Many years ago there was a garage at 4th and Blenheim....Blenheim Motors. They also had gas pumps which augmented their business. The service station was run by two very honest guys and I had my VW serviced there for a few years. One day I was there and the access to the pumps was blocked by City road crews...I asked Andy(one of the co-owners) what was happening. "They are re-paving and improving the access. We can deal with the revenue loss, it'll take about four days for them to finish." All was done and it looked great until a week after it was repaved and 'finished' the access was torn up by City water works. Andy was miffed when he was told that it would take about two weeks to finish. He called City Hall to complain and asked for a reduction of his business license fee and was shunted around so many different 'crats at City Hall that he gave up and bit the bullet. Now it was beginning to cost the garage money. Finally the city's job was done, and the street re-paved and all was normal for about a week and a half. OK.......no! A new crew arrived and began to tear up the access again. Andy blew his stack and asked, "what the hell is going on now?" The answer was City Electrical ops. Andy was on the phone to City Hall to tell them that he was not going to pay his business license fee due to significant loss of revenue from his pumps. When he finally reached the city mandarin, Andy was told in no uncertain terms that if he refused to pay, the City would shut him down. All of this could have been avoided and everything could have been accomplished in three days had there been some co-ordination by the city works and Andy would have been a happy camper. This was the 70's.....have things changed that much at City Hall? I doubt it very much.
Any guy who fathers more than 108 children (What does "more than" even mean? 2,009? 18 trillion) should have his little weenie put on ice and made a permanent exhibit at Science World.
NOTE: by the way that Mr. Blackmore is always smiling.
You'd be smiling too if you spent most of your day shtupping teenage girls.
Whether laws against polygamy are constitutional or not, whether the practice is repugnant or odd or not, there are laws against sexual exploitation and what has taken so long for those to be enforced?
And maybe someday the full story will be told about the young boys, seen as a sexual threat to the leaders, are basically enslaved at an early age as workers in the community's primary businesses like logging.
These sects are sick little enclaves and their hiding behind religious freedoms is an obscenity.
$365 Million for a new retractable roof for BC Place.
No problem. Do it. we pay for it. No problem.
$300,000 debt for Ballet B.C.
Get outta here! You're on your own, Fairy Princesses!
The good news is that the Ballet did in fact save themselves from bankruptcy by offering debtors a few cents on every dollar owed. Which is fine.
But Glad-handing Gord could have paid the full tilt iin the stroke of a pen if he had any vision of what this province is supposed to look like outside of highways and skating rinks.
was the headline on the front page of yesterdays' Vancouver Sun.
Our response?
Shock? Not really.
Here's what I wrote on Tuesday.
"These public-private partnerships might even work on occasion if the rubes who are in public office and who have never run so much as a Bingo game weren't creaming their jeans with the excitement of playing with the Big Boys.
The suits in the towers must be bending over in hysterics every time the phone rings from one of these municipal offices with yet another grand scheme to build a highway or a subway line or a bunch of hospitals."
Now, we are told that the tab could run close to One Billion Dollars.
Understand that any shortfall will have to be made up by raising taxes and that I and you will pay for the clownish country-bumpkin mistakes of these elected clods and that and you will pay for some idiot's right to pay $1,200/square foot to live in a concrete box and call it home.
Not about snow removal but a true story about Vancouver's Engineering Dept.
Some years ago, my (commercial) landlord had a problem, the sewer was backing up in the newly rented store the new tenant, who was a florist.
The stores were located near Richards & Hastings St's. in the downtown core.
The local 'Mr. Rooter' came and rooted and for his troubles got nothing but gravel. He told my landlord; "The sewer line is not connected to the main sewer line and that the past tenant's 'waste' just leached into the gravel under the lane way."
When my landlord phoned city hall and complained, the head of the 'sewer dept.' came out and looked over the situation. His reply was "no-way that happened and the fault was in the building."
