” but the Toronto Police Service believed that unless it was somehow delegated power under that legislation, it would have to look elsewhere for incontrovertible legal support to construct and control the exterior security fence.

The Commons: These fleeting words

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 7:20 PM - 75 Comments

The Scene. This space has been used in the past to acknowledge the futility of placing anything more than passing significance on the pronouncements of this government’s ministers and mouthpieces. Their words are like daylilies, blooming only for 24 hours before fading into memory. To quibble, to seek to extend their meaning beyond nightfall, is to argue with the sun.

Perhaps then what follows here is relatively pointless. But then sometimes the rhetoric is so colourful, its aroma so intoxicating, that it is difficult to forget; near impossible, whatever one knows to be true, to admit to oneself that these are merely passing fancy.

So it is that we turn to the blooming words, uttered less than a week ago, of this nation’s Justice Minister and Attorney General.

“Mr. Speaker,” Rob Nicholson declared, under some attack from the other side, “no group of individuals has more respect for human rights in our country than the Conservative Party … There is no group of individuals over the course of Canadian history that has had a better record for standing up for human rights than the Conservative Party of Canada and its predecessors.”

These were strong words strongly delivered. Mr. Nicholson’s reading comprehension has been the subject of some lament, but his ability to stand and fulminate is unquestioned. His is a raring appearance of great conviction.

But here we are, less than a week later, struggling to reconcile that rhetoric. Continue…

G20 laws “illegal” and “unconstitutional”

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 4:50 PM - 2 Comments

Ontario ombudsman Andre Marin argues the enactment of a secret law ahead of the G20 was “illegal’” and “likely unconstitutional” in an extensive 125-page report titled Caught in the Act. In the report, Marin said the law “should never have been enacted” and “was almost certainly beyond the authority of the government to enact.”

Earlier this year in June, at the request of Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal cabinet designated areas within the G20 security zone a “public work” using regulation 233/10 under the Public Works Protection Act. Marin maintains the public should have been better informed when the police powers were changed. “By changing the legal landscape without fanfare in this way, regulation 233/10 operated as a trap for those who relied on their ordinary legal rights,” wrote Marin in the report. “It gave police powers that are unfamiliar in a free and democratic society. Steps should have been taken to ensure that the Toronto Police Service understood what they were getting.”

The Toronto Police force is currently being investigated by the Ontario’s Office of the Independent Review Director, the province’s Special Investigations Unit, and the Police Services Board over allegations police used excessive force against anti-globalization protesters during last June’s summit.

Ontario ombudsman’s office

Toronto Star

The Globe and Mail

Toronto Star

Take that, Pierre Trudeau

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 4:06 PM - 72 Comments

That weekend in Toronto is bestowed an historic epitaph courtesy of the Ontario ombudsman.

For the citizens of Toronto, the days up to and including the weekend of the G8/G20 will live in infamy as a time period where martial law set in the city of Toronto, leading to the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history, and we can never let that happen again,” André Marin told reporters Tuesday.

The full report is here.

Police reopen G20 investigation

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 12:41 PM - 4 Comments

Ontario police are reopening an investigation into injuries sustained by Adam Nobody, 27, whose nose and cheekbone were broken by police officers during the G20 summit in Toronto this summer. Earlier, the director of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) had said that there was a “probable excessive use of force” in Nobody’s case. Nobody is alleging he was assaulted by police twice during his arrest—one instance of which was captured on video by web developer John Bridge. Interestingly, the officer who arrested Nobody wasn’t wearing a badge that matched any of those issued by the Toronto Police Services. The Crown dropped the charges against Nobody in October, saying that the police didn’t have “reasonable probable grounds” to arrest him.

Toronto Star

They spent it on what?!

By Sarah Boesveld - Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 10:40 AM - 2 Comments

Christinne Muschi/Reuters

The story made headlines everywhere: it was Feb. 11, 2009, and Daniel Ferman was a member of Drop YFS, a group dedicated to overthrowing the York Federation of Students. Drop YFS was presenting a petition with 5,000 signatures—enough to stage a coup of sorts. They were protesting the student union’s support for a teachers’ strike, which would potentially leave students on the hook for missed class time. They were also against the union backing the Israeli Apartheid Week, which many pro-Israel students despised. As the press conference began, Ferman and his fellow Drop YFS members were faced with a crush of student union members who came in to denounce the petition rally. After a volley of shouting, the crowd moved to the Hillel student lounge where some of the Drop YFS members took refuge. “Students were barricaded in the lounge,” says Ferman, who was Hillel @ York’s president at the time and helped organize the Drop YFS effort. “It got very nasty. Police were called. There were racist slurs.”

