Photo: "Air" by Brendan Lynch, member of the theGentries Flickr pool.

Your Toronto morning news roundup for Thursday September 25th, 2008:

Bob Kinnear doesn't seem to have a very keen ability to read the views of his union members and relay them to the media. After all but reassuring the media that a deal had been struck, VIVA transit workers rejected the deal he'd negotiated and are now on strike. The way this scenario came about is similar to the most recent TTC strike, which Kinnear also helped orchestrate.

A man who was running from police yesterday made a pretty weak getaway attempt - he ran off and got on a TTC bus, which we all know isn't exactly the fastest way to get from A to B (or in this case, A to freedom). He's been charged with a list of weapons-related offenses.

The next gun amnesty program slated for Toronto is quite simply an awesome idea - trade in your gun for a digital camera and photography lessons. Even if this concept ends up flooding Flickr with blurry shots of kneecaps, I think we can agree that it beats blood on the streets. A headline like this might read differently: "Snapshots on busy, daylit Yonge Street depict milk-and-honey-gorging pedestrians".

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Your Prime Minister thinks that "ordinary people" like you and I and our starving artist friend aren't particularly concerned about the massive cuts the Conservative government is making to arts funding. This here ordinary Canadian thinks he couldn't be more wrong, and so do people in the arts industry, who are being affected most.

And suspected bike thief Igor Kenk was to be sentenced, but his lawyer got him an 8-week break in court proceedings because he's yet to have the opportunity to read through the Crown's 4000 pages of evidence against his client.