Two things you can always count on the Toronto Sun to provide: great headlines and hyperbole. It’s hard to take any article seriously when the writer refers to “untold tens of thousands” of people, and then goes on to, well, tell us exactly how many tens of thousands (a mere seven and a half) in the very next sentence. And what great disaster has befallen these newly-told masses? Hurricane? Fire? Terrorism? No, it’s much worse: they don’t have new garbage cans. The horror!
Awesome headline, though.
Screen capture from the Toronto Sun web site.
Well, I’ll give you the bit about the good headline and hyperbole, but I will take issue with your criticism after that.
The “untold” numbers follows in that the Nov. 1 was “7.5” tens of thousands (not what I would call “mere”, but anyway…).
Today is Nov 19. It would follow that at least SOME of those 75,000 folks (unlike me for instance) have received their bins.
Or they could have gone to Florida:
javascript:changeVideo(‘http://esi.ctv.ca/datafeed/urlgen2.aspx?vid=113780′,’CFTO1118_bins’,’00:00:00.00′,’00:02:14.00′,’113780′,’7′)
I’m sure the number of binless people has changed in three weeks. I generally read “untold,” like “countless,” “hordes,” or “bazillion” to mean “more than I can fathom.”
I’m merely pointing out that 7.5 is hardly “untold.” It’s lazy writing to suggest that the numbers are so vast as to be unimaginable, and then produce a number that isn’t really all that big after all. And even if 90% of the city didn’t have bins yet, it wouldn’t be the shocking (shocking!) tragedy that some local media and councillors are making it out to be.
Oh, agreed, its lazy writing. As a former (see first sentence for the reason, it was getting unbearable) Sun reader, though, I do get my back up (perhaps unreasonably most times) when some people criticize the Sun for what they let other papers and outlets get away with. See the growing “references to Facebook page” file…
In this case, the lazy writing (and editing) could have been fixed by using a word like “unknown” together with a phrase like “at least…”.
And this is “gotcha” politics, but hey, I’m playing. If I go to a restaurant and order steak for $50 and they bring me bologna but still charge me $50, I at least have the option of leaving and not paying.
When the city charges me $ for a new bin, but don’t deliver it, well, you can’t fight city hall, I guess, but I can whine with the best of them.