680News - Lisa Brandt

Just when you think you’ve heard it all about airlines, comes the story of the disallowed pendant.

This week has been particularly tough for air carrier news. US Airways has decided to discontinue snacks to save money. A new survey of US Airways travellers finds many are deciding to stay out of the friendly skies because of problems with security and ridiculous delays.

Having flown on several major airlines recently, I can relate. Most were pretty wonderful, but my experience on one U.S. airline was so horrible, I will never fly with them again. They overbooked and we were delayed about an hour, while they begged for volunteers to take later flights, and then finally had to delete the last three people who registered. And they were quite loud in their disapproval! We boarded the plane amid the screams of one woman with a connecting flight: “I AM GETTING ON THAT PLANE!” It was stressful for all.

Now a Toronto University student was deemed a potential security risk before she boarded a flight out of Kelowna, B.C. because of her pendant in the shape of a gun. It’s just a wee thing, about the size of two fingernails. Even if it were a James Bond-style operable weapon, which it clearly is not, there is no way you could get anything but a toothpick in to pull the trigger! Certainly not even the tiniest pinky would fit. It’s totally ridiculous to consider the thing anything but a piece of jewellery.

Even the student in question doesn’t blame the security guard for being overzealous - she blames a black-and-white system that doesn’t allow airport security to use their own judgment. A five-centimetre silver pendant in the shape of a gun is still a gun and therefore is not allowed on board. There is no provision in the rules for an inoperable little bullet-less adornment. And that’s the dumb part.

The woman has received an official apology from the Canadian Air Transport Authority. But it just makes you wonder what they’ll decide is dangerous next.

So the Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has been forced to resign under a cloud of scandal. And the Prime Minister continues to act like the “speak no evil” monkey about the situation. This is the same leader who has put significant energy into controlling the country’s media and its access to revelations about everything governmental on Parliament Hill.

Bernier gets a lot of attention because of his relative youth and his good looks. Hey, it’s equal time for men, after so many women in politics have attracted reams of ink over what they wear and how they do their hair. Bernier is a divorced father of two at the age of 45. He may be camera-friendly, but he’s also a bit of a loose cannon who has made a series of rather serious political gaffes, the latest being a promise to send a planeful of supplies to Myanmar - a plane that wasn’t available. That sent the Hill into a scramble to find a substitute jet to make good on his promise.

Now Bernier’s ex-girlfriend is revealing more than she showed on the day of his swearing-in, when he, apparently, chose her dress. She says he left classified documents behind and she didn’t turn them in for five weeks. (Was she a slow reader?) She claims her bed was bugged and her life has been ruined.

What a mess! The opposition wants an inquiry. The PM has already received Bernier’s resignation. This is getting loads of coverage overseas and it remains to be seen if it will have a negative impact on our image. Will the Prime Minister continue to claim that nothing is wrong, that the personal lives of his ministers is none of his business, that people should just move along and carry on as normal? He can say whatever he wants, but that doesn’t make it so.

Boy, I don’t like having to call in “sick.” Whatever I’ve got - a very wicked spring cold or some such thing - would not allow me to fully function in my job today, that’s for sure. There was no question that my only activity this Monday would be visiting a doctor. This “thing” ended my weekend before it was halfway through and sent me to bed during one of the most beautiful days of the spring so far.

Experts continue to say it: wash your hands! I was startled to learn that antibacterial gels don’t kill the pesky C. difficile virus, but regular soap-washing will. More and more I see people using paper towels to push washroom doors open and just generally behaving more carefully about what they touch, and acting more aware of how many hands may have touched it before. Taps with sensors and automatic hand-dryers are the norm rather than the exception.

One phenomenon I’m suddenly seeing occasionally, especially in my North York neighbourhood, is women - mostly younger women - wearing surgical face masks. I’ve seen a few on transit and others simply walking down the street. I don’t know what it is they’re trying to prevent, but last I heard, SARS was long gone and there’s no expected imminent arrival of bird flu. Perhaps we simply have some overly concerned germaphobes in our midst. I don’t think they know anything we don’t know. And we know from the experts that beyond everything else - including sneezing into your arm and avoiding breathing in shared air - hand-washing prevents most germs from spreading.

I was robbed yesterday. The perp didn’t have a gun or a knife, but a piece of pavement roughly the size of my vehicle in good proximity to where I needed to go, Brookfield Place, for a spa treatment. A little “me” time. A semi-pricey girlie episode. You get the idea.

