HELP!

Could someone please explain to me what is going on here?

I speak of what passes for traffic in the City of Vancouver.

On Thursday at 6:30 pm, it took me half an hour to drive from the Stanley Park tennis courts to the Burrard Bridge.

Most of that time was spend idling and inching along Beach Avenue and Pacific.

That trip usually takes 5 minutes. The Lions' Game was Friday, wasn't it?

Then it took me another 15 minutes to get from the Burrard Bridge to 10th and Sasamat.

Yesterday, driving east on Broadway, I was stuck idling again for a full five minutes while a construction truck turned around at Birch.

At Cambie, we were ushered into a single lane and that took another five minutes.

Is it just me, or has driving in this city become a complete nightmare?

I basically loathe driving into the downtown core at any hour of the day or night.

And this doesn't even mention the complete disappearance of the turn signal, the inability to use a traffic circle and the Happy Wanderers.

Come on, explain it to me.

Let me assure you, Mr. Premier and Mr. Mayor-to-be and Mr. Transclunk, let me assure you all that if there existed an LRT running down 10th Avenue that got me swiftly and safely to the Canada Line on Cambie, I would happily leave my car at home.

Until then, it will be the PNE and Bumper Cars year round.

But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln...

At a social gathering recently, a young woman said what we didn't know it was possible to say.

Tall, beautiful and well-spoken, for over an hour she hovered by the food table and riffed on her favorite theme - only autocratic governments that can plan 50 years in advance are worthy of our attention.

Health care, transportation - if only someone had the vision to organize us all.

Then, just when it seemed she might run out of steam, the coup de gras.

"Hitler's legacy," she offered, "included large tracts of open land that could be used in the future for transportation corridors."

We were gone shortly thereafter.

Priorities

The people of Ashcroft have got it right.

The Campbell government is drunk on Olympics and SkyTrains and convention centres.

It is too drunk to notice the exit of doctors.

Two over-worked and beloved doctors are leaving the town of Ashcroft and its exhausted hospital because they have been slaving 100+ hours a week.

The CEO of the Interior Health Authority says, of course, "No problem."

Andrew Neuner is no doubt a $300,000 a year man.

Nothing is a problem for him.

And asking him to care about the problems of the sick and the elderly in his jurisdiction is apparently unseemly.

Let the Name-Calling Begin

It is as predictable as rain in Vancouver.

The moment I write a piece in the Province decrying harm seduction policies and the garbage can called Insite and asking for more money for real treatment, the hate mail arrives in 100-lb. bags.

I'm arrogant. I'm an a-hole. I'm ignorant. I know nothing about the issues.

So be it.

And watch for more columns and more posts and more articles in the same drug-free vein.

The Skinny on the Two Skinnies

Frances Bula has left her City Hall beat at the Vancouver Sun and moved to Vancouver Magazine.

Her piece this month called "Next Mayor" is first-rate.

She gives us just about everything we could ever stand to know about Peter Ladner and Gregor Robertson - to start with not the two most exciting guys in the neighbourhood.

If you are going to vote this November, you owe it to yourself to read this.

Strike Up the Band

The officially endorsed Culture of Failure rolls on.

The City is on a big orgy of self-congratulation because it is buying a slew of single rooms in the DTES.

But Mark Hasiuk, writing in the Courier today, nails this mistake for exactly what it is - a further concentration of failure.

Read it here.

Michael York & Liza Minelli - Maybe This Time

Other Voices

Alex G. Tsakumis has written column in 24 Hours today similar to mine in content and point of view. Read it here.

Today's Province Column

The Harper government is headed the right way in the battle against drugs

David Berner Special to The Province
Friday, August 22, 2008

Federal Health Minister Tony Clement is on a dangerous mission.

Clement is bucking the accepted wisdom and the official stories about safe-injection sites such as Vancouver's Insite. He knows these are hideous mistakes that help very few.

He knows the facts have been manipulated by doctors and social workers and politicos to support a program that is a deadly waste.

Addressing the Canadian Medical Association the other day, Clement said: "Over the last five years, while Insite has been operating, we could have provided treatment to 5,000 addicts.

"Instead, during that time, 250 addicts have died of drug overdose alone. "The vast majority of injections still take place in back alleys and seedy hotels, and the centre's $3-million annual cost would be better spent elsewhere."

Clement has been viciously attacked for stating the politically-incorrect truth.

