The Big Zero Sum BIke Caper

The City of Vancouver claims that a recent survey of some 300 people proves that the famous Burrard Street Bike Lane joke has been a clear winner.

I have given this matter serious and prolonged consideration.

For ages upon ages, I posted my daily count of bicycles.

That is, until I tired of the whole silly thing.

Here is my conclusion, rigged and slanted and unreliable surveys aside:

This has been a nothing, a non-event, a smoke-screen for lack of action and ineptitude on other more pressing issues.

The net result of wasting $1.5 Million of public tax money is zero.

No big rush of bikes, no big traffic snarls.

Just headlines and arguments and the spending of tax dollars on an irrelevancy.

Feh! Poo-poo.

NEXT!

CBC News - British Columbia - Olympic security plan a safety risk, airline warns

CBC News - British Columbia - Olympic security plan a safety risk, airline warns: "Olympic security plan a safety risk, airline warns
Saltspring Air says diverting passengers for screening will jeopardize flights"

Yes, another fun Olympic moment.

Accountability

A girl of 12 murders her parents and younger brother.

Now, three years after being confined to a secure building in a mental institution, the girl may be allowed out from an Edmonton psychiatric hospital so she can go to banks and malls.

Her 'treatment team' is seeking such approvals from Alberta's Solicitor-General.

May the Solicitor-General have the good common sense to say, "Absolutely not!"

Or add a little rider: Each and every one of you nut bars on the treatment team will be publicly named and held personally responsible when this crazy person kills again.

Program Advisory

The PBS television program, 'Frontline' features an hour long documentary tonight called "The Medicated Child."

In the Vancouver area, that can be found on KCTS 9/Cable 27 at 9 pm.

I have been speaking for many years now about what I feel is a public crime and con job by Big Pharma - the overselling of powerful drugs for the alleged "problms" of children.

This piece might be worth a gander.

H1N1 - The 2-Tier Shot

Private-clinic patients jump the line for flu shot

Health agencies give clinics in Toronto and Vancouver access to vaccines amid shortage; Ontario vows review


No. Not a swift move, folks.

Not when people are lining up for blocks to get theirs.

The Copeman Clinic here in Vancouver has already received its first shipment and expects more.

Then why are my doctor and his clinic still waiting?

Time Warped

What century is this?

Pay for these dimwits to travel about, wave at the peasants?

Th photo in the print edition is much better.

C & C are captured in the back of an open carriage. He is sporting a top hat, she a great swooping white something on her head and a quiet tasteful bead of pearls.

King...queen...royal consort. Whatever.

I read through Sir Walter Scott by the time I was about eight.

Nice old bygone era for sure.

Hello, Future. Bye Bye Canerda.

While the broadcasters and the cable companies continue to make the Globe and other papers rich with their daily full-page ads accusing each other of being THE robber barons in the television landscape, Sheridan Scott has written a prescient little piece this morning pointing us to the real future - the net.

She warns that the Brits and Aussies are accommodating themselves to the new communications world and illustrates how Canada is typically twiddling its dials and thumbs.

Note the obvious - you have read all of this on your computer, or for all I know, on your smart phone while eating a sandwich, making love, driving your beemer and moving that portfolio into something more productive.

Canada, the B movie.

For the Birds

When I saw that very large and fat and healthy looking robin on the laburnum tree behind my house this morning, I was sure that I was hallucinating again.

Or maybe the poor thing was just five months off schedule.

But then I checked with my Audubon Field Guide (There's one on the kitchen window sill and one on the table near the glass doors off the living room.) and cheer-eep, cheer-up:

The American Robin winters in British Columbia and Newfoundland.

Who knew?

I hope my guy has a good safe flight to St. John's.

To Have and Have Not

The local government has no shame.

And no sense of sweet reason or equity or simple good judgement.

By now, you all know about The Deal.

The B.C. government is under fire for giving out an untendered $500,000 contract to Vancouver's elite Terminal City Club to host private soirees during the 2010 Olympics.

This is the same august body that is cutting mental health, addictions and senior's services in every sector.

Iain Black, minister of small business, technology and economic development, repeatedly stated the contract is about doing business.

"Our job is to host this $4-billion revenue-generating spectacular event, and that means we will host international dignitaries," Black told the house.

"It means we will host community and national leaders," he went on to say. "It means we will host international investors and leading academics from around the world. This is our opportunity. We have a job to do."

But Mr. Black knows not whereof he speaks.

Does he naively believe that these freeloaders will jump about and immediately bring business to Pender and Hornby?

No.

These guests are career leeches. They make a life of travel and expense accounts.

And most of them have no power. They are merely the advanced guard for people who are too busy to bother with such bosch.

The division in the sovereign state between the rich and poor, the touched and the untouchables has never been clearer.

