Quick Court

Justice is supposed to be swift.

That notion has pretty much gone the way of the long bow and the noose.

But never fear.

VANOC conquers all.

Tourist courts to open for Games

Minor charges to be heard within 2 weeks

Which is all well and good and perfectly sensible.

But excuse the rude question.

If it was so darn easy to get all the court and police and justice ducks in a row so quickly so as to not inconvenience some drunken scofflaw from Amarillo, why can't we make that effort 365 for our own citizens?

A friend was involved in December in a comically outrageous run-in with highway police somewhere between Seattle and Portland. Guns were drawn. Not my friend's. He no pack.

He has now returned to the scene of the crime this month and must attend once more in early February.

I don't really care berry much if a law breaker guest from Allentown, PA has to get his sorry ass back here for a court appearance.

But I would like to see local cases cleared with the same enthusiastic dispatch.

By the way...

Does this mean there will be a big new neon sign at YVR - owned of course by the local native band - screaming

COME ON IN BREAK THE LAW GET OUT QUICK

WELCOME TO THE FRIENDLY GAMES

Leaping Lizards

My friend, Bob Ransford, contributed an excellent and thoughtful piece to the Vancouver Sun yesterday on the need for better planning in Greater Vancouver.

Give it a read.

Then, explain this mystery to me.

Two friends of mine - one lives in Shaughnessy in half a beautiful old mansion, and the other lives on 4 acres in the Gulf Islands in a log house he built with his own hands 40 years ago - have had their property assessments jump 60% this year.

That's right.

60%!

Short of discovering crude in the back yard, what could possibly justify this unholy demand for more tax money.

60% raise in one year?

They can't afford that and both are contesting this arbitrary and cruel "adjustment."

I can't.

Could you?

Should we?

The Devil's in the Details

Yesterday I wrote about City hall laying off workers - the wrong workers.

Today, our friendm Martin, shares the gruesome details:

Martino said...

The thing that bugs my wife the most about this is that not one person called or even asked what she does in her job. She oversees the busiest community centre in Vancouver (Kerrisdale) with the most programs. She is constantly overworked, with endless committees to attend, and always took on more responsibilities with a smile on her face.

Without her, there is no way to continue with the amount of programs that are currently running, which will inevitably lead to cuts. And the people who will suffer are the good taxpayers of Vancouver, who depend on their community centre to enrich and educate themselves/their children. To a lesser extent, the Community Centre suffers too, as they will lose revenue that gave it the ability to offer programs at a discounted rate to seniors and school age children.

The worse part of all this is they still expect her to represent the City of Vancouver at one of the LiveCity sites with a smile on her face. She become so cynical the last 48 hours that she thinks she'll have to resign from that, which stinks considering she supported the Olympics from day one and wanted to do her part to represent the city she was so proud of. She even turned down a great volunteer position with VANOC since the City asked that she represent the City for this event.

At the very least, the City should have hired an independent auditor who actually went out and found out what people did in their job...not some fatcat at City Hall who just wanted to balance the budget in order to keep their job.

Saw These 4 at Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall in '91...Smoke!

COC Up

The whole Olympic movement needs to take a pill.

Just relax, fellas.

Stop trying to own the world and run it.

Others have a right to live and breathe.

Like the Canadian Congenital Heart Alliance, for example.

This is the group that works with people who are born with heart defects.

My mother - may she rest in peace - was such a person.

The poor old Alliance has made the unforgivable sin of having for many years now a logo with a hand holding a small torch.

The flame of the torch is in the shape of a heart.

OK, so far?

Not if you are the Canadian Olympic Committee, who never saw a sleeping dog it could let lie.

Oh, no.

COC has got to rise up and make demands and threats.

Bully much?

A billion dollar party team gangs up on a long-existing, small non-profit society that struggles daily for money and provides life-saving responses for people with critical health problems.

COC needs to drop the viagra and take up all that methadone that's lying around.

'Nuff Said

It's Not Unusual

City workers are let go and given layoff notices all the time.

What is noteworthy on any given such occasion is who and what and why and when and where.

That's why they call it W5.

In today's case,

44 Vancouver city workers get layoff notices

a friend's wife, who is a recreation community centre worker got the pink slip.

This speaks to questionable choices by a government that could very well trim lotsa fat.

But this kind of worker has an important role in the lives of young people at risk and this worker is not very well paid.

Show me a 1000 city hall workers who are very well paid to do very little and I'll be at the front of the parade cheering them on into the real work of the private sector.

Don't Believe Everything You Read

Scare Canada is running full page color ads in newspapers these days.

