Portage & Maintenance
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Dear Winnipeg, Oddly enough, despite Portage & Main being the main issue
that pushed me to start Dear Winnipeg, I have never actually written a
single le...
4 days ago
Casual commentary about political, cultural and economic issues with a particular interest on the city of Winnipeg by John Dobbin
The CRTC has revoked the licence of a community radio station on Ryerson University’s campus citing numerous regulatory violations and a lack of quality control.
In a news release, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission says CKLN Radio Inc., could not convince regulators that it could properly operate the station going forward. CKLN receives funding from Ryerson students and is a tenant of the student-government-managed campus centre, but has no official relationship with the University.
The investigation into station operations began in July 2009 after complaints about CKLN's management, operations and quality of programming.
The CRTC says “significant infighting” plagued the station and the building manager on campus eventually locked out staff and management for a period of seven months, during which intermittent loops of programming went over the airwaves.
The station could not maintain a significant quality-control mechanism once regular broadcasting resumed, the CRTC ruled, and cited limited involvement from Ryerson’s student body.
The station management was not able to comply with licence requirements, including submission of on-air tapes, program logs and complete annual returns.
More significantly, Target sells clothing middle-class women are willing to wear. Or at least that's what I'm told.
Few people cheered when Walmart came to Canada in 1994, when the chain was expected to wipe out independent businesses with the ruthless efficiency of The Borg, to use a pop-culture reference relevant at the time.
Above all else, the end result is more homogeneity. And you can add that to the existing homogeneity that already makes Winnipeg's outskirts just as bland and ugly as the edges of every other major metropolitan area in North America.
A couple of years down the road, we'll have an Ikea store and a couple of Targets to go along with the Walmarts on suburban arteries clogged with McDonald's, Tim Hortons and Subway.
I understand the utter pointlessness of being upset about this. Just don't be offended if I decline to cheer on the process.
Graham Thomson, the college’s dean of business and applied arts and a non-voting executive member of the board that canned the show, acknowledged that the Winnipeg Free Press contacted president Stephanie Forsyth, but denied any outside influence. Ms. Forsyth declined to comment.
“As I understand it, the president did get a communication from the Free Press,” he said, later adding that he believed the communication came from editor Margo Goodhand. “There were some concerns about Marty having taken shots at the Free Press ... I believe that the concern about the show was voiced by the president to one of our vice-presidents who is on the board.”
Mr. Thomson said the vice-president was present at the Nov. 2 executive board meeting of Cre-Comm Radio Inc. — the non-profit corporation that manages the station — where four voting board members unanimously decided to cancel Mr. Gold’s show.
He said the cancellation was part of a far-reaching “reorganization” aimed at ensuring students get air-time, and said the decision “was not about censorship.” Mr. Thomson said the decision was made without student board-member consultation and without faculty input — something the station’s bylaws “allow for.”
In an email to the National Post, Ms. Goodhand said: “I’ve never met Mr. Gold, I’ve never actually heard his college radio show, and I don’t know why it was cancelled.”
The college is granting Mr. Gold/Goldstein/Boroditsky a daily podium for his rants, which have escalated to defamation on more than several accounts.
1. That a Certificate of Suitability not be issued to maintain an existing, but unapproved, Electronic Messaging Centre sign at 388 Portage Avenue, as it is not compatible with the existing heritage building
Respondents agreed strongly most frequently with the perception of effectiveness in catching criminals and holding offenders accountable.
Those same respondents disagreed most frequently with the perception of effectiveness in freeing police officers up to deal with other crime issues.
Interestingly, some are skeptical that CCTV will be effective in preventing crime and reducing serious crime issues. This, coupled with the general level of support for the use of CCTV, implies some level of cautious optimism. Secondary phases of this research should focus on these seemingly contradictory perceptions.
The perceived success of CCTV in relation to controlling crime in Australia is almost totally anecdotal (Goodwin, 2002; Sutherland Shire Council, 2001, 2003; Welsh and Farrington, 2002). While further CCTV implementation continues to occur and state and federal agencies consider additional crime detection and minimisation strategies (Wilson, 2003), there is a critical need to undertake a comprehensive review and research the impact of CCTV on security of public spaces and public transport.
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This research questions the general assumption “that surveillance cameras are not only controlled and monitored constantly, but also operated effectively and efficiently” (Smith, 2004, p. 376). It is unrealistic to suggest the installation of cameras will have a major impact on crime rates unless “used as part of a strategy to tackle specific offences” (Gill and Hemming, 2006, p. 36). From our research it appears CCTV is effective at detecting violent crime and/or may result in increased reporting as opposed to preventing any type of crime.
Use of CCTV images for court evidence has so far been very poor, according to Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, the officer in charge of the Metropolitan police unit. "CCTV was originally seen as a preventative measure," Neville told the Security Document World Conference in London. "Billions of pounds has been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court. It's been an utter fiasco: only 3% of crimes were solved by CCTV. There's no fear of CCTV. Why don't people fear it? [They think] the cameras are not working."