Knee-jerk. Simple-minded.

These are the accusations thrown at anyone who dares question the efficacy of Insite.

Earlier this week, the Conservatives sent out a mailing decrying free needles and safe-injection sites.

There is a photo of a discarded needle in a children's playground. The word "SAFE?" is engraved on the photo.

The text talks about keeping junkies off the street and in rehab. The text uses words like "junkie."

Some are outraged at this cruel attack on the sanctity of heroin addicts.

Here's some news for them: Heroin addicts call themselves "junkies." Get over it.

Every time I speak in public about dope fiends and junkies, some cunning linguist rises in morally-superior objection.

Mark Townsend, the man responsible for running Insite, said he was depressed to find the Conservative mailing at his home.

I'm depressed every time I hear about Insite. And Townsend's depression is not my concern.

My concern is that, rather than providing treatment, too many people are helping junkies to stay stupid.

Not willing to do anything substantive about addictions, one government afteranother, federal, provincial and local, has dithered.

The Four Pillars, the needle exchange and Insite seemed ready answers. So respective city mayors and the 200 social service agencies in the Downtown Eastside hopped aboard the bandwagon.

The results? You tell me.

Here in B.C., the home of a million free needles a year for addicts, there are children born with diabetes. Today, the parents of those children are begging the provincial government to provide the insulin pumps these youngsters need to survive.

But if you don't support free needles, free crack kits and safe-injection sites, you're told you don't understand a complex problem.

The Harper government is heading in the right direction on drug addiction and crime.

It is to be applauded heartily for this -- and should be given a standing ovation if and when it provides money for real treatment.

david@davidberner.com

Stephan John Stock, 25

Three Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday.

I will not change my mind.

This is a needless obscenity.

Once Upon a Time..

Property values will skyrocket along the Canada line.

This is news?

This is the story of Canada. This is the story of highways and railways since Rome.

Now what would bea real story is if some enterprising reporter for one of our dailies could reveal who knew, who was told, who bought under numbered companies the devalued properties just before the announcement of construction.

Now that would be a story.

Mommy Dearest

A mother throws her baby into a swimming pool and kills him.

In court, where she pleads guilty to infanticide, she is given a conditional sentence of two years less a day to be served at home, with three years' probation to follow.

The usual truckload of psychiatric gumbo is hauled into the hearing and the equation.

May I be so rude as to ask a few questions?

What value do we place on the life of a baby?

What help - if help is what is needed - will this woman receive in her basement suite in Surrey?

What do we, the community, the courts, do when she becomes pregnant again?

Homelessness

Below is Ladysmith Black Mambazo. It was my great pleasure to have them on my radio show at midnight in the early 90's.

Now, let me draw your attention to two pieces in the local press on this important issue.

Tom Sandborn, writing in yesterday's Courier rightly skewers several politicians for their playing with numbers, while accomplishing little.

The amount of pure BS that has been emitted from local gasbags on this subject is appalling, when you consider how they have refused to really tackle the issue.

In today's Sun, Dr. Kerry Jang, asks the question, "Which comes first - a new home or a cleaned up street person?"

It's a fair enough question, but he spends so much time asking it that he leaves only a few short sentences for the answer.

The answer is that neither extreme is correct.

The answer is that homeless people need homes, just as anyone does. But a home without purpose, direction, focus, love and support is not a home; it is a building.

That is why the treatment program we ran for years worked - because it was all these things and more. That is why so many government answers to these problems don't work.

The monumental premier and the city politicians believe in real estate. They don't understand that CONTENT IS CRUCIAL.

It is easy to buy or build wooden structures.

It is much more challenging and labor intensive and attention-demanding to create the structure of do's and don't and wills and won'ts that exist in a real home.

Wake me up when the politicians get it and start to invest in non-profit groups who actually know how to help homeless people find homes.

You know the more I think of it, the more I am starting to feel sorry for people like Gordon Campbell. Guys rushing around building and buying, grabbing and snaring and espousing and saying and travelling and conquering...and not a clue about what really counts and how things really work. Always on the lookout for the Easy Answer, the Ready Solution, the healine grabber.

Blah, blah, blah - zilch.

These boobs are sadder than the guy on the street.

Homeless

Admission

OK.

I admit it.

I'm an Anti-Lawnite.

Have been for a very lawn time...uh, long time.