The ads show a plane brightly festooned in PC green and Olympic doodlings.

It's a happy aircraft.

The body of the ad is 13 "quotes" ( I must put quotes around the quotes because we have no idea if they made this up or they really are quotes from the Handful of the Happy.)

The "quotes" are all from deliriously satisfied Scare Canada flyers.

Huh?

Is this your experience?

It is not mine.

I find their routing and timing for departures and arrivals consistently inconvenient, their telephone, desk and in flight service people consistently arrogant, superior and bored, and their prices ranging from incomprehensible to simply expensive.

But aside from all that they are wonderful.

So wonderful that my last five trips within Canada have been on WestJet and my next trip overseas is with British Airways.

Please comment.

You like Air Canada? You love Air Canada? You heart Air Canada?

You

Dying of Stupidity...and Fear...and Greed

When you get past all the other noise and confusion, one sour note rings through.

Universal health care is not a happy thought for many Americans.

The fact that close to 50 million of their fellow citizens and (maybe not) neighbours are uninsured - and therefore always one snivel away from personal and financial catastrophe - doesn't seem nearly as important as punishing a president or a party or a candidate they don't like.

Or rising to the bait of scare words like...00000...socialism. Oooooo...

That this simple goal - coverage for all - has been drowned in the cheesiest forms of partisan politics is overwhelmingly sad and disgusting.

The editorial in the Globe blames Boston voters, among others.

If Obama can save this bill and his own place in history from this mess, he will replace Cujo on the alltime save list.

Print Progress?

"Everything on the Internet should the free."

Dream on, Little Grasshopper.

The dot.com hay days of the late '90's may have come and gone with their $100 Million start-ups that folded 90 nights later, but people are still determined to make money on the net.

With ad revenues down on average 30% world-wide for daily print newspapers, it should not come as a surprise that the New York Times will try once again to get you to subscribe to its electronic articles.

This program is slated to start next year, with the fees and the dates yet to be announced.

"If the newspapers, including the Times, continue giving away their content for free while asking subscribers to pay for an edition that they get six hours later, it is a continuing foolhardy business proposition," said Joel Brinkley, a communications professor at Stanford University who worked for The New York Times for 23 years.

What all of this means for info vampires like me and you remains to be seen.

If I pay the subscription fee and I read a NY Times article, under the proposed new system I can recommend it to you.

But can I LINK it to you?

Perhaps you won't be able to open that link if you have not paid up as well.

Ah well.

The Tree People will be basking.

More Audacity, Less Hope

President Obama's light is seriously dimming.

A pretty boy Republican has stolen the Boston Senate seat that has belonged to the Kennedys for decades right out from under, and partisanship is storming away at an all-time high in American politics.

Read Konrad Yakabuski's excellent coverage in this morning's Globe.

Even a grand old Democratic warrior like Harry Belafonte, speaking the other day with Tavis Smiley is disenchanted with the directions and tones coming these days from the White House.

If the health care bill is lost, Obama may have the shortest effective presidency in history.

May all of this get much better - and soon!

Mumbo Jumbo

"We strongly believe in local television and we're strongly committed to local television"

Hahahahaha...

This was a Rogers executive, speaking about how their wholly-owned CITY-TV franchise is cutting local news across the country.

It always amazes me how folks like this can say things like, "We love you and we care deeply for you," as they drive the knife expertly between L4 and L5.

The irony here is that in this case, the cable operator and the broadcaster are one and the same.

Don't you love those mushy TV ads declaring that Local TV Matters?

They go out of their way to find a round black woman, who immediately suggests motherhood and professorship and intelligence and integrity all at studied once to babble on about the importance of local television.

All the while the people who have paid for the ad make all of their money buying shows in and from Los Angeles or making new Canadian drek like, "Human Target," and cutting local news.

The bottom line here is that the very sociopathds who are crying for more breaks from the government and claimning ownership of local concerns are in reality cutting jobs and information and public access.

Be clear in understanding what colossal bullshitters they really are.

Funny

Unfunny - All of Them

The Conan O'Brien-Jay Leno boredom festival has hardly been worth a comment ... until now.

A guy who teaches journalism and communications at Concordia has suggested that the smart move is for the CBC to hire O'Brien.

This fool must be an American ex-pat looking for good health care.

If he's a Canadian, he should be imprisoned for 12 years for Not Understand Much of Anything.

Don't worry.

He'll b e out in 30 days. See Below...

Alice in Courtland

A life sentence for plotting acts of terror.

Sounds good.

Or 12 years for a similarly inspired young devil.

But, as the editorial in today's Globe points out, the sentences do not say what they mean, or mean what they say.

