Thursday, May 8, 2008
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Transclunk to the Rescue
Transclunk is really special, isn't it?
A girl is attacked and robbed at one of Skytrain's wonderful freeloader stations.
Good news. Clunksville has a videotape.
Bad News. Tape gets recycled every two hours. Solly. No footage of crime. No charges. You have back luck, Lady.
But look, more good news.
Clunkerama announces that within a year it will have...wait for it...digital equipment that will record for...gasp...7 days!
Hahahaha....
Every kid in the cafeteria at the school where I work has a wafer sized electronic gadget that can send and receive videos, movies, music and messages from and to the entire universe in nono-seconds wirelessly.
But Clunkkopf will take a year to fix their little problem.
On the next page to this story, the government of Canada has a half-page ad telling us that our safety is their first concern.
Tell it to the girl who was attacked and robbed. Tell it to her family. Tell it to Clunktown.
What'$ in a Name?
Dr. Ron Burnett has written an interesting and persuasive argument in the op-ed page of the Sun today about why Emily Carr - he is the President - now rightly designated a University.
You may have noticed that two weeks ago, the Premier went on a bit of a roll: every day for five days in a row, he named yet another college now a university - Capilano, Malispina, Kwantlen, Emily Carr, and...and...I forget.
No doubt every one is very proud and excited. Even though almost nobody can figure out what the point was for doing all this renaming.
But be assured that within a very short time the Law of Unintended Consequences will set in and the You and I will be paying mightily for the Premier's Naming Week.
Very soon, all those instructors at colleges who have been earning $70K or $90K will wake up and realize that they are now Professors at Universities and they will demand parity, and $90K won't be nearly enough to make them feel good about themselves. Better $125K or such.
Nice move. Gord.
Child Care is Our Darkest Shame - But, hey, have another latte...
Following on my recent postings and Province editorial about Child Care in BC...
Today, BC's Auditor-General, John Doyle, released a scathing report of exactly this subject. He says the government has no idea how anybody in their care is doing.
According to Doyle's report, more than half the children in care are aboriginal, the government has no idea which programs that they pay for are working and which are not, which services are needed, how many social or other workers are necessary and so on.
Of course, the absolute fool, Tim Christensen, who has been the Minister of this Disaster, for far too long, quickly defended his efforts.
Resign Tim. You're not cutting it. Children are suffering while you dither.
At the same time, the Federal Auditor-General, Sheila Fraser pointed out that children living on reserves are eight times more likely to receive child welfare services than those not on reserves.
Why do we as a nation continue to allow this monstrosity to exist?
Why do the first nations people allow their own children to suffer so badly?
No doubt I am a racist or something worse for asking these dreadful questions.
No Comp for Land? Welcome to Russia
VICTORIA -- The B.C. government has quietly introduced legislation that would give it the formal right to retake control of certain public lands without paying compensation.
There's your opening paragraph in the business section of this morning's Sun.
Read the whole article and then please tell me what this is about.
Can you say, "Draconian," boys & girls?
Delgado Knows
Immediately below is yestserday's post about the Maritime Museum.
Today, the Sun quotes former director Jim Delgado extensively on how the City has gone out of its way to destroy the Museum.
Delgado is practically a genius - a diver, a writer, a photographer, a lecturer and a museum curator. He was, simply put, one of the best people in this city for many years. We were lucky to have him.
He fled a few years ago to Texas, to a much better job.
I remember chatting with him on Cypress Street near the Museum one afternoon just before he left. He ran the list of how and why his job had become impossible. The buck stopped entirely at City Hall.
Judy Rogers, the City Manager, says today that she doesn't know why Jim left. She must be deaf, dumb and blind or simply lying.
He left because of her and the City' s entirely neglegtful attitude toward this invaluable resource.
Shame on them all.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Who will Stand Up for The Maritime Museum?
Recently I wrote in The Province about art and culture. I mentioned specifically the disgrace of our Maritime Museum, how it is starved of funds, how it ought to be a beautiful showcase for who we are as a maritime community.
Today, the Sun reports that the geniuses at Vancouver City hall have told the Maritime Museum to close its doors by the end of 2009.
Close before you have secured a new home.
Close before the 2010 party.
Close before you any firm plans for the future...not to mention regard for the past. Remember the past? We used to call that History. We used to have some interest in it.
The President of the the non-profit society that runs the Maritime Museum has placed considerable blame at the feet of Sue Harvey. He has called her dismissive and disrespectful.
