The Commons: When photo ops go wrong

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 6, 2012 at 7:40 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. “Louder!” called a voice, possibly from the Conservative side of the House.

Peter Julian, already speaking at a certain volume, attempted to oblige, punctuating his question with exclamation points.

“When(!) is the government going to show leadership? When is it going to work on a jobs plan so that Canadians(!) can get back to work?

The subject here was the recent closure of Electro-Motive Diesel in London, Ontario—a closure notable not only for the 450 individuals it put out of work, but because the plant was once selected as an ideal scene to demonstrate the Prime Minister’s economic stewardship. And so a silly picture of Mr. Harper pretending to conduct a train is now a symbol of some kind. And so Mr. Julian was yelling this afternoon in the general direction of the Finance Minister. Continue…

After the photo op

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 3, 2012 at 11:13 AM - 0 Comments

March 2008. He also toured the Electro-Motive Diesel plant on Oxford Street where he met many of the firm’s 900 employees. Harper said his visit to the rail locomotive plant was intended to highlight tax measures from his government aimed at keeping manufacturers competitive.

Today. The company that owns the locked-out Electro-Motive plant in London, Ont. has decided to close the plant permanently. Progress Rail Services Corp., a subsidiary of U.S. construction conglomerate Caterpillar, announced “it is regrettable that it has become necessary to close production operations at the London facility,” in a release on Friday. The company locked out 450 workers from the facility on Jan. 1. Costs were the main factor in the dispute, with the company pushing employees to take a 50 per cent pay cut.

‘Free to believe. Free to love. Free to be.’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 23, 2012 at 3:18 PM - 0 Comments

The prepared text of John Baird’s speech to an audience in London, England today.

Good evening, I am pleased to be with you tonight and it’s a real pleasure to be back in London – one of the world’s truly great cities and one of my personal favourites. I would like to begin by thanking Canada’s High Commissioner here in London – Gordon Campbell – and his team, for making this visit possible.

One of the reasons I – like so many Canadians who come here to vacation, study or work – so enjoy being here is because, in a very real sense, it feels like coming to a familiar and welcoming place. That sense of the familiar is all the more welcome, given that so much of the world is undergoing a fundamental transformation.

Power is rebalancing and, with it, opportunities are changing, for Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as for our allies and friends. This presents for Canada and Canadians both challenge and opportunity: to shape the relationships and institutions for a new century; to promote free societies and open markets; and to engage with new and sometimes, unfamiliar power brokers.

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Rallying the cause

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 23, 2012 at 9:26 AM - 0 Comments

Peggy Nash speaks to demonstrators after a rally for workers at Electro-Motive diesel in London this weekend.

Down and out in London

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

When the European Union expanded its borders eastward in 2004, more than half a million Poles took advantage of the newly opened border to pack up and move to Britain. They were joined by thousands more Czechs and Slovenians, and after the EU expanded again in 2007, migrants from Bulgaria and Romania.

Many thrived. Suddenly traditional English pubs were staffed by servers with Eastern European accents. The new arrivals were so ubiquitous in the trades that “Polish plumber” became a catchphrase.

Inevitably, however, thousands have also floundered. Estimates vary, but a disproportionate percentage of homeless in London are from Eastern Europe, most of them Poles. And when they do stumble, they fall harder than the locals. Migrants who have not worked full-time for more than a year do not qualify for many social assistance programs, such as housing benefits. Last year, a charity worker found homeless Poles roasting rats. Continue…

On the ground in central London

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 15 Comments

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

You know you’re in England when locals gather at the scene of a prospective riot armed only with cups of tea. On Camden High Street in central London—just across from the dank, urine-scented waters of the once-bustling Regent’s Canal—residents gathered Tuesday evening on the rooftops of boarded-up buildings to await pandemonium. They brought cameras and refreshments.

The night before, the neighbourhood was visited by hundreds of rioters, who wrestled with police from nightfall to early morning. The clash was part of a wave of violence that started Saturday in rough-and-tumble Tottenham, then spread, immobilizing large swaths of North London. Quivering (only slightly) in my bed, in a flat above a dollar store on gritty Camden Road, I listened to sirens, the patter of running and some especially foul-mouthed hollering.

A day later, Masud stood guard in front of his Camden Road convenience store. After Monday night, he was feeling nervous and planned to close early. His young employees were stationed up and down the street, ready to report the first sign of trouble. “I’ll close the minute I see something,” Masud said. As we talked, three Northumbria Police vans barrelled down the road. Evidently, the city had called for national backup.

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Photo gallery: Riots break out in north London

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 8, 2011 at 6:19 PM - 0 Comments

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Photo gallery: Riots break out in north London

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Looters detained

Police detain looters found inside JD Sports at Tottenham Retail Park. Riots spread from Tottenham High Road and looters raided shops on August 7 2011. Looters continued to rob from the store, even after sunrise. Looters struggled to escape, even after they were cuffed and police had to keep other people back as they arrested the looters. (London News Pictures / Rex Features)

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'I actually don’t know quite what to tell these folks'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 9:44 AM - 82 Comments

Glen Pearson deals with defeat.

It was expected by most that I would win and the media sent its staff to my campaign office to cover the victory party that wasn’t. It became clear as the evening progressed that the vote split between myself and the NDP was proving fatal. Yet I’d had something of a premonition of the outcome during the last few days of the contest. At doors I canvassed I kept hearing certain stories about how I spent too much time in Africa, or that my voting presence in the House wasn’t too impressive. When I informed them that I only spent one week a year on that continent (Sudan), and that I take it on my holiday time over New Years and on my own dime, I could sense the hesitation in their voice. “Oh … that’s not what we heard when the Conservatives phoned us last night.”

'I would apologize'

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, May 1, 2011 at 6:07 PM - 70 Comments

Awish Aslam gets a meeting with Mr. Harper (and Mr. Harper’s campaign gets a photo to distribute). She does not, though, get an apology from him.

Aslam took three friends into the meeting with her, including another woman who was kicked out of the April 3 rally. ”I feel like now I’m more angry. We didn’t even get an ‘I’m personally sorry for you’,” Aslam said.

Aslam says she has already voted in an advance poll, but wouldn’t say how she’d voted. Pressed by a reporter, she said her complaint Sunday was about Harper as a person rather than as a leader. ”I’m not saying [that] I’m not thrilled with his policies and his ideas, but personally, him as a person, honestly, if I kicked you out of my house for no reason, I would apologize,” she said.

Everyone wants to be friends with Awish Aslam

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 at 5:44 PM - 122 Comments

Stephen Harper’s press secretary is offering to set up a meeting between Mr. Harper and the young woman ejected from a Conservative event this week. The NDP meanwhile has sent out the following picture and note.

Stephen Harper didn’t want Awish Aslam at his London rally this week. Awish Aslam, a second-year political science student at the University of Western Ontario, told reporters she and a friend were trying to attend a Sunday rally with Harper when they were asked to leave by an RCMP officer.

Jack Layton had no such problem at his rally in London. That’s Canadian Leadership.

'You are no longer welcome here'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 5, 2011 at 8:44 AM - 148 Comments

The London Free Press recounts the stories of two individuals who say they were ejected from a Conservative rally after they were accused of being sympathetic to other parties.

Aslam and a friend registered online to attend Harper’s Sunday rally — part of the restrictions the Conservatives place on such events. Aslam said her friend’s dad is a card-carrying Tory who showed them how to sign up online.

About 30 minutes after arriving and signing in, with thundersticks in hand, the two girls were asked by a man to follow him out of the rally, Aslam said. Though confused, they complied. In a back room, Aslam said he ripped off their name tags, tore them up and ordered them out. “We were confused. He said, ‘We know you guys have ties to the Liberal party through Facebook,’ ” Aslam said. “He said . . . ‘You are no longer welcome here.’ ”

Aslam and her friend both attended last week’s Liberal rally in London, where they managed to snag a picture with Ignatieff that both posted as their Facebook profile pictures.

Countdown to the Games

By Leah Mclaren - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Anthony Charlton/ODA/CP

On a dark, drizzly evening last week, several hundred Londoners gathered near Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square to watch a ceremony to unveil a broken clock. “It is tremendously exciting since this reminds us of how much we’ve still got to do before the Olympics,” London’s famously shambolic Mayor Boris Johnson announced as the cameras rolled. “We’re on schedule, with an iron grip on the budget so far—but really it’s all about sport and beating France!”