Or more repugnant.

The Secret Democrat

A fascinating little fight is brewing just a few miles south of us in Washington State.

On Tuesday, voters will have the opportunity to vote for or against a ballot that will extend gay rights in many aways other than a full declaration of marriage.

At issue is who gets to see the names of the people who have signed petitions.

One would think at first blush that anyone who signs a petition of almost any kind should have the fibre to stand up and be counted.

But the Law of Unintended Consequences has come into play in the shape of the Internet.

Suddenly, in a country where referenda and open ballots often change laws faster than legislative bodies, some people want to know how you voted.

Why?

So they can harass you, because you didn't agree with their group.

This would be a clear invasion of privacy.

We may not have the urgency of such a dilemma here in Canada, but the question is still a good one.

Should your vote or signature on a ballot be made public?

Not Much of a Muchness

On the one hand, I read three newspapers this morning and found exactly nothing. Zilch, kaduches, gornischt, zero...

On the other hand (to quote a certain milkman), there is this great doumentary on Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis that follows below.

I'll try again tomorrow.

Cheers, Mates!

Music History

The Justice File, Part 9,217

The headline is misleading:

Three teens sentenced as adults for killing 14-year-old boy in Surrey

While that may be literally true, the sentences hardly reflected the callous brutality of the crime.

For beating and stabbing to death a 14-year old boy in Surrey in 2008, two teens were given 5 year sentences.

Another, 4 1/2 years.

All three dangerous scum were given two years "credit" for time already served while in custody.

Please understand that there are crooks and there are crooks.

Fully 90% of the people in Canadian prisons are silly goofs who are more of a danger to themselves than to anyone else.

They are good candidates for rehab and half-way houses in communities.

Then there are Clifford Olson and Robert Picton.

These are the handful of truly dangerous lunatic psychopaths who must never be released to anyone anywhere.

Just below them are the slightly larger number of violent, out-of-control murderous s.o.b.'s who kill 'cause it's Wednesday.

Like these three fine upstanding citizens who will now do about two years for murdering a young boy.

Why not 25 years? Why not little chance of parole?

Is the community never to be considered again in a Canadian court room?

Career Changes

Wonderland

Alice asked, "Is I mean what I say the same as I say what I mean?"

Lewis Carrol might have been dreaming into the future and imagining British Columbia where on any given street corner you can always buy a bite of mushroom where 'one side will make you tall, one side will make you small.'

We have, after all, a Premier who speaks out of both sides of his square head.

Well, judos to the Se't A'newey Performance Choir who have said, "Fuggetit, man."

Believing they were invited by Head Honcho Numero Uno to sing in the Opening Ceremonies, then de-invited, then offered a consolation prize, these kids unanimously opted for goin' fishin'.

Good on them.

To add insult to grievous injury, the little so-and-sos want an apology.

Why am I seeing a striped cat with a grin wider than his face?

Karzai Kapers

Here was Tuesday's little explosion in the N.Y. Times:

"KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials."

Translation: SNAFU

The brother of the Afghan president is both a major drug dealer and a paid CIA informant.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regularly refers to the embattled country as a "narco-state."

The Taliban is happily blowing up everything and everybody it can in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I don't know what we or anyone else is doing there.

I also don't know how we can sit back and watch the region collapse.

I'm stymied. This is a full-blown disaster and no one has shown me that they are less confused than I am.

Appointments

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto has published in this morning's papers an appointment announcement.

Dr. Catherine Zahn is the new CAMH President and CEO.

I don't know Dr. Zahn and I am sure she is a smart and accomplished and lovely person.

The CAMH is another cookie altogether.

It is a monolith formed some years back by the amalgamation of the Clarke Institute and the Addiction Research Foundation.

Here is how they describe themselves:

"Canada's leading mental health and addiction teaching hospita and research centre...committed to transforming lives..."

I cannot speak about their track record with people suffering from mental problems.

But I can tell you loud and clear that I know of NOT ONE addict who has walked away from CAMH as a clean and sober citizen.

Now, if one tenth of this vulnerable institution's multi-multi-multi-million dollar budget was passed on to the handful of real treatment programs scattered across the Canadian wilderness, we might be doing something useful.

But this is the way of the world, isn't it?

Governments, politicians, bureaucrats, doctors build big bold buildings and put stuff in them. They huff and puff and congratulate themselves silly.

Meanwhile on the other side of town, real people with real understanding of the issues work under strained conditions begging always for money.

Interview

Immediately below you will find a link to Joseph Planta's website, The Commentary.

Click in and you'll hear, if you like, an interview he did with me the other day about my recent re-acquaintance with real and effective drug treatment.

David Berner | thecommentary.ca

David Berner thecommentary.ca