You may not know of Sue Harvey.
But you should.
She is the Great Czarina of all things cultural in this hick town.
She spends your money and you have never heard of her.
Harvey is the city's managing director of cultural services.
And I can testify that Harvey is arrogant and dismissive and disrespectful. I've met with her. Once is more than enough, thank you.
But, you see, when you get to control an entire element of your community for years and without any apparent oversight by your employers, that's what happens...you become arrogant and dismissive and disrespectful.
Harvey's abrasive style and personality aside, the treatment of the Maritime Museum by this city, province and federal governments is a crying shame.
A pox on all your short-sighted, short-lived and short-armed houses.
Snapshot
Last week, I parked my car on Cordova near Abbott at 6:45 pm.
I walked a block and a half to The Spaghetti Factory to meet an old friend. We meet there about once every four or five months.
Here is what I saw.
Four homeless men lying in rags under the eaves of buildings, one after another.
Then, on the corner, and immediately adjacent to the homeless men, a new and very upscale chi-chi eatery. Big windows, big show. And filled with chi-chi folk, clearly happy to be seen in the big windows as part of the big show.
Vancouver April, 2008.
A MUSICAL NOTE
Below are two videos of The Byrds, I believe from the same concert on the same day.
The first, "Turn, Turn, Turn," is their brilliant version of Pete Seeger's wonderful musical adaptation of the great poetry of The Book of Ecclesiastes.
The second is yet another of Dylan's anthemic calling cards, "Mr. Tambourine Man."
What is wonderful, aside from the great music and arrangements, is the moment when Dylan walks out on stage. The audience just completely loses it.
Also wonderful is remembering, as we watch and listen, how we all knew the words to songs like Tambourine Man, while I'm sure we had and have absolutely no idea what they mean or meant.
"In the jingle, jangle morning, I'll come following you..."
Monday, May 5, 2008
TRANSCLUNK REDUX
We had quite a few comments on this morning's post about the idiots who designed and mis-run Transclunk, but these two below, deserve special attention:
David,
I have used BART in SF and Metro in DC often in my life, and both systems have secure entry and exit systems. And on both systems, everyone pays.
My favorite example for the operators of the Loser Cruiser though is this: In what is arguably the most civil, upstanding, law-abiding cultures on earth - Japan, the subway systems in Tokyo, Osaka and all other cities have TURNSTILES! Japanese rapid transit systems use the same secure gates that all grown-up cities use. And it's very easy for visitors to use: if you don't speak or read the language and aren't sure how much to pay to get to your destination, the system tells you when you reach your exit point.
Loser Cruiser officials keep claiming than they based their "honor-pay" system on research of other rapid transit sytems. I have travelled the world my entire life and find it hard to believe any of them have ever used rapid transit anywhere, even in Vancouver.
John
I was in Hong Kong with a friend this past March. We rode the Metro extensively (in fact it was fabulous and got us to far flung areas not just destinations within the city). Upon arrival we purchased an Octopus Card (http://www.thingsasian.com/stories-photos/2582) which made paying for our transit use extremely efficient. And like BART, you pay when you go in, and if you ride further than your initial payment allowed, you pay when you go out. It appeared to us that people wouldn't think of not paying -- you use the system, therefore you pay. Simple.
We really are a hick town (one with fabulous views of mountains and the ocean, but a hick town nonetheless). An honour system is a joke, and it breeds misuse and a culture of "let's see what we can get away with".
I've ridden the subway systems in San Francisco, New York, Paris and London -- you always pay as far as I can see. It seems Vancouver can never quite figure out what is simple for the rest of the world.
Mo.
TRANSLINK - THE NEW PLAGUE
You won't read this story in the local press.
But you should.
We were heading to Steveston yesterday afternoon and we gave a lift to a friend who lives in Richmond.
Our friend pointed out that the 98 B-Line express bus no longer asks for or checks on tickets. Much like the idiotic and self-defeating and costly "honor" system on the Skytrain.
The result of this largess, our friend advises us, is that homeless people have figured out that they can relocate for free. Now, Richmond has a new population of homeless people who have travelled from downtown Vancouver.
Further, he suggests that when the famous Canada Excuse-me-While-We-Wreck-Your-Business-And-Destroy-Your-Life-Savings Line is in operation that the homeless will be expressing their way to new sidewalks in Richmond in droves.
Thus - follow the bouncing ball - Transclunk is the carrier of the social disease.