My favourite esthetician has moved locations. She used to be in Yorkville. But she was the reason I went there and when she moved to Front Street, I followed, and this is only the second time I’ve been to see her there. The first time, I took the subway. Cost: about $6. This time I decided to drive and chose a parking lot a couple of blocks away to force myself to walk a little further. Besides, I was a bit early, and I don’t like to rush my pal by sitting in the waiting room, bored out of my mind.

So I parked and - dopey me! - I assumed that it was the same underground parking gouge - I mean garage - that I’m used to in this city; $3 per half hour or less, blah blah. I returned to my vehicle less than an hour later and used my credit card to exit, as I had when I entered. The little machine spit out my receipt. Smack me in the face with a wet mackerel: $25. Twenty-five dollars! For less than an hour! Even by Toronto standards, that is absolutely outrageous.

Depending on where we tape my parts for the TV show Whatever Happened To, I can sometimes pay up to $16 to park for the 90 minutes or so. That’s ridiculous. But $25 for under an hour is just plain old sick and I don’t mean that in the new, hip way the kids are using the word “sick.” I mean ill, ailing, disgusting. Greed is alive and well and putting its grubby hand in my pocket.

So, how do you prefer to spend a long weekend?

680News morning show editor, Elizabeth Harrison, her daughter and I went to New York City for a shopping and touring trip. I bought some cool stuff you can’t get here at home and walked so much that I have blisters the size of quarters on my feet, even on some of my toes! My lottery dream of acquiring a Segway could really help me get around right now.

Here at home, I hear a lot of people spent much of the weekend in stores as well, but the province still thinks big department stores and others should not be allowed to open. I think it should be up to each outlet, frankly. If a merchant decides he or she wants to stay closed, that should be their right, too. I walked around Harbourfront Centre on holiday Monday and some places were open and some weren’t. Merchants in and around the Eaton Centre were allowed, because of the “tourism” designation, and they were hopping busy.

As I write this, the province is saying police need to decide whether to charge Sears for opening some of its stores for an invitation only fundraising sale that competitors have said is just a disguise for breaking the shopping law.

New York City - the city that never sleeps - has it right with Times Square, which is clean, safe, and incredibly busy all night long. And where did I see the most young kids hanging out? The M&M’s superstore! It’s three floors of candy and M&M related merchandise and it has some interactive stuff that looked like a lot of fun. But I couldn’t get anywhere near them.

Slews of Canadians were in the Big Apple this weekend. I’m not a cross-border shopper per se. If something’s available here, I will buy it here. But there are some things we can’t get, like certain clothing designers’ wares and some other things. And when we can’t shop at home it really takes the choice out of it for many people.

Ivor Tossell’s column in today’s Globe and Mail beat me to a little tweak I’ve noticed on Facebook and wanted to comment on.

I joined Facebook quite a long while ago to connect with 680News listeners and friends, old and new. If you’ve never been on it, Facebook allows you to accept people as “friends” and then you can communicate with them through the website privately, share photos and play games like Scrabble.

At first, I accepted just about anyone who asked to be my friend. If they didn’t appear to be a serial killer or overt stalker, I clicked “yes” when I was asked. Many of my radio colleagues, past and present, are now friends and it’s fun and simple to communicate with them through the site.

Now I’ve become much more picky. Some folks are mere friend collectors who just want to add to their totals. Well, I don’t need them to see what’s going on with me, so I say no or ask WHY they want to hook up. That sometimes scares them off! That doesn’t mean you should be afraid to send me a friend request. Just tell me why you want it!

But now Facebook is going too far, in my opinion. They offer up a little window with three people you “may want to add as friends.” In my case, it’s usually people in radio. And it’s usually the same few people over and over again, which is fine, except that I don’t really want them as Facebook friends and they, apparently, don’t want me either or we would have already made that happen. And what’s worse, is that a recently deceased announcer from another station continues to turn up every few days with the clickable link to “add as a friend!” It creeps me out. It’s not right.

A supposed competitor for Facebook has started up and claims to want to pay you to join and bring in friends. After all, it reasons, if Facebook can pull in $20 million a month because of “you,” surely this new site Yuwie.com can afford to spare a few mil. But I have a suspicion that it may be a scam because the only friend requests I’ve had so far are from pimps and hos. Seriously. One pimp and one hooker. And in case you’re wondering, I turned them both down.

Helpless. That’s how we start to feel after days and days of depressing details come out of Myanmar and the sometimes futile efforts to help those whose lives and worlds have been devastated by the cyclone, or hurricane, more than a week ago. It’s not a typical disaster, if there is such a thing. Often, in times of great human crises, there are few questions about whether to help. A donation to the Red Cross or another organization can ease that feeling of “what can I do?” But the situation in Myanmar is deterring many generous hearts from opening up too far.