Hate lawns. Don't get them. See them as a Protestant plot to make us all dull and the same.

One of the many joys of my home is that my back yard is a driveway bordered by a huge tree, and my front yard is a jungle choking with 20 different plants and bushes, all overseen by an enormous pine.

Did you know that Americans spend - read, waste - $40 BILLION dollars a year on grass - and that's not the kind you smoke.

"And how much water?" I ask.

One of my idiot neighbours has built in sprinklers. Pulleeeeezze.

Half the world is dying and we're watering in a rain forest to get a carpet.

Here's the really, really, really good news.

I am not alone.

Read this wonderful article, called "Turf War," from the New Yorker magazine of July 21 and marvel.

I will be happier when all the unnatural, imported from other countries grasses are replaced with vegetable gardens, rock gardens, ponds, bushes, wild grasses and weeds.

May I never again here the intruding noises of electric and gas mowers and that worst of all urban pests, the whirly trimmer thing. One day, I will rip the fishing line from one of those suckers and wrap it around the fool piloting it at 8 am on a Sunday.

Another Country Heard From

"Quebec says no to safe-injection sites for now"

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=c1e36f15-2e98-4463-b470-a2919f40848f&k=55177



Quebec says no to safe-injection sites for now
Canwest News Service
Published: Wednesday, August 20, 2008
QUEBEC - Quebec has decided not to open safe-injection sites for drug
addicts, citing too little scientific evidence about their effectiveness.

The decision comes only two days after Tony Clement, the federal health
minister, assailed the Canadian Medical Association for supporting Canada's
first supervised drug-injection site in Vancouver, arguing it is against
their profession's code of ethics to allow drug addicts to shoot up.

The federal government is a vocal opponent of the project and has repeatedly
tried to shut it down.

A spokeswoman for Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc said Clement's comments
didn't influence them.
"We are not ready to endorse what Mr. Clement said," Marie-Eve Bedard said
Wednesday. "There's a question of public opinion, but we are also concerned
about the fact that there is no consensus in the medical community about
this. So right now we don't have enough information to go ahead."

In June, then health minister Philippe Couillard said he was considering
setting up safe-injection sites in the province.

Bedard said the government didn't change its mind on the issue but has
rather decided to wait for convincing evidence such a site can cut down on
blood-borne infections among drug addicts and set users on the road to
recovery.

One of the Great recordings of One of the Greatest Ballads ever written

No Insight

Knee-jerk. Simple-minded.

These are the accusations thrown at anyone who dares questions the official story called Insite.

Federal health Minister Tony Clement is daring exactly this and he is being torn asunder in the press.

Today, the Vancouver Sun has launched a broadside at Clement and the Harper government in their lead editorial.

But understand how this game is played.

Not willing to do anything substantive about addictions, one government after another, federal, provincial and local, has dithered.

The FOur Pillars and Needle Exchange and Insite seemed ready answers. Big swift solutions.

So The Three Amigos (Mayors) and the 200 social service agencies in the DTES hopped on board the bandwagon.

Results?

You tell me.

Now, if you don't buy into the Official Story you don't understand a complex problem.

You are simple minded and knee jerk and law-and-order.

Ooooooooh. How bad!

The editorial makes the laughable claim that no government stood idly by.

The truth is that ALL the governments have stood idly by, ignoring the small pockets of real work being done in rehabilitation and treatment.

What is passing these days for treatment is gas.

A poor misguided fool writes in a letter to the editor today that for Insite to really be effective it should also give out free heroin. Why? Because then you could talk to the addicts about treatment and it would cut down on crime.

Hahahahaha...

Now here is a fellow who truly knows nothing about addictions.

1. You can't talk to a drunk or a hopped up junkie about anything. You can only talk to someone who is detoxed and clean and sober.

2. What treatment?

3. Junies want more. They will continue to commit crimes to buy more illegal junk after their free hit.

The ignorance on these issues is frightening.

And it is this ignorance that keeps the Editorialists and 200 social agencies and Insite supporters in business.

Out with the Old

What could be clearer about this provincial government's priorities.

They are rushing to close a publicly funded and run old folks home on the Island so that they can have a private care home open.

Read the Province story and toss your cookies.

Georgia on Our Mind

Thre is a revealing editorial in this morning's NY Times regarding the Russia-Georgia conflict.

The piece is written by Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union.

The claim is that Georgia - and the U.S. - have much to answer for.

Read it.