Much as they have already helped spread drug addiction and drug sales and robbery and violence to Joyce, New West and Surrey to name a few. The Skytrain - free and available - is the Ride-of-Choice for petty crooks and creeps of every stripe.
I was in San Fransisco a few months ago. BART has the same system as the subway in Washington, DC.
Pay when you want in, pay when you want out. If your ticket is not sufficient, you must buy extra value from the machine before you can leave.
Skytrain and Transclunk are provincial hicktown jokes. Worse they are dangerous and carriers of social contagion.
Fed Up
It is pleasing to see the Parent Advisory Councils refuse support for the BC Teachers' Federation.
The Fed wants to regain control of little issues like class size, compostition and staffing ratios.
They lost those bargaining rights and the Parents are exactly correct in not helping the Fed to have them again.
Catcher in the Rye
On April 25, I wrote in my Province column about the running disaster known as the Ministry of Children and Families here in BC.
I pointed out - for about the 900th time in recent years - that money and political correctness are not the answers.
This morning we learn of yet another child - a four-year old girl - who has been hideously abused, in this case by her drunk and demonic and incapable-of-minding-a-gold-fish grandmother.
The girl had her two blackened eyes camouflaged with make-up.
Is it truly possible that no one knew that this woman was a drunk?
What is much more likely is that because the girl is aboriginal and because her grandmother is aboriginal and because it was an aboriginal social agency that did the placement, all was considered settled.
Sorry, not good enough and naive in the extreme.
The ministry's political correctness and blindness to realities has endangered yet another child.
We don't need another inquiry. We've had 3 to date.
We need new and KNOWLEDGEABLE management of this important, but largely ignored department.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Oh Cotton Canada
MADE IN ???Kvetching that the Canadian Olympic shmatas will be made in China is a marvelous example of crying after the horse has left the barn.
I grew up in the textile trades. Just about everyone in my family was in one way or another working in the manufacturing or selling of clothes. My grandfather sewed furs, my uncle Max owned most of the buttons, thread and zippers in Winnipeg, my Uncle Tom was the Head Tailor at The bay for 25 years - an authentic Gold Watch man. My mother was the bookkeeper for any number of clothing factories, my aunt, a secretary. Heck, I sold men's clothing at The Bay when I was in my teens.
And it is interesting to note that it is HBC - The Bay - the oldest company in Canada, is it not? - that has the Olympic contract.
But the glory days of Canadian textiles are as much history as Eatons and Woodwards. And no doubt for many of the same reasons - labor costs and world competition.
Having said all that it is still annoying and disappointing to see HBC not try a little harder, be a little more creative in trying to find ways to have these products Made in Canada.
I suspect nothing will resuscitate what has been for some time now a moribund industry, but wearing Canadian products and being able to boast of it would have added a note or two of much needed Canadian pride.
Oh, well, perhaps we can make up for that on the playing fields.
Perhaps the performance enhancing drugs that will carry our athletes to the podiums will be hatched in secret Canadian home labs.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Falsehoods on a Moibus Strip
The Nutty Mayor has called Courier editorial writer Allen Garr a liar, and has accused Garr of writing falsehoods.
But, as Garr reveals so clearly in yesterday's Courier, it is the Nutty One who is messing with the truth.
The matter at hand is how Nutty tried to trademark the word Ecodensity and then has tried ever since to deny that he did.
No great number of denials will change the facts.
Nutty continues to be self-serving entirely and as dissembling as a certain English King.
"Now is the winter of our discontent..."
The Righteous are Wrong - Over and Over and Over Again
So many righteous people are lining up.
Neil Boyd, Debra Macpherson, a hundred imminent scientists, and yesterday, the Sun Editorial.
They are all casting Prime Minister Harper as the devil.
And the Insite safe injection place as a saviour of humankind.
And they are all honorable men and women.
And they are all wrong.
The studies on which they base their claims are bogus and political and wrong, exactly the charge they lay at Harper.
The real studies have clearly revealed that Insite is eating up $3 Million a year and accomplishing next to nothing.
Anyone in the know will assure you that the addicts who shoot up at Insite are shooting up in the alley a few hours later.
That almost no one is referred to real treatment because so few real treatment beds exist and because it is a fact of life that you cannot talk to a stoned junkie about cleaning up.
All of these people are so sincere and so caring and so knowledgeable.
Let one of them extend his hand to an addict and offer real help - quitting.
Anything less is enabling, cruel and detestable.
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