The florist soon left has he could not practice his trade because the sewer did not work and the store remained vacant for months.
Again my landlord contacted the 'Engineering Dept.' and complained and again they said "Not their fault."
In desperation he got his lawyer to contact city hall and the City Engineer came to view the problem. "Not our fault" was all he said. Later my landlord struck a deal with the city's Engineering Dept. - they would dig up the alley to check the connection and would pay if it was the city's fault, if not, my landlord must pay th full shot.
Well two days prior to the excavation, a massive digger was dropped, two large construction huts were left. On the day of the excavation there were no less than 15 engineering types around, not including flaggers who made sure Richards St. was closed and BC Hydro types, who were hired - 'just in case.'.
Estimated cost so far - $40,000
But wait, the massive digger finally uncovered the problem - the last time the city worked on the sewer, they failed to reconnect the line to store.
Their excuse - well it wasn't supposed to be connected to that sewer line at all, even though it was before!!
No dice said my landlord and a deal is a deal. Within 60 minutes, diggers, construction huts, engineering types, Hydro linemen, flaggers all disappeared and three men and a backhoe came and fixed the problem.
What does this have to do about snow removal? Simple, the city's Engineering Dept. can't be trusted to do a simple job cheaply and will screw the taxpayer for every dime he/she has!
Can Mayor Greg change City Hall's mind-set? I doubt it.
Frances Bula has written two very good pieces on the Olympic Village story in this morning's Globe.
One is called "Sun will shine on athletes village, builder says"
The other is "Out of Mud, Olympic Village a showcase of ecology."
The second piece is a tour through the sludge and rain to view first-hand the building progress and it's good clean messy fun.
But the first article is the one with all the real juice.
First we get the Millenium GM chronicling the entire list of hardships and challenges that he has heroically overcome. Hahahaha...It's a riot.
Then, moving on to the thorny issue of What Idiot Signed Off on this Deal, we get one mayor after another disclaiming any part of the guarantees that the City has apparently provided in case of problems.
Why hasn't CBC TV, which specializes these days in sophomoronic humor signed up Owen, Campbell and Sullivan (An Act Funnier than it's Name!!! Tonight at 8!!!) to do a song and dance number called, "I Didn't Do it, Do it, Do it, I Swear."
The photo, by the way, is of the Salt Building (1930), which has been preserved and upgraded and will become a restaurant and pub in the Mark James Group after the Olympics.
"B.C.'s Solicitor-General has ordered his staff to study the possibility of fining outdoor enthusiasts who enter out-of-bounds areas at ski resorts and in backcountry B.C."
Why study?
Why the possibility?
Why doesn't John van Dongen simply do what he should do?
"No new policy would be ready this winter because the idea requires a lot of discussion."
About what?
"Mr. van Dongen said he does not believe in forcing people who break the rules to pay for rescue efforts. "
Why not?
We force people to pay for traffic violations including the horrifying bad taste of parking for 62 minutes rather than the 60 you've paid for.
Of course, no one really ever pays these fines, which is why any city of any size in Canada typically has a backlog of about 300,000 unpaid traffic tickets.
Here's my idea.
The signs that say, "Ski area BOUNDARY, not patrolled," should instead say, "NO RESCUE ZONE. WANT BIG THRILLS? DIE AT YOUR OWN EXPENSE, DUMMY"
Of course,we would never do such a thing. We are a civilized caring society. We rescue almost everyone we can.
If you want to kill yourself with various narcotics, we will rescue you by giving you needles and crack pipes and mouth pieces and places to take your drugs away from the winter winds. If we can get away with it under the guise of "science" or progress or improvement or some such, we will rescue you by giving you your drug of choice or a near facsimile or a new pill or a baby lulu to suck on at the very least.
There are some rare exceptions, of course.
If you are old and cold and starving and living in a cardboard box on the street, we wouldn't want to force you to come in out of the storm. That might violate your human right to die in the cold.