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The G20 promotes aid through entrepreneurship

By John Geddes - Friday, November 12, 2010 at 10:12 AM - 0 Comments

Peace Dividend Trust, a non-profit organization that works to link peacekeeping and humanitarian operations to local entrepreneurs in strife-torn countries, was recognized today at the G20 summit in Seoul.

PDT’s’ Ottawa-based executive director, Scott Gilmore (full disclosure: he’s a friend), is standing on stage with President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and others, in a photo here, on the website of Changemakers, which ran a contest for the G20 among social entrepreneurial organizations.

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G20 officers facing disciplinary action over name badges

By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 1:22 PM - 0 Comments

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair announced on Wednesday that some 90 Toronto police officers are facing disciplinary action for removing their name badges during the G20 summit. Blair, speaking in Ottawa before a House of Commons committee, said he received 13 complaints from the public about missing badges. “I have a rule with the Toronto Police Service—it’s my rule—it’s in accordance with the policy of my police services board that our officers will wear their names displayed on their uniforms,” Blair told the committee. “If they have made a choice to engage in misconduct by disobeying a rule of the service they will be held accountable.” Blair added that “technical” reasons were behind the fact charges against those who were arrested at a University of Toronto gymnasium during the summit were dropped. “It was because the police did not have the proper warrant for the apprehension of those individuals,” Blair said. “But that does not negate the fact that they had evidence to make the arrest.”

Toronto Star

Mitchel Raphael on a star candidate the Liberals can't wait to bait

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Liberals love that old fake lake
Liberals have continued to hammer the government over what they see as outrageous expenses for the G20 and G8 summits. One Liberal insider says that the civil liberties angle does not resonate with voters, so the focus is still on things like the fake lake and expenses for snacks. With the nomination of former Ontario Provincial Police chief Julian Fantino as the Conservatives’ by-election candidate in the Ontario riding of Vaughan, look for the opposition to drag him to committee hearings to justify the G20-G8 security bill. (Fantino oversaw the OPP’s operation for this summer’s summits.) Vaughan will be the first “safe” Liberal seat coming up for a vote since Michael Ignatieff took over as Liberal leader, and Grits know Fantino is truly a star candidate. When the Liberals, under Stéphane Dion, lost the Montreal stronghold of Outremont to the NDP’s Thomas Mulcair, it was seen as the beginning of the end for that leader.

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'It is time to earn back our place in the world'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 2, 2010 at 1:55 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Ignatieff lays out his foreign policy vision to an audience in Montreal.

But none of this will be possible without the talents of every Canadian. Foreign policy is no longer reserved for diplomats, development workers, and soldiers. We used to talk about a “whole-of-government” approach. Our Global Networks Strategy requires a “whole-of-Canada” approach instead.

The next generation of Canadians will be the most international ever. Young people studying and working abroad will be Canada’s best ambassadors, and their experiences will shape the future of our country. We must rebuild our leadership in the world so that our young people can be proud again to live in a country that helps to improve our world.

And we must always support the youth of this country, when they go abroad to serve Canada. They are our finest representatives.

In the centre of our engagement with the world, we must restore our finest Canadian traditions, inspired by peace, justice, and mutual aid. We must show the world – and ourselves – that Canada can inspire us again.

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, October 29, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

A perfect wedding for one
Chen Wei-yih, a 30-year-old living in Taipei, waited for the right man. But he never came along, so in a triumphant gesture aimed in part at upending clichés about unmarried women, she rented a hall, bought a wedding dress and will marry herself on Nov. 6. The Facebook page for “Only&Only’s Wedding” has won her loads of new friends. And yes, there is a honeymoon: Chen will travel with her new, better half to Australia.

Still Wayne’s world
It would have been the biggest English divorce since Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Shaken Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson told a press conference that his star attacker, Wayne Rooney, intended to move to a new professional soccer club instead of renewing his contract. Rooney had quarrelled with his boss over an ankle injury, and told Sky Sports he had concerns over “the continued ability of the club to attract the top players in the world.” The fight raised the possibility of Rooney defecting to a Man U rival—perhaps the most despised of all, Manchester City. But after two days of uncertainty, Rooney relented and signed a deal that will keep him in the famous red kit until June 2015.

He said it once. He’ll say it again.
He has no chance of becoming the next governor of New York, but this gubernatorial candidate’s stump speeches have won him Internet fame, a parody on Saturday Night Live and even a toy action figure based on his likeness. Jimmy McMillan heads a political party called The Rent is Too Damn High Party, and in appearances he hammers away at his party’s one and only platform plank: the rent is too damn high. “Our children can’t afford to live anywhere. There’s nowhere to go,” he said during one televised debate. “Once again, why? You said it, the rent is too damned high.” He even won over front-runner Andrew Cuomo, who during the debate admitted: “I’m with Jimmy: the rent is too damn high.”

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