Many nations don’t recognize the name Myanmar officially. It was changed from Burma by the military-led government nearly 20 years ago. The ruling junta initially refused to allow foreign aid workers into the nation to help save the lives of the millions of people who are in real danger of dying, despite surviving the cyclone’s devastation. They wouldn’t even accept aid goods at first, but then said they’d take the stuff, just not the people. There’s something terribly amiss about that and it certainly makes one wary of giving money because it truly does not seem impossible that it might not end up where it’s supposed to — with the people.

Echoes of the tragedy in Myanmar hadn’t even begun to fade when China suffered its worst earthquake in 30 years. As I write this, officials expect 20,000 to have been killed. Myanmar’s neighbour though, threw open its skies to help immediately. Cynics might say that’s because China’s working hard to improve its image ahead of the Beijing Olympics. But whatever the reason, help arrived quickly to many quake victims, although getting aid to any disaster is slow, frustrating and painful work. The donation process for China has been highly organized as well.

Ernest Hemingway wrote, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee”. Each man’s (or woman’s) death diminishes me. I know I feel that way in the wake of such massive tragedies as those in Myanmar and China. The question is, what do we do to make a difference, for those directly affected and, frankly, to be honest, for ourselves?

If you so choose, you can find links to donate to the people of Myanmar or China by clicking on the 680News Cares icon on this website.

Just how much technology do you need - I mean really need to carry with you?

I love my BlackBerry. I am considering purchasing an upgrade to the Curve, so I can have a mouse instead of a trackwheel and a camera, which my model does not have. But I’m about three or four models behind the latest and greatest and for now, that’s quite alright.

But for those who absolutely must have the brand new, hottest and most powerful version, RIM has a new version coming out. The BlackBerry Bold is aimed to head off the Apple iPhone.

The Bold features more audio and video features and a more vivid video screen. It has GPS and WiFi, and can support the high-speed 3G cell network. If you have any questions about those features, you probably don’t need it!

There is something addictive about the peer-to-peer service. You know you can reach someone in the network instantly, if you need to. The trick is to know when it’s appropriate and to hold back from this type of contact when it’s not.

The trouble with this technology, and with cell phones, is the etiquette and lack thereof. I’ll admit I have, on occasion, been that annoying person in the cereal aisle of the grocery store with her head down, pecking away on the tiny keyboard. But some folks go pretty hard core and seem to forget others are present. Perhaps if you have a cellphone or BlackBerry with a camera in it, you could take a picture of them and e-mail it to them, just to show them how rude they look! It’s just a thought.

So, Toronto is losing tourists because it doesn’t have the “Wow” factor anymore.

A tourism project finds our fellow Canadians dismiss Toronto as a vacation destination because, in order, of crime, traffic and the expense.

Americans say they’re put off by passport requirements, delays at the border and bad weather.

Just a few years ago, three-quarters of tourists polled said they were satisfied with their experiences here. Now that number has fallen to less than half.

But there are some positives in the report. Toronto is still this country’s top place to visit. More tourists have been coming to visit from overseas in recent years and more visitors overall are staying overnight.

Councillor Michael Thompson reminds us that we all have a role to play in attracting tourists and making sure they go back home with positive things to say about coming here. It’s true. If you stop someone in Paris you’re likely to get a shrug and no help at all but the attractions make up for it! Tourists are willing to put up with some stuff as long as the overall experience is a good one.

But what do we wow them with? I’d suggest to visitors that they plan to arrive during one of our excellent festivals: Beaches Jazz, Caribana and so many others. This city has a lot to offer, there’s nowhere on earth quite like it and we simply have to do a better job of promoting it.

Have you poked around this website much?

If you’re like me, sometimes you come back to a bookmarked site and tend to just check out the same stuff. It’s a routine. It’s a habit. But here on 680News.com we’re adding new things all the time.

For example, there are now photos up of the David Bloom Memorial Spring Sprint that I emceed on Sunday. Richard Bloom, David’s older brother, used to be on our morning show team.

One of our Internet experts, Patricia D’Cunha, is now writing a blog on the arts. Every day we upload photos taken by our reporters on the scene of breaking news stories and entire interviews with newsmakers. There are blogs by our political affairs specialist, John Stall, and our traffic experts, and biographies of our staff. And of course, all the latest news updated throughout each and every day.

We have also added a way for you to donate to victims of the cyclone in Myanmar. Just click on the icon, 680News Cares.

You only have so much time to spend consuming information and we’re trying to gather it all together for you at one URL. We welcome your comments and suggestions and thank you for dropping by!