To be fair, the Omega London 2012 digital countdown clock was not broken at that moment, but stopped unexpectedly less than 24 hours later—499 days early for the city’s planned Olympic opening ceremonies on July 27, 2012. And despite this minor glitch, London seems to be in good shape well in advance of its big moment on the world stage.

The same day the clock flopped, the first advance tickets went on sale. Roughly 75 per cent—some 6.6 million—of tickets to the Games will be up for grabs to the public, through an application process which closes in six weeks’ time. Lord Coe, the London 2012 chairman, told the BBC sales had so far been “steady—with no reports of anything untoward.” In honour of the 500-day milestone, foreign press were also allowed a rare glimpse into the Olympic Park located in the city’s formerly industrial and increasingly rejuvenated East End. During a bus tour guided by Sarah Weir, head of arts and culture for the Olympic Park, reporters were assured that preparations were on schedule, with construction 75 per cent complete.

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Cribs: despots edition

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 10:32 AM - 1 Comment

Luke MacGregor/Reuters; Alastair Grant/AP

Moammar Gadhafi may prefer living in tents when he visits the West, but his son Saif likes British red brick. In 2009, he plunked down $18 million for an eight-bedroom mansion in London’s tony Hampstead suburb. Gadhafi, like so many of his region’s oil-rich princes and potentates, knows the value of a safe bolthole in Europe’s banking and retail centre—regime change so often comes without warning. (During the first Gulf War, the Saudi royal family bought 10 homes on “billionaire’s row,” Bishops Avenue. Just in case.)

Indeed, sizable chunks of the most exclusive areas of the British capital have been snapped up by the mega rich of the Middle East, either as investments or for their personal use. The emir of Qatar shelled out more than $55 million for a 200-year-old fixer-upper at 100 Park Lane. His PM, and cousin, signed up for a $65-million-plus apartment at a prime new development, One Hyde Park, which he is backing financially. The head of finance in nearby Sharjah, part of the United Arab Emirates, also bought a flat there. In 2009, a Saudi royal got planning permission to knock three houses in Belgravia into one $80-million “super home,” complete with a two-storey below-grade complex. Gamal Mubarak, son of Egypt’s recently ousted ruler, also owns a piece of Belgravia, namely a luxurious pied-à-terre at 28 Wilton Place.

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Going for a skate

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 17, 2011 at 4:32 PM - 144 Comments

Not to be entirely outdone this day, the Liberals have released the following video of Michael Ignatieff skating about in a hockey jersey, high-fiving children: all no doubt intended to contrast with a Prime Minister who is “not a great skater.”

Remembering a day of pain

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Paco Serinelli/AFP/Getty Images

Five years have passed since London’s transport system was hit by four suicide bombers during morning rush hour. Now, the official inquest into the 7/7 attacks is underway. In the Royal Courts of Justice in London, witnesses have been sharing tales of horror and heroism from July 7, 2005, when 52 people died, and approximately 700 were injured.

Gerardine Quaghebeur, a doctor, stayed to try to comfort the dying following an explosion on the London Underground’s Circle Line. Martine Wright, a former marketing manager, told how she’d been sitting six feet away from Shehzad Tanweer when he set off his suicide bomb. She lost 10 pints of blood and both of her legs; Elizabeth Kenworthy, an off-duty police officer, ran back to the blackened scene and used a belt to keep more blood from spilling out of Wright’s body. One tube operator, Timothy Batkin, recounted hearing the screams: “It was a chilling, haunting cry for help, something that still makes my blood run cold.” The inquest is expected to last for up to five months.

The prince and his manservant

By Leah McLaren - Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Evidence included video footage of Abdulaziz attacked in the hotel’s elevators |Metropolitan Police/Press Association Images

Last week at the Old Bailey courthouse, a prince was jailed for life.

Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser al Saud, 34-year-old grandson to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and a member of one of the richest and most powerful families in the world, was convicted of murdering his manservant in what Crown prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw described as “a really terrible, a really brutal attack.” It took place last February, when Bandar Abdulaziz, 32, was found beaten and strangled to death in a room at the five-star Landmark hotel in the upscale central London district of Marylebone. At the time, Saud co-operated fully with police, appearing “shocked and upset” at the death of his companion who, testimony revealed, often slept on the floor at the foot of his bed like a faithful dog. But during the October trial, a different story emerged.

The prince was revealed as a decadent playboy involved in a sadistic sexual relationship with Abdulaziz, a poor orphan—one so psychologically oppressed he did not even put up a fight to save his own life. While a post-mortem revealed Abdulaziz died with chipped teeth, split lips, a fractured rib and severe injuries to his head and internal organs, the prince had not a mark on him. The victim also had strange bite marks on both cheeks, which the prosecution argued were proof (in addition to sexually explicit photos of Abdulaziz on the prince’s phone) that the abuse had “an obvious sexual connotation.”

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Now is the time for new words

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 11:56 AM - 0 Comments

Former Liberal MP Joe Fontana is the new mayor of London, Ontario. His signature promise: taxication.

Joe Fontana coined a new phrase in his Mayoral race tonight and for those tired of London’s ever climbing tax rates, Fontana`s “Taxication” sounded like music to their ears. When elected Mayor, Mr. Fontana declared he would put before the new Council, his plan to take London on a four year tax vacation.

“It will be Taxication in London”, he said, speaking to a crowd of about 250 supporters. “London must get its spending in check and it must give some relief to overburdened taxpayers. Assessment growth in London averages only 1.5% each year, and we need to do better. City revenues will have to go up by growing our economy, to cover increasing costs, but individual tax rates will be held down, to give London homeowner’s amuch needed respite and to bring commercial and industrial taxes into a more competitive place with other municipalities in the 401/402 corridor.”

The weather outside is frightful

By Leah McLaren - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 4:20 PM - 0 Comments

Horst Friedrichs/Anzenberger/RED

Start digging.
That’s the message one local government is giving London residents worried about what is predicted to be an unusually snowy winter for the British capital.

Camden Council, which accounts for a large swath of north and central London including Covent Garden, Bloomsbury and Primrose Hill, has unveiled a plan to encourage residents to shovel their sidewalks by providing them with the tools to do so. More than 2,000 wooden-handled, plastic snow shovels have been purchased by the local authority to be handed out for free to residents, shopkeepers or community groups.
It’s a nice gesture, by Canadian standards anyway. And a helpful one for a nation that is better accustomed to umbrellas and wellingtons than to windshield scrapers and Sorels.

But here in Britain (where even the short-range weather forecast is notoriously unreliable), the program has sparked anger among some local residents. They think it’s the government’s job to deal with snow—a rare occurrence in the south of England, and one that invariably sets off a wave of public panic before temporarily grinding the country to a halt. (Last winter’s unusually cold and snowy winter resulted in the closure of schools, businesses and public transit and reportedly cost the country as a whole more than $100 million in road repairs.)

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They are conspiring as we speak

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 3, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

More from the Prime Minister’s swing through southwestern Ontario.

“Don’t let anyone ever tell you they are not a coalition — they work together on everything,” he said.

Harper accused the three other parties of “obstruction for the sake of obstruction.” They should never be given the chance to govern Canada, he said. ”We have to defeat the coalition and ensure that we have a Conservative majority that can keep this country moving forward.”

Ignatieff in summer

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 13, 2010 at 2:03 PM - 0 Comments

In the latest print edition of Maclean’s there are something like 1,300 words, under this byline, about Michael Ignatieff’s summer. Here, for your amusement, curiosity or comparison, is the indulgently long version, including a never-before-seen alternate ending.

It could be read as the latest in a series that includes previous sketches in September 2008, February 2009, June 2009 and October 2009. It could also be read as a reference to my favourite rap song of 2008.

