Wrong link...oops

The confession...

http://bctrialofbasi-virk.blogspot.com/2010/01/question-you-never-heard-asked-when.html#links

Grant....

Grant, the article is about protests regarding the prorogation of parliament, not the Premier's DUI of seven years ago. Get a grip, man.

The Captioned Photo

There's more granola in this one photo than there is in all the Whole Foods in Seattle.

Matt

Granolas have a lot of time to protest. I have never known one with a full time job. I grew up on Vancouver Island in the '70s so I should know!

Matt and Wilf

Guess you guys hate seeing Canadians protest against Harper, you better get used to it.

Actually, Frank

I was at the Jan 23 protest at the art gallery in Vancouver. There were granolas and professional CAVE (citizens against virtually everything)people there but most were just rank and file people disgusted by Harper suspending parliament (again) to get himself out of trouble.

Were you there, Frank?

Wilf

Pretty clear to me that you're the citizen against everything Wilf? You've never supported anything that would help people in your life.

And I don't live in Vancouver.

edh

I suggest you look up what proroguing parliament means.

edh

If they bought the flag they can do whatever they want with it.

realistically, Mr Minority, the Pro-Rogue

... is having a hard time keeping his incompetence under wraps.

"...Second, we will continue to respect the principle that government is accountable to the people as representatives in Parliament."
Harper's Victory speech 2008

“When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid assent is frankly when it’s rapidly losing its moral authority to govern.”
Harper, Apr 18 2005

And for the poll-curious :
http://www.cbc.ca/news/pdf/ekos-data-tables-100107.pdf

Even a third of Harper's supporters think he's anti-democratic.

Green Party

Congratulations on reelecting the Gordo. That was a really really great move for BC's environment. And Steven Harper twice. I see Green leader May is working hard to get that champion of the environment Gary Lund reelected. Good work there too.

After Green leader Ralph Nader gave us George Bush in 2000, and sent Al Gore (nothing Green about him) packing, American progressives worked very at wiping your Brand off the map and succeeded. We need to do the same here.

That's what you are. A few puerile malcontents who refuse to reason with other adult green progressives in other parties but have gotten your hands on a brand name that uninformed well meaning voters associate with friends of the environment.

The damage you cause to the environment in Canada by electing and reelecting Neocons is incalculable.

There is no room for you in the first past the post system.

realisticman - for your reading pleasure

Here's an article from a staunchly conservative publication:

Canada's Parliament: Harper goes prorogue:
Parliamentary scrutiny may be tedious, but democracies cannot afford to dispense with it

Jan 7th 2010
From The Economist print edition

"The argument that previous prime ministers frequently prorogued Parliament is no more convincing. In almost every case they did so only once the government had got through the bulk of its legislative business. The Parliament that Mr Harper prorogued still had 36 government bills before it, including measures that form part of the prime minister’s much-vaunted crackdown on crime. When it reconvenes, those bills will have to start again from scratch. Past prorogations were typically brief (see article). This time sessions will be separated by a gap of 63 days.

Never mind what his spin doctors say: Mr Harper’s move looks like naked self-interest. His officials faced grilling by parliamentary committees over whether they misled the House of Commons in denying knowledge that detainees handed over to the local authorities by Canadian troops in Afghanistan were being tortured. The government would also have come under fire for its lack of policies to curb Canada’s abundant carbon emissions. Prorogation means that such committees—which carry out the essential democratic task of scrutinising government—will have to be formed anew in March. That will also allow Mr Harper to gain immediate control of committees in the appointed Senate, where his Conservatives are poised to become the biggest party."

retrieved this hour from:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15213212

activists vs thumpers theatre vs affecting change

First hats off to the many people who started to build a network of people who have decided that enough is enough. Protest is good, but only at best the first step of getting involved.

"The problem is Harper and Campbell don't give a rat's ass about activists... You need to direct your resources more effectively at consolidating the left"

And as long as we don't use the democratic lever of power at our disposal, why would those who are prepared to run rough shod with the rule of law and democracy, bother to listen much less do anything to our favour?

How do you find that leaver of power? By having a clear understanding how our so-called democratic system gives power to the elite few at the expense of the many! Virtually everyone knows that any party that gets 40% of the support in the polls but achieves 60% of the seats is undemocratic and quite bluntly a phony majority.

Strange though, even though many call the first-past-the-post system, more appropriately and more correctly a single-mark ballot system as part of the cause, yet very few can show how the single-mark ballot is the basic building block by which the true 60% majority is reduced to having less than 40% of the seats, and this mostly with party horses that can't really run, except with bridles directed by their party leader's hands.

The single-mark ballot becomes a political tool of divide and conquer by its very nature of being very vulnerable to vote-splits which can be simply illustrated as follows. