Friday, October 16, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
THE OLYMPIC PLAN
Remember Cambie Street?
Deja vu.
It's not often that I am shocked, especially by the predictably idiocy of bureaucrats and politicians.
But yesterday, I caught just enough of the local supper hour news to almost fall off the sofa.
In the morning I had enjoyed a coffee with an old friend at the corner of 65th and Granville. Of course, I parked the car right in front.
No, sir.
That will no longer be possible, sir.
You see we're staging the 2010 Olympics and every one's life must be disrupted and every one's small mom-and-pop business must suffer irrevocably.
Because you are not important and the small businesses that we like to say are the backbone of our economy are not really important either. We just like to say that because it sounds good at rubber chicken lunches and on news bites.
The news is that during that now hateful affair next February, that Event That Surpasses All Other Events, there will be no parking allowed 29 hours a day, 12 days a week on Granville Street from 16th Avenue south to the Arthur Laing Bridge. None. Zero.
I watched a couple talk about the $200,000+ they lost before they abandoned their shop on Cambie Street during the hideous Cut and Cover Caper. So they smartly moved to Granville around 65th. Now they face exactly the same nightmarish scenario.
Now, here is the voice of authority to the rescue.
"First of all, leaving your vehicle behind is absolutely fundamental," Penny Ballem, City of Vancouver manager and a board member with the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Games, said in issuing a plea for public support.
Oh yah?
Tell me, Penny.
As a VANOC board member, won't you be given a pass or a limo or some other exemption that permits you to dart about the city with impunity?
You betcha.
"Transportation is key to the success of the Games," Dr. Ballem said at a news conference. She reminded people that "you can walk across the core of Vancouver" in about 25 minutes, and planners are hoping a lot of people will do just that during the Olympics.
Isn't that nice.
Thanks a whole bunch, Penny. Walking across the city in a driving rainstorm in February is exactly what we all want to do to help out this act of totalitarianism.
There are those among you who are patiently waiting for "the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Please be advised that something way bigger will be here and on schedule in February. Further note that if Jesus does make it, he may not get downtown because of the the roadblocks and traffic restrictions. Remember, ye devout, that we have out priorities here.
And speaking of age-old values, we are told by Dr. Ballem and others of the Privileged Set, that "co-operation" is the key.
Co-operation? Hahahahaha...
Have any of these bozos actually tried to negotiate local traffic lately.
Here's two quick snapshots of The Co-operators.
One: I'm driving east along Columbia in New West Tuesday afternoon heading to the Royal Columbian Hospital to see a friend who is recovering very nicely thank you from open heart surgery. Just before you get to the hospital, Columbia splits off into Columbia on the left and Burentte on the right, heading to the freeway. Some poor sap in front of me is in the wrong lane and wants to turn over to the Burnette lane. He has his turn signal on. He's at the front of the line. But, OH NOT YOU DON'T. The driver of the 18-wheeler monster rig keeps nudging and nudging so as to not let him in. Very sick. Very disturbing. Very co-operative.
Two: Yesterday afternoon about 3:30, I am walking across Broadway at Spruce, near Oak Street. Five lanes of traffic stop for me to cross, as they are required to by law. As is common courtesy. But the nice man in the Hummer who sees me from more than a third of a block away and has only to slow down while I step past him would SIMPLY NOT HAVE THAT, SUCKER! Lunatic boy screams past me imitating a great matador who can have the bull pass so close to him that a horn picks a button off the man's costume.
Yes, we are a nation and a town of Great Co-operators, Penny.
Like that's really going to happen to make the Olympic Visitation a real sweet pleasure.
Yes, I am really leaving town.
No, I am not renting out my house.
My home - Vancouver - has already been rented out by Gordon Campbell to the IOC.
You know what I want to know about the Olympics?
Nothing.
I will be Elsewhere, and I won't be watching TV.
I will be eating great food and walking and drinking real espresso and talking with friends and reading and writing and all the lovely people with slats of wood tied to their feet can careen down snowy slopes all they want.
If you can't escape, I suggest you go to a case lot sale at your local supermarket and stock up.
Hibernation will be the ticket.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
UGLY IS AS UGLY DOES
The B.C. government has found a wonderful old-fashioned way to justify cutting funds from social and medical programs.
"You can't have that, 'cause everyone will want it, so there!"
The fancy name they give this meanness is "service equalization."
On Vancouver Island, the Health Authority needs to cut $45 Million from their budget. (The new Canada Line cost $133 Million per kilometre vs. $13 Million they could have spent on Light Rail. The Olympics? Don't even ask.)
So, here is a partial list of what's going:
Fewer operations, reduced diagnostic services, higher parking fees. There's a hiring freeze and an overtime ban. Properties will be sold and two residential care homes will close.
If a support service for parents is available in Victoria but not in Powell River, the Victoria program is being cut. Meals on Wheels will no longer be delivered for free to some shut-ins because others pay a fee.
The same principle means less money for therapy for adults with mental illness and peer counselling programs for those struggling with addictions.
Peer counselling for addicts is just about the cheapest, not to mention the most effective approach to addictions that we have. Cutting funds is cutting your own throat.
And Meals on Wheels?
Hahahaha...
Gordon Campbell is clearly going out of his way to be the new poster boy for The Grinch.
Incorruptable Cop Not Wanted Here
Immigration Canada has much to answer for.
While they do an admirable job processing thousands of new people arriving from all over the world and swearing in new and valuable citizens with regularity, they make some colossal errors.
Usually we are made aware of the criminals and nut jobs they welcome.
But today, the Globe has focused on a troubling case in which a policeman from Mexico has fled to Canada with his family under death threats.
We don't believe him. We, being Canada.
Do you still travel to Mexico?
I don't.
Murder is practically the national sport.
Drug and sex murders are daily past times.
And that includes in luxury "protected" resorts.
In the age of the iPhone and Google, how long exactly would it take to verify this man's claim that returning to Mexico would constitute a death sentence?
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
TV OR NOT TV
Toronto high schools are being hustled by a group of con artists who want to put TV screens in their hallways.
Of course, ads will appear.
Of course, ad people would love to get their claws on all that young consumer flesh.
Of course, schools are strapped for cash. This is Canada, remember. So, of course, schools are tempted.
Bad idea. Very bad idea.
I watch TV.
I don't watch the nature channel or CBC or pubic television.
I watch sports (NFL football, tennis and golf), comedy (Seinfeld re-runs, which I have seen now at least 20 times per episode), and the occasional dramamine or movie.
I do not expect TV to educate or enlighten me.
I get from TV exactly what I want - escape from my troubles.
I relax. My feeble mind wanders. I daydream. I sing. I eat food. I talk on the phone. I snooze.
Schools need books and teachers and yes, even computers. They also need art supplies and sports equipment.
Governments should pay for these.
If your government is not, then hassle the living daylights out of them.
I will not watch a video screen "installation" in an art gallery.
The medium is the message.
TV is not art.
It is shopping and silliness and that's just fine...
As long as it's not foisted on children who should be using their actual minds during school hours.
RIM Me...I'm waiting
"Love the journey."
That's the new ad campaign for my favorite thing in the whole world, the ubiquitous Blackberry.
Every website has their ads.
The Globe has not one but two full pagers.
No question, the Research in Motion (RIM) folks who have paid for these spots can be proud. This is boss advertising.
However...
There are still some of us around who are old enough to remember when getting RIMmed really meant something.
Granny Shmammy
The Vancouver Sun has the most curious article this morning.
The headline reads:
"Nanny, granny or secondary suites are key for home ownership in Metro Vancouver"
After explaining the obvious - rental income helps pay the mortgage - the piece goes on to tell us how the City of Vancouver encourages such accommodations.
Huh?
There is a house a block away from me that is for sale.
Asking price $2.2 Million.
Brand new.
But the so-called basement has a bathroom, the laundry and one useless square dungeon of a room.
That is because the City won't allow people on the West Side to build full basements that might be - oh, the horror! - rented - egad! - out.
It's a puzzlement.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Ka-Ching!
Rio beat out Chicago for the 2016 Olympics.
A Globe editorial reports the following:
"Rio de Janeiro, one of the most violent cities in the world (2,069 murders last year), with crumbling transportation infrastructure and a ramshackle airport, surrounded by impoverished and drug-ridden ghettos, will be expected to host a seamless Games and accompanying tourist experience, at an estimated cost of $15-billion.
It must simultaneously find a way to double current hotel space to 50,000 rooms.
Of course, the $15-billion estimate is likely conservative. The budget for the 30th Olympiad in London has already quadrupled - from the original $3.3-billion to $15.4-billion (Can.). And the Games are still three years away."
Murders and drug-ridden ghettos.
And these games will help matters how?
Explanation
I was once stopped along the Upper Levels Highway by an RCMP for speeding. The officer had to chase me because I couldn't hear his siren. The Byrds were singing "Turn, Turn, Turn" on the radio, my big car (Lincoln Continental Mark IV, pictured herein) had huge speakers and I was singing along at the top of my lungs.
The man thought this was so funny, he didn't ticket me.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
really big ideas
RCMP to avoid Taser chest shots
Hahahahaha...
You can't write material this funny.
This is a real headline in the Winnipeg Free Press and reprinted in the Province.
There's more:
"When possible, avoiding chest shots with electronic control devices avoids the controversy about whether ECDs do or do not affect the human heart," it said, suggesting Taser users instead aim for the abdomen, legs or back."
How about just play that famous parlor game, "Hit the Weenie!"
This week marks the second anniversary of the death of Robert Dziekanski. A death I call a murder.
Which makes this fatuous announcement an obscenity.
POT OF GOLD
By the way...
Wish me luck will you with my new Television program.
It's a Reality Show, of course.
It's about real Vampires (We have located several stashes of them in Surrey, Victoria and the DTES.) competing in a dance and losing weight contest.
Both CBC and CTV are so enamored of the concept that they are making me rich in a bidding war.
The only problem with the whole enterprise is that we can only film at night, of course (Vampires...I told you that.) so I am finding it really hard to get up in the morning.
The show is called "BITE! KICK! LOSE!"
But we're open to snappy suggestions.
LETTER FROM A FRIEND
Spanish Bank Stream is still of great interest to me and we are now eagerly awaiting the return of this years salmon.
We are not the only ones anticipating the return.
This fellow has been at the stream for one or two weeks.
I just got lucky this afternoon.
To be there; to see the critter; and to have a working video camera on hand.
A few years ago the stream at this spot was in a large wooden pipe several feet under a blacktop parking area at Spanish Banks.
In 1999 the stream was "day-lighted"
It is very comforting to know that given a chance nature is ready and willing to take over.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
GOVERNMENT STINK BIG
When I wrote in this space yesterday about the eHealth money scandal, I hadn't read the front page story in the Vancouver Sun.
What I missed was quite a lot.
The headline alone gets the blood going:
Man at centre of health scandal was under house arrest when hired
He got job overseeing $9-million budget while prohibited from handling other people's money
Jim Taylor was hired as director of communications systems at the Fraser Valley health region in April 2000 -- a month after he was sentenced to two years less a day for defrauding the White Rock Sea Festival Society, which went bankrupt.Kevin Falcon said he wasn't sure why Taylor was hired by Fraser Health when he had a fraud conviction.
Taylor is accused of fraud and breach of trust, former assistant deputy health minister Ron Danderfer of breach of trust and Dr. Jonathan Burns (foto above) of fraud and influence pedaling.
Danderfer oversaw the multi-million dollar electronic health initiatives.
Guess what?
His wife was a senior official at the Ministry of Children and Families and both his son and daughter are government employees.
Danderfer and his wife were both suspended two years ago.
Their salaries are all paid by your taxes.
Could this be any more corrupt?
All of those Board of Traders are convinced that the Campbell regime is so competent at minding the store.
Surpise!
This is an old story of government contracts awarded to friends, paybacks and kickbacks, jobs for family members, billing irregularities and over-billing.
This is what is happening in an almost identical scandal in Ontario.
This is what happens when governments and bureaucrats have access to unlimited public funds and very checks and balances around them.
This is tax money.
THINK LIKE US...OR ELSE!
The provincial government wants to come into your home and property to tear down any sign it may not like.
All in the name of the Olympics.
If you are not already offended by this, you should be.
Introduced this week, the proposed legislation would temporarily allow officials in Vancouver, Whistler and Richmond to enter a property with 24 hours notice to take down an improper sign or graffiti, a change from the current process, which officials say can take weeks.
The new powers to quickly remove signs would be in effect only during the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, officials said.
Suppose I put up a sign in front of my house or in my apartment window that said, "Let's face it, the Premier is an old poop."
Suddenly, the jack boots are breaking down my front door?
What gulag have we become all in the name of snowboarding?
City Councillor Geoff Meggs thinks all of this is benign.
“We don’t believe any of [the changes] will impact the right to freedom of expression or political expression at all,” he said.
“They will help us to uphold our obligation to stop ambush marketing and inappropriate commercial expression.”
How quickly they forget.
What if you put out a sign that says, "I don't like the Games."
Will that bring on the storm troopers? Will they be armed with tasers or staplers?
That is the question.
THE NOBEL
The folks at the Nobel committee must have a rule of some sort that prizes must be awarded each year.
I thought that, on occasion, if they didn't find a particularly worthy recipient, they simply passed.
Maybe I am wrong.
The other morning they awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama.
He was gracious as always in accepting this honour with humility and, it seemed, a little confusion.
I am a huge Barack Obama fan.
I understand the award and its signal for a more hopeful world.
But I think the award was precipitous...uh, a little early for a fellow but nine months into his term.
It's hardly the worst thing that ever happened, but it is peculiar.
Carry on...
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