After the week he just had, Mayor David Miller might want to take his trademark broom and use it to clean up his own trash talk.

I'd say there's some tarnish on our golden-haired socialist mayor, who swept to power last November promising to get rid of the dirty backroom deals and restore things like credibility and transparency to City Hall.

This is a mayor who has taken great delight in proving his predecessor, the daffy Mel Lastman, wrong. Lastman, during one of his regular foot-in-the-mouth rants exactly two years ago, told Miller he'd never be mayor of this city because he says "stupid and dumb things."

Well, Miller is indeed mayor. But apparently, even the Harvard-educated, U of T-trained lawyer is not above saying stupid things either. Maybe foot-in-the-mouth disease comes with the territory.

Whatever was Miller thinking when he was caught on tape Thursday, quipping to the Lord Mayor of London: "Is your police force in jail? Mine is." (He says he was trying to explain the embarrassing barrage of media questions about the cop corruption scandal.)

Even though he was reasonably quick to apologize Friday morning, Miller dismissed it as a regretable joke.

"I said something I regret and I apologize for it," he said. "The allegations are serious and I shouldn't have referred to them with humour ... I'm British and you respond to embarassment with humour."

Some joke. Can you imagine if any of his critics at City Hall made a humorous public statement about the MFP scandal, or the homeless, or one of Miller's favourite causes? He and his politically correct socialist cronies would attack.

What his remarks show, in my view, are his true feelings about the police. "They're reflective of an anti-police attitude," agrees Coun. Case Ootes, a member of the police services board. "This was not a joke."

'Left-wing flavour'

Adds Andrew Clarke of the Toronto Police Association: "There's certainly a more prevalent left-wing flavour with respect to police issues at City Hall ... it doesn't matter how many people we help, it's never going to be good enough."

While Miller will hotly contest that argument, saying he's given the police the biggest budget increase in history this year, let's get real. Most of that increase pertains to salaries and no other city program was forced to go through such an ordeal as the police did to justify their budget.

Now, I expect Miller's media apologists will say he was under incredible pressure last week with his first budget, etc. Nonsense. I've watched Miller as a councillor for the past six years. While he is indeed articulate, I've seen his temper flare in self-righteous indignation and I've seen him engaged in political spin.

The leopard hasn't changed his spots, it seems. In the dying hours of the seven-day budget meeting, Miller denied making a promise not to hike business taxes unless the province agreed to offset the increase by lowering business education taxes.

I produced a tape of Miller making just such a pledge to The Sun's editorial board last Oct. 27. When Coun. Denzil Minnan-Wong tried to play the tape in council, he was ruled out of order by Miller and his comrades. At one point the mayor was visibly angry as he approached Minnan-Wong in an attempt to get the tape.

The whole scene could have been avoided if Miller had simply admitted his plan fell through at the provincial level. That's the sort of openness we should expect from a mayor who ran on a platform of restoring credibility at City Hall.

Coun. Mike Del Grande says it would have been an opportunity for Miller to "come clean" that he wasn't able to fulfill his tax promise this year. But no. "Somehow he thinks he doesn't make mistakes ... that he's a big, perfect mayor," says Del Grande.

If you ask me, the bloom is starting to come off the rose.