POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
Blair has always been a weak leader.
Now he whines about this or that technical detail instead of just accepting responsibility for what was sheer incompetence.
With a recent freedom-of-access release of information, we know police had infiltrated all the organizations well ahead of time. Whatever they learned in their quasi-police state tactics, the police still managed to make a complete mess of things.
Incompetence, all around, while officers collected unbelievably fat pay packets for overtime.
As for Blair's specific weakness, recall, a few years back, police officers going in full uniform to City Hall to demonstrate for more money, an unacceptably threatening action in a free society.
Blair told them not to wear their uniforms, but they still did, ignoring a direct order completely.
What did Blair do to the large number of police who took this action against direct orders?
Pretty well nothing.
Actually, I would call that weakness bordering on genuine cowardice.
And you could view the matter as one of the precursors of the police disgrace at the G20. Their behavior reminded me not a little of out-of-control Chicago police at the 1968 Democratic Convention.
We have had example after example of such inept leadership.
But it isn't just Blair who showed weakness here.
Where was the voice of the Mayor of Toronto in all this?
A supposedly liberal-minded mayor?
Not a squeak about so gross a violation of human rights to our citizens.
Miller of course should have stood up for the city against Harper's ignorant insistence on holding the G20 right in the downtown, a decision which cost a fortune in money and cast filth on the city's reputation in the end.
Yet Harper seems to have been coated with Teflon in that blundering, costly decision. He paid no political price.
The whole affair, from beginning to end, is a textbook example of how not to do things.
And our police need serious reminding that they exist to serve the public good, not run things like the Stasi.
We overpay them, give them too many privileges, and expect too little from them.