But other than that we are the rescue society.
So keep schussing down those unmarked mountains in the avalanche zones, baby. Never fear, The Rescue Society is near.
It is your god given and charter blessed right to behave like a yahoo and be bailed out by taxpayer dollars and the efforts of men and women who put themselves at risk to save your sorry ass.
Despite Hamas’s unrelenting rocket attacks, Israel continues to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, warning the civilian population to stay clear of terrorist sites. Said Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, "Israel has made it clear that we are fighting against terrorism, not the Gazan residents, and the extremists are the ones who are taking advantage of the concern of the humanitarian organizations and the international community as a means of pressuring Israel." [2]
Israel’s Humanitarian Aid to Gaza
396 truckloads of humanitarian aid that have been delivered through Israeli crossings into Gaza since the beginning of Operation Cast Lead, including basic food commodities, medication, medical supplies, blood units and donations by various governments and blood units. [3] 80 truckloads of humanitarian aid expected to arrive in Gaza on Jan. 5 [4] 20 Palestinians evacuated to Israel for medical treatment (including two children) [5] 800,000+ leaflets disseminated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to Gaza civilians instructing them to stay away from terrorist and weapons storage sites [6] 70+ times the IDF warned populated areas before conducting airstrikes [7] 10,000 tons of aid transported into Gaza at the request of international organizations, the Palestinian Authority and various governments since the beginning of Operation Cast Lead. The World Food Program informed Israel last week that that it would cease shipment of food to Gaza because warehouses are at full capacity, with enough food to last two weeks. [8] 0 wounded Palestinians allowed by Hamas to cross from Gaza into Egypt for treatment. [9]
Iran-backed Hamas Rocket, Mortar Attacks and Nuclear Developments
10,000+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2001. [10] 3,200+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza in 2008 alone. [11] 6,500+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. [12] 538+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israeli territory during the ceasefire from June 19 to Dec. 19, 2008. [13] 480 rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israel since Operation Cast Lead began Dec. 27. [14] 28 deaths caused by rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israel since 2001. The dead include Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire ended, Iran-backed Palestinian groups in Gaza fired rockets and mortars that killed an Israeli-Arab construction worker and a mother of four who was seeking shelter in a bus station as a rocket warning siren sounded. [15] 1,000+ people in Israel injured from rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2001, including Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the start of Israel’s defensive operation in Gaza Dec. 27, 90 Israelis have been injured and at least 244 have been treated for shock. [16] 20,000 Hamas terrorists Israel is targeting as part of its defensive operations [17] 1,000,000 Israeli civilians Hamas is targeting and can reach. [18] 15 seconds Israelis have to get to a bomb shelter once a warning siren has sounded. [19] 8 years Israel has endured rockets and mortar fire from Gaza [20] 3 mosques in Gaza used as weapons, ammunitions and explosives depots that were struck by the Israel Defense Forces during the operation in Gaza. [21] The strikes occurred only at night and never during prayer times, to avoid civilian casualties. 4 UN Security Council resolutions passed since 2006 to try to stop Iran from enriching uranium. [22] 5,000+ number of centrifuges operating in Iran to enrich uranium, the material used to produce a nuclear weapon. [23]
What Israel Gave Up in Hopes of Peace - Gaza Withdrawal Aug. 2005
100% proportion of the Gaza Strip evacuated and handed over to the