Anyway. Make of it what you will. Continue…

Calling London

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, August 8, 2010 at 11:27 AM - 0 Comments

Last night, he drew a crowd of perhaps 400 to the market square in downtown London. After an eight-hour bus ride from Ottawa he was not quite electric on the stage, but he waded in before and afterwards and shook hands and posed for pictures and marvelled at a bobblehead likeness of himself that someone had brought for him to autograph. Inside the market he talked garlic imports with two gentlemen from the agriculture federation. Before boarding the bus he stopped to talk with a group of pensioners who wore matching t-shirts calling for changes to the Bankruptcy Insolvency Act. Continue…

And we're back

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, August 7, 2010 at 12:19 PM - 0 Comments

Greetings from downtown London, Ontario. The Liberal Express and my vacation have arrived in roughly the same part of the country and since you can never fill a magazine piece with enough local colour, I am once more on the road.

Actually, to be perfectly honest, I’m here primarily because tomorrow’s tour stop at the Comber Fair happens to coincide with the opening heats of the Comber Fair demolition derby. I somehow managed, despite more than a decade spent living in Essex County, to not once make it out to Comber to attend the demolition derby. And so now being paid to possibly attend the Comber Fair demolition derby didn’t seem like the sort of opportunity I should frivolously pass up.

Mr. Ignatieff is due at the market here in London around 4:45pm. Tomorrow morning there is a breakfast event in London, then the fair and then a rally with Paul Martin in Windsor.

All aboard a new Orient Express

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 10:50 AM - 3 Comments

Photograph by Chen Xiaodong/ ChinaFotoPress/ Keystone

It sounds like the stuff of an Agatha Christie novel, or Edwardian travelogues that unfold over weeks rather than days. But if high-level negotiations between China and 17 countries throughout Asia and Europe bear fruit, passengers could one day traverse the 8,100 km between London and Beijing in just 48 hours, travelling at a blinding 400 km/h.

The idea is part of a proposed high-speed rail expansion that would connect China with the West and see all roads leading to the Middle Kingdom. One would link Singapore to Beijing; another would run through Russia to Germany. Still another would link China to Thailand, Vietnam and Burma. Another prospective partner is India, which appears willing to overlook tensions with Beijing to tap expertise China has gained during construction of its domestic high-speed network. While the projects could take a decade to complete, all parties appear to be in a hurry. “We’ve already carried out the survey work for the European network,” says Wang Menshu, a senior consultant on China’s railways. “The central and eastern European countries are eager for us to start.” China is even offering to build lines in exchange for natural resources rather than capital investment, says Wang.

The network’s completion would help cement China’s position as the world’s economic centre of gravity—a prospect that doesn’t thrill skeptics worried by the country’s growing might. But others are encouraged by Beijing’s leadership on the railway initiative. “If they’re putting their own resources into it, and if they’re acting collaboratively—taking these other governments into their confidence—these are good signs,” says Amitav Acharya, a professor at the American University in Washington. “China has to be at centre stage in Asia, and something like this is a big symbolic step for them.”

Speed Demons

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

The chant was sandwiched between a rousing, singalong of O Canada with the house oom-pah-pah band, and an even lustier rendition of Queen’s We Are the Champions (extra emphasis on “No time for losers”). It lasted maybe 30 seconds, starting out in the grandstands by the backstretch, then spreading quickly around the smooth curves of the Richmond Oval. Christine Nesbitt had just delivered Canada’s third gold medal of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, topping the podium by 0.02 seconds in the women’s 1,000-m speed skating race, and the delirious home crowd was already looking ahead. “We want more! We want more!” they screamed.

Nesbitt didn’t need to be told. Fulfilling the prophecies and clinching the event she was touted to win—the 24-year-old from London, Ont., hadn’t lost a 1,000-m all season long—wasn’t much of a relief, or a release. There were some Kodak moments, as her mother Judith, an elementary school teacher, came to the trackside for a quick hug and to show off the “Go for gold Christine” banner her students at Lord Roberts French Immersion had drawn up on a white bedsheet. Nesbitt also entered into a lingering lip-lock with her boyfriend, Dutch long-tracker Simon Kuipers. But that was about it for passion.

At the flower ceremony—the medals would come later that night at BC Place—silver winner Annette Gerritsen of the Netherlands leapt onto the podium and thrust both arms in the air. The best Nesbitt could muster was a tight smile and a wave. If you had just arrived at the rink, you might have thought they were standing on the wrong spots.

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