But, hey.

The madman who shot the Pope is out of prison now and he's warned us that a) he is the Messiah and b) the end is nigh.

You think he's crazy.

How about our lawmakers.

We Are Not Alone

REAL Women of Canada

"Women Building a Better Society"

NGO in SPECIAL consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations

M E D I A R E L E A S E

Ottawa, Ontario January 18, 2010

Rule by Judicial Fiat

Vancouver Drug Injection Site

The liberal-minded B.C. Court of Appeal, in order to maintain the operation of the Vancouver Drug Injection site, has had to forsake common sense by describing the site as a “hospital” which provides a “health care program”. Supervising the injection of a harmful illicit drug by an addict is by no reasonable standard, “health care”. It is a recipe for disaster since its effect is to deepen the addict’s addiction, which leads to his/her inevitable, painful death.

According to the report of the Expert Advisory Committee released in April 2008, only 5% of drug addicts in the Vancouver area actually use the site, with 95% of drug injections in the area taking place outside the site. Only 3% of addicts using this site are actually referred for treatment. Treatment is the only way in which the addict can be genuinely helped.

In addition, the addict has to obtain the drugs injected on site from illegal sources, costing approximately $350,000 annually – money invariably obtained from criminal activity. Do these politically correct judges grasp these implications?

This decision by the B.C. Court has arbitrarily relaxed Canada’s drug laws by intruding on federal criminal law jurisdiction – the purpose of which is to protect society and individual addicts, not destroy them.

Canadians deserve better than the opinion of these liberal judges who choose to rule by judicial fiat, rather than by common sense and respect for Parliament.

Please contact:

Diane Watts

Researcher

(613) 236-4001

Vancouver B.C. January 18, 2009

BC Court of Appeal’s Decision on

Vancouver’s Drug Injection Site

Canada’s drug policy of prevention, treatment and enforcement is the only proven way for illicit drug use to be controlled.

However, two judges on the B.C. Court of Appeal have chosen to change this effective policy which was validly enacted by Parliament, by concluding that drug addicts supposedly “benefit” from the injection of illicit harmful drugs providing only that the injection is “supervised”. In no way can this be construed as “treatment” or “medical care” as the judges euphemistically call it, but rather this policy is a death warrant for the addict.

Under this policy upheld by the court, the addict has nowhere to go but downwards in that he/she will only require larger and ever more frequent injections of the illicit drug. It also leaves the addicts without treatment, the only genuine way to help them, because according to the report of the Expert Advisory Committee, April 2008, only 3% of addicts using the site are actually referred for treatment.

Moreover, this trendy court, by its decision, has eviscerated the federal government’s attempt to control illicit drugs in Canada. It allows the obtaining and use of illicit drugs with money inevitably obtained by the addicts’ criminal activity, and permits them to use illicit drugs with police protection. This is unacceptable.

The Drug Prevention Network of Canada strongly urges the federal government to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Good Idea - Wrong PLay

Right on, Kash.

At least the general goals are headed in the right direction.

When BC Solicitor-General announced today that he was going to do something about the unacceptably high incidence of domestic violence and deaths thereof, I am sure he won himself some new friends.

Deservedly so.

But Kash.

The exact way to not achieve anything new or useful is to ask senior bureaucrats what to do.

Remember that the old favorite definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect new results.

Well, Kash, if senior bureaucrats had something to contribute to anything, let alone a subject as specific and horrific as domestic violence, perhaps they would have already done so.

Instead, ask a panel of police, mothers, parents, children, teachers, and ordinary citizens with a splattering of common sense.

Leave the bureaucrats alone to mess up property assessments and things they truly (mis)understand.

Announcement

I will be posting my blog all through the next week (except tomorrow, Jan. 18th, whicj will be difficult bordering on impossible) but, because I will not have my computer hooked up to my Shaw cable, I cannot email each day as usual.

For those of you who cannot get through a day without A Little Berner in the Night (And you are legion! Both of you!), please bookmark the url and check in:

http://thebernermonologues.blogspot.com/

The email version should resume next Saturday, January 23d, if my psychiatrist decides that am ready again for human contact.

It'll be touch and go, for sure.

The Force Barks Back

Al Arsenault is a film director/producer with Odd Squad Productions Society and was a 27-year veteran with the V.P.D., upon his retirement in May 2006. He does not share the popular views on addiction and crime issues and he does not suffer fools gladly.

