Calling the accommodations "extremely sufficient and extremely reasonable", but nothing sumptuous, the French President said the upcoming French G8/20 will cost ten times less than Harper is spending. Oh snap!
The Globe comments that this "bold declaration could come back to haunt him". Really? Let's do a little simple math.
Last year's summit in London cost $30 million. This year's summits in Canada cost $1.3 billion. Now, that little .3 at the end is actually $300 million - 10 times what London spent - with a billion bucks thrown in on top.
To be fair Canada is hosting both the G8 and G20 (in two separate locations for some reason). So, double London's cost and add another $20 million to each for inflation. That's $100 million. That is what the total should be, but Harper is spending 13 times as much.
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After partaking in the live tweeting and reading the live blog on Toronto Star, I believe that the violence we're hearing about was all orchestrated by none other than our beloved PM Steve, hisself. He is a master tactician who controls everything, including the message and the media for the most part. If it were anyone else, I would say that putting this shindig in the middle of an urban center is nothing short of stupid, but since it's steve the tactician and given that insurance companies don't cover damages from events like protests and rallies to begin with, and given that he already emphatically refused to reimburse any business or individual who sustains damages; the carefully crafted police state (which anyone with half a brain would know that that would cause major trouble, particularly from 'anarchists): I would say that all of this is going exactly according to Steve's plans. He will have the media and his flunkies and cheerleaders justifying the expense, when in reality, all this violence did was prove that no amount of expense or security measures will stop protesters and/or anarchists from doing what they came to set about doing.
ReplyDeleteI read a comment somewhere today to the effect that either way Steve wins. If there's violence, the security was needed, if not, it worked.
ReplyDeleteNow there has been violence. People apparently breaking away from the main protest where the cops were, to do damage where they weren't, like along Yonge St.
There are something like 20,000 police and security personnel in Toronto right now. Is it unreasonable to think they could have had someone at every downtown intersection to observe and respond?