Palestinians. [24] 300 square miles of the West Bank evacuated. [25] 21 Israeli settlements uprooted in the Gaza Strip. [26] 4 Israeli settlements uprooted in the West Bank. [27] 48 graves uprooted in Gaza’s former Gush Katif Cemetery, including six graves of area residents murdered by terrorists. [28] 9,000 approximate number of Israelis, including 1,700 families, who lived in Gaza and the northern West Bank. All of them were moved out as part of the withdrawal. [29] 38 synagogues dismantled in the Gaza Strip. [30] 5,000 school-age children who had to find new schools. [31] 42 daycare centers that were closed in the Gaza Strip. [32] 36 kindergartens that were closed in the Gaza Strip. [33] 7 elementary schools that were closed in the Gaza Strip. [34] 3 high schools that were closed in the Gaza Strip. [35] 320 mobile homes, ordered by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, to serve as temporary housing for settlers. [36] 45,000 Israeli soldiers and policemen who participated in the Gaza withdrawal. [37] $1.7 billion the approximate cost to the Israeli government for the withdrawal initiative. [38] 166 Israeli farmers who were moved out of Gaza. [39] 800 cows, which comprised the second largest dairy farm in Israel, moved out of Gaza’s Gush Katif community. [40] $120 million value of flowers and produce exported annually from Gush Katif and lost following the evacuation. [41] 1 zoo, the “Katifari,” that housed hundreds of animals and was moved. [42] 10,000 people who were employed in agriculture and related industries in Gush Katif, including 5,000 Palestinians. [43] 60% proportion of Israel's cherry tomato exports that came from the Gaza Strip. Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza extinguished this economic resource. [44] 3.5 million square meters (almost 1,000 acres) of greenhouses abandoned in Gaza. [45] 70 percentage of Israel's organic produce grown in Gaza – another economic resource lost in the evacuation. [46] 60 percentage of herbs exported from Israel that came from Gush Katif. [47] 15 percentage of Israel agricultural exports that originated in Gaza – exports lost following Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. [48] $360,000 expected average compensation amount Israel expected to pay to relocate each family. [49] $870 million approximate cost for Israel to facilitate the resettlement of former West Bank and Gaza residents elsewhere in the country. [50] $500 million amount of money Israel's security establishment spent to relocate Israel Defense Forces bases outside the Gaza Strip and build new border crossing facilities. [51]
After Israel’s evacuation from Gaza…
430,000 West Bank Palestinians able to move freely within and between Palestinian-controlled areas. [52] 1 Israeli remaining in Gaza. Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit was abducted from Israel on June 25, 2006 by Hamas in a bloody cross-border raid in which the terrorists also killed two IDF soldiers and wounded four others. [53] 1.2 million Arabs who remained full and legal citizens of Israel. All Israeli citizens – Christians, Muslims, and Jews – have freedom of speech, religion, press, and the right to vote. [54] 1.3 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip many of them in Palestinian Authority-controlled refugee camps, who live under their own leaders. [55] 820,000 Jewish refugees forced to flee without their belongings from Arab countries between 1947 and 1949, and who have never been compensated by Arab governments for their losses. [58] 650,000 Arab refugees who left Israel from 1947-1949 and still need Palestinian leaders who will end terrorism and the culture of hate. [57]
The Ontario arm of the Canadian Union of Public Employees announced yesterday it would propose, in a meeting next month, “a ban on Israeli academics doing speaking, teaching or research work at Ontario universities,” if they do not explicitly condemn Israeli action in Gaza.
Let me see if I understand that.
CUPE, in their support of "the Palestinian cause," would ban Israeli academics.
The headline in yesterday's Globe said this:
Proposed ban on Israeli academics sparks bitter debate
How can you debate when you are rendered speechless?
You can read the article yourself and then perhaps you could tell me what country am I living in?
The City of Richmond, one of my all-time favorite places for watching pea-brained politicians and their ego-centric managers fall all over their Velcro-tied loafers, has done it again.
Turns out one of their biggest projects ever may have to be scrapped.
The Sun Tech City project was one of those Gordon Campbell-inspired P3's - public private partnership. Give a developer a ton of goodies and watch him build you a Skytrain station, a small park, a couple of kiddy swings and a fountain. That's the general fantasy.
'Course, life doesn't always play into your hand.
Take that HUGE economic recession/depression. diporama now.
