A week ago we had never heard of Rob Ford, and we suspect most people outside Toronto would be like us.

Now they say 7 days is a long time in politics but this 7 has been double long for big Rob. He started being finally busted for smoking crack cocaine. Now in itself that’s not ideal for a mayor, but Rob was busted after months of denying it by the police announcing they found a video.of Rob in action on some other perp’s phone.

Rob didn’t care. He just said he’s staying. He’d forgotten hitting the pipe because he was “ so drunk”. An unusual defensive gambit for a politician. But then, as he said, his battle with the booze was well known by one and all.

Now the week ends with the large unit in trouble again.

This time “happily married” father of 2 Rob was in trouble for trying to coerce a female aide to give him oral sex. Rob’s defence this time? A brilliant foul mouthed rant about how wife Renata maxes out the “O” at home so why would he need it. Naturally.

Resigning? No thank you. No need.

We agree.

Under Rob’s care Toronto has developed into a formidable music city and is a big part of Canada’s neat music scene. The Arts and Crafts scene that gave us the lovely Feist and the awesome Broken Social Scene (and to a lesser extent Metric) continues to flourish, and now our boy Drake and his boy Abel “Weeknd” Tesfaye have created the sound of chill-core R&B for the world. Throw in the bro-step of DangerMau5 and the un-categorisable punk rave of Crystal Castles and its fair to say Toronto is a musical city on fire.

Which made us wonder if the shit mayor – good music connection has something to it?

Another that springs to mind is the great Marion Berry.
 

As the above surveillance photo shows Marion was another crack smoking mayor, and on his watch Washington DC reached new lows as murder capital of the US. But no one could deny the music with Fugazi and Dischord records creating the emo-punk thing, and the kings of the Go Go (Trouble Funk, Chuck Brown, Rare Essence) getting the Chocolate City global funk respect.

And of course New York was far more musical before Rudi Guiliani sorted out the crime, and Philadelphia was better bankrupt and with the musician s begging the politicians to “Lets Clean Up The Ghetto”.

Maybe the erratic and pretty contentious Boris Johnson needs to get even looser if he wants to put London onto the music map?
 

-TH

PS - UPDATE “Big Rob is still not resigning. The rest of the council have stripped him of all his powers and all his fiscal duties. So Rob will have time to kill. God knows where that leads?”