Merchants asked to prepare for the Sizzler

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All merchants are asked to get their promotions ready for South Bayview’s Summer Sizzler on Saturday, June 23, 2012 At last year’s South Bayview event merchants had special sales, one-day-only menu items, a BBQ, a Latin Band, colouring contest, snow cones and  free balloons. Once you know what you’ll be doing, please let Sue Byford know at  the www.southbayview.ca website. If you would like to sponsor the poster, please drop off $5 to our office (1536 Bayview) before May 31st. Your company name (or logo) will be placed in the sponsor section of the poster. The money will be put towards the colour photocopies. Posters will be dropped off to stores in the beginning of June. If you get missed, please email & we’ll get one to you right away.

When banks try to win the Lotto

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All business has risk but banks in particular are supposed to calculate the downside carefully before jumping in. Now it’s come out that JP Morgan has been taking insane risks with billions of dollars in the stock market equivalent of trying to win the Lotto. Of course, they lost. The early estimates set the damage at $2 billion.  A London trader who was apparently under the very eye of the president of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, has been transforming the U-K investment office from one that tried to limit risk into one that rolled the dice with the company’s assets. The trader, Bruno Michel Iksil, has become known for huge transactions and has earned the nickname of the mysterious Harry Potter villain Voldemort.  All very cute but perhaps we should be asking the Canadian banks if there is anything going on downtown that we should know about.

Mother’s Day preparations on Bayview Saturday

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A reminder that tomorrow sees a variety of South Bayview preps for Mother’s Day. Notably, the giveaways and promotions at Tremblett’s Valu-mart are worth checking out. Go early.

Globe readers trash paper for paywall plan

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The Globe and Mail has announced that it will implement a so-called paywall at the paper in an effort designed to get readers to pay for news online. In addition,  Publisher and CEO Phillip Crawley has said the paper will ask employees to take unpaid leave as a way to improve the bottom line. Our sister blog, Mostly Media, has reviewed comments from readers. It is an understatement to say that they did not take to the idea of paying for online content. While we have not read all 492 comments, the trend seems to be firmly — and sometimes viciously — against. Here are a few samples: 

Oh no! Now where will I go to read the same Canadian Press articles that every other newspaper in Canada runs mixed in with PMO press releases?

Hey, here’s a cost saving idea so that the site can remain free: The G&M should replace all of their staff, starting with their editorial management, with temporary foreign workers and pay them all 15% less than before. 

That’s all they’ve been promoting lately; everybody there must think that it’s a dandy idea

Congratulations on your bankruptcy. You will find your web traffic is decimated by this move and any financial gain you receive through the paltry number of subscribers will pale in comparison to the lost adverts currently on the site.

No successful Internet site charges for content. those that try soon become pretty unsuccessful. Learn from history, not the accountants.

Pop up heads into last weekend at 1695

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The pop-up store from the company previously known as  Five on Queen West will be at 1695 Bayview until this weekend. It’s been a one week stand for  what is being called all brand new clothing merchandise  1695 is the shop next door to Smokin’ Cigar. Website.  

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JPMorgan Chase & Co., (JPM-N40.740.100.25%) long viewed as one of the best-managed U.S. banks, has suffered a multibillion-dollar trading blunder that its chief executive officer called “stupid” and “egregious.”

Stocks plunged again today (especially in Toronto) as political parties said they really don’t want to fix the debt problem.  Can t worth it? 

Melanie Aitken vs Visa and MasterCard

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Melanie Aitken and the lawyers of the Competition Bureau are throwing everything they’ve got at Visa and MasterCard these days.  Ms Aitken is the Commissioner of the Bureau and since her appointment by the Conservatives in 2009 she has proven herself to be a strong defender of the consumer. At stake in the current round of hearings in Ottawa is the way the two main credit card companies charge merchants rates that are, as the Bureau puts it, among the highest in the world.  The Bureau thinks that properly competitive rates would save merchants and consumers some $5 billion a year. More than that, says Aitken’s chief counsel Kent Thomson, Visa and MasterCard are running a “perverse” system that extracts unreasonable fees.  The issue has come to a head as the two leading card companies have decided to produce so-called premium cards which set fees of up to three-percent of the amount of each transaction. This is the way American Express does it and the allure of giving people “gifts” purchased with their own money was just too much for Visa and MasterCard. Did somebody say there’s no free lunch?  Retailers have lobbied for permission to tack a surcharge on purchases, so customers would be more aware of the costs. But the contracts offered by the major credit firms prohibit any such surcharges. They also forbid retailers from selectively accepting only credit cards from the same company with lower fees and denying customers with so-called premium cards.

“Protest industry” is at full employment

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The pay isn’t so good but there’s lots of work in Ontario’s protest industry. Kids at St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School in Brampton are protesting the government’s plan to introduce a so-called healthy menu into school  lunch rooms. They’ve got a video on YouTube but we are going to save that until later. Maybe much later. Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak says he agrees with the young protesters. This may not be an election issue, Tim. Moving on, there is a rather specialized weekly anti-meat protest near Exhibition Place to protest the slaughter of pigs at Quality Meat Packing on Tecumseh Street. Quality is a throw back to earlier times when there was much such work located along  King Street West. This demonstration is run by a lady who holds a doctorate in social justice  The story is published with considerable feeling in that social justice journal the Toronto Star. The doctor likes to reference Tolstoy and brings to her work that grim view of life on the Steppes of Russia with such quotes as: “Come closer, as close as you can to him who suffers and try to help.” Okay. And finally, Allan Harding MacKay, 67, will rip up five of his acrylic works of art to protest what he considers the destruction of Canadian parliamentary tradition. Go for it, Allan.

VIP Superjet 100 flew into mountainside

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Trusting to fate and fast feet

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Mother and daughter wait it out under the Chai on Bayview awning during today’s torrential rain. Then, trusting to fate and fast feet, they make a run for it.

Wine Rack checking for space on Bayview

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A representative of the Wine Rack, a subsidiary of the world-wide wine company Vincor International, has been door to door on South Bayview checking to see if spaces are for lease. The Wine Rack has some 160 or so outlets in Canada. If the Wine Rack were to open here, it would be very good news indeed. Vincor is one of only two organizations permitted to sell wine at retail in Ontario, apart from the LCBO. This comes about as a  result of a so-called grandfather clause associated with the introduction of free trade in 1990. Many merchants on Bayview would be glad to sell the odd bottle of wine, but they would be clapped in jail for trying.  The Wine Rack also is experimenting with the concept of wine kiosks 

David Crombie says Ford, Council are okay

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The foremost elder statesman of municipal politics in Toronto declares  Mayor Rob Ford is doing all right and so is city council.  Former Mayor David Crombie is quoted in the Toronto Sun as saying Mr. Ford”s contribution to the democratic process has been impressive.. Crombie was optimistic about Ford’s first 18 months in office. Despite several fights between Ford and council over transit, the budget and the Port Lands, Crombie thinks an agenda is slowly emerging.  Toronto Sun.