Read the whole gruesome story here, and then contemplate just what level of scepticism you should hold in reserve the next time you hear some gasbag going on about P3's.
These public-private partnerships might even work on occasion if the rubes who are in public office and who have never run so much as a Bingo game weren't creaming their jeans with the excitement of playing with the Big Boys.
The suits in the towers must be bending over in hysterics every time the phone rings from one of these municipal offices with yet another grand scheme to build a highway or a subway line or a bunch of hospitals.
And, by the way, you'll never guess who gets left holding various bags of debt...
UPDATE: Israel enters Gaza to end Hamas rocket threat IDF’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’ splits Strip in two By David Parsons, Editor ICEJ News
Some 18 months after Hamas seized control of Gaza, reluctant Israeli leaders finally decided to take serious military action against the growing rocket threat on its southern towns, launching a week-long aerial campaign on December 27 followed by a ground offensive now in its third day, both of which appear to have taken the Islamist militia by surprise.
The Prelude to War After unilaterally pulling out of Gaza during Disengagement in August 2005, Israel’s leaders hoped for a quieter border but got instead a four-fold increase in the rate of rocket fire onto neighboring communities, with over six thousand rockets and mortars pounding the western Negev over the past three years alone. Since Hamas seized control of the Strip 18 months ago, the number, range and payload of those rockets have all been on the rise.
Hamas has also built up a paramilitary force of nearly 20,000 trained fighters and honeycombed Gaza with a network of underground fortifications and tunnels, while also smuggling in rockets with extended ranges of over 25 miles, along with anti-tank and anti-aircraft rockets and tons of high-grade explosives.
An unwritten six-month truce brokered by Egypt brought a ‘lull’ in fighting but it effectively ended in early November, and Hamas has been anxious to display its expanded arsenal of weapons with renewed Kassam barrages. Thus Israel’s caretaker government felt it had little choice but to take action, despite its long-standing reticence and the approach of national elections.
Caught Off Guard Now in its second week, the IDF’s “Operation Cast Lead” began just two days after Christmas with a wave of air strikes that targeted Hamas militia commanders, as well as Kassam rocket factories, warehouses and launch sites. Over the next seven days, the Israeli air force expanded its target list to include weapons smuggling tunnels along the border with Sinai, as well as the homes of senior Hamas leaders and even a university building and three mosques known to be used for arms production and storage.
The initial air assault appeared to have caught Hamas off guard, as Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak employed diversionary tactics to hide the fact that a political decision had already been taken to order a large-scale IDF military campaign in Gaza. Although 90 rockets and mortars struck the western Negev on Christmas Day, Barak ordered the Gaza crossings opened the next day a Friday and put out word that a Gaza operation would only be discussed at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday. Thus, Hamas was not expecting the IAF bombardment that came on the intervening Saturday also the Jewish Shabbat.
The initial wave of air strikes killed 150 Palestinians, mainly Hamas combatants, including some 70-80 ‘police’ cadets gathered for a graduation ceremony from their training academy. Hamas later admitted it was caught by surprise but claimed that its military wing was already in hiding and had survived largely unscathed. That appears to be the case, although several senior Hamas militia commanders have been killed in targeted air strikes.
In response to the Israeli “aggression,” Hamas began firing longer range Grad rockets supplied by Iran deeper than ever into Israel, killing three civilians. The Chinese-made missiles started raining down on Ashdod and Beersheva, large Israeli cities some 40 kilometers away from Gaza. But the move only seemed to galvanize public support for the IDF operation, which entered phase two this past Saturday with the launching of a ground offensive.
Just before dusk the IDF first laid down an artillery barrage in order to take out mine fields and Hamas fortifications just inside the border. Shrouded by a smoke screen, a column of 150 Israeli tanks and APCs then swept across the border after dark, in search of Hamas forces hopefully staggered by a week of intense airstrikes. Again, the IDF had foiled Hamas plans to inflict heavy casualties at the outset, with only one IDF soldier killed in the opening clashes.
IDF sources said that the immediate goal was to cripple the Hamas terror network and to grab and hold areas in northern Gaza where most of the rocket launch sites are located.
Yesterday, the head of the IDF’s intelligence branch, Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, gave the Israeli cabinet an upbeat assessment of the military campaign so far, claiming that “hundreds of terrorists have been killed and weapons and ammunition stocks have been destroyed, along with tunnels and rocket manufacturing facilities. The Hamas government isn't functioning, and the group's leaders aren't serving the citizens but themselves alone. There is much criticism of Hamas amongst Palestinians for bringing on this situation."
Shades of Lebanon Indeed, the Palestinian terror militias have been bloodied, as over 80 percent of the 500 Palestinian casualties so far have been Hamas combatants, according to Palestinian and UN sources inside Gaza.
But the IDF’s claims of success, however, have reminded some of the Second Lebanon War, which most Israelis consider a draw at best. When hostilities erupted in July 2007, there was an initial euphoria amid IDF boasts that it had inflicted major damage to Hizbullah through air strikes, while ensuing ground operations were limited to short probes that repeatedly captured and lost the same territory several times over.
But Israeli security forces appear to have implemented the lessons of that conflict this time around with a swift and determined ground thrust, while Israel’s political echelon is trying to do a more credible job than in the Lebanon conflict at defining the goals of the operation and the ultimate exit strategy from Gaza.
The stated aim is not to re-occupy the Gaza Strip, thereby providing Hamas with static targets for its terror cells. Rather, Barak has stated that the operation is meant to change the “strategic equation” in terms of Hamas having a base to smuggle in heavier weapons and establish a permanent threat to Israel’s southern half.
In this regard, it is clear that Israel is trying to keep Hamas from building itself into as large a threat as Hizbullah now poses to the North, with its rebuilt arsenals now exceeding 40,000 rockets, including longer range missiles capable of striking most of Israel.
But the Israeli cabinet is apparently split over whether to simply stop the rocket attacks and leave a weakened Hamas in power, or whether the end-game is to cripple Hamas to the point that Fatah can regain control of the Gaza Strip, perhaps backed by international or NATO troops.
The Battle for World Opinion Meanwhile on the diplomatic front, the UN Security Council has tried several times to pass Arab-sponsored resolutions that denounce Israel and demand an immediate ceasefire. But the US has blocked the drafts so far, with Washington insisting the language must condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization that seized power in Gaza from the legitimate Palestinian Authority.
The outgoing Bush Administration has also called for a “durable” and “sustainable” ceasefire that would be “respected” by Hamas, and not just some temporary truce that allows the Islamist terror militia to continue arming itself with longer range rockets.
The Arab League met last Wednesday at the foreign minister level and condemned Israel’s actions. But several Arab leaders also were critical of Hamas for giving Israel the pretext to attack due to its “irresponsible” Kassam rocket fire, as well as its blocking of efforts at Palestinian unity by wrecking reconciliation talks with Fatah.
Egyptian officials in particular have been scathing in their response to disparaging comments from Syria and Iran, and were especially livid when Hizbullah sheikh Hassan Nasrallah urged Egyptians to take to the streets and basically topple the Mubarak regime.
Meantime, anti-Israel protests have spread from Arab to European capitals, but they seem to have misread the lack of sympathy for Hamas among world leaders. Not only is there widespread concern about the group’s totalitarian and Islamist agenda for Gaza, but also its close ties to Iran, which is racing for the nuclear threshold in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.
By the Numbers On Dec. 27, Israel began "Operation Cast Lead" to stop Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza from continuing its decade-long campaign of attacking Israeli civilians with thousands of rockets, missiles and mortars:
8 years of rocket terror from Gaza
10,000 rockets and mortars fired
1,000 Israelis injured
750,000 civilians now at risk