Hi David,

This news re the continuing status of the SIS is very distressing indeed. As I say, the rich get treatment and the poor get harm reduction. Why cannot all these learned researchers from the “Center of Excrements” come up with just even one single simple graph from the late ‘80’s to present showing the rate of change of OD deaths or drug-related infections that would prove their point of the efficacy of the SIS? Because that plotted line would skyrocket from a few % to the current astronomical levels. And yet they call it a success and the public is again mislead. This is nothing but shameful idealism leaning towards legalization passing itself off as legitimate research under a false banner of compassion. David you are so right on this issue of delivering real treatment instead of this sham of so-called Harm Reduction. All of the addicts in recovery know this. The active users do know what’s best for them- shooting galleries and free drugs leading to legalization. As you so well know, that is how the fiendish drug addict mind works. Some of the Harm Reductionists who know little about the dope simple brain, do not know that they are being mislead by the likes of drug users such as Dean Wilson, while the others are no doubt in the legalization camp, so they are merely letting the drug users suck in the public by making them believe that it is the right thing to do for them. As kind and compassionate parents, we shouldn’t give kids what they want (candy), rather we should provide them what they need (nutritious food). These addicts are being Band-Aided to death. Thank you for speaking out against this travesty.

Al

Guest Blogger, Beth McArthur

Friday, January 15, 2010

Team Jeff or Team Colin?

For those of you waking up in cold sweats, madly humming "Somebody Else", and driving your friends buggy with obsessive musings on the Jeff Bridges versus Colin Firth Best Actor of 2009 dilemma, take heart. You are not alone. The bags under my eyes are heavier than Mariah Carey's weekend totes. For days, I've agonized over this predicament at 1:00, 2:00, 3:00 am. Call me a kook. That's just how I am. I embrace movies and fairness with equal fervour. The outcome of this thespian horse race matters to me.

The trouble is, both men are excellent. Both performances raise the status of the men's films to "Ooooh, baby!" from merely "Oh yeah."

I saw Firth's movie, A Single Man, first. Throughout, my heart bled buckets at his repressed, anguished performance as a grieving gay college professor. Afterwards, I sobbed for 45 minutes until globs of black mascara dotted my ultra suede loveseat. With hand on heart, I declared to friends, family, co-workers and complete strangers in movie line-ups that Firth would surely win the Oscar. But then, it struck me. Doesn't Firth always seem stricken in his movie and television roles? He was stricken in Pride and Prejudice. He was stricken in Bridget Jones's Diary. Was his performance here that great a stretch, acting-wise, after all? Maybe he looks stricken when he's buying toilet paper.

Then I saw Crazy Heart, a riveting character study about a drunken, brilliant, sensitive country singer played by an irrepressible Bridges. I chortled, held my breath, gasped, tapped my toes, wanted to run my fingers through his character's Kris Kristofferson-y hair as much as I wanted to flee from his puke spittle. I now felt 100% certain that Bridges was the guy to beat. He sang the songs himself, man. His character felt more real than Firth's somehow. His lovable loser was more recognizable, more tangible. You could sense his flabby, physical heft. You could smell this dude. Firth, on the other hand, seemed pristine: a Ken doll slowly crumbling.

The Golden Globe is one award that might go to Colin instead of Jeff at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's big wing ding this Sunday, January 17. That's because the 49-year-old Firth's a Brit and foreign journalists are voters. But the Oscar will likely go to Jeff in March. The guy's as American as apple pie.

It was after almost a week of angst that I finally realized for me it all boils down to: who will most appreciate an Oscar? Which man will be happier, and look happier, to win an Academy Award? And which man's win will delight the gleaming audience to the rafters? The answer to all these questions is, of course, Jeff Bridges.

I want to see Jeff Bridges's big handsome, 60-year-old face light up, his cheeks dimple, and those crinkly baby blues sparkle. I want to see an extreme close-up of beautiful Susan Geston, Bridges's wife of over 30 years, crying in the audience, followed by a slow pan to brother Beau, also weeping. I want Jeff to thank his late father Lloyd Bridges in his Oscar acceptance speech. I want Jeff to say "far out" or "right on" for the boomers watching. I want the entire Kodak Theater audience to rise as one to celebrate this American son, a man who's given and given and given, goddamnit, to movie goers and TV audiences for over 40 years without once donning a reindeer sweater.

TEAM JEFF!

Update as of January 16th: Jeff Bridges won the Critics Choice Award for Best Actor the evening of January 15th. He will host the Grammys 2010 on January 31st.

Of course, the lovely irony is that Robert Duvall, who won a much-deserved Oscar for his role as a broken, alcoholic country singer in the great Horton Foote story, Tender Mercies, is co-starring in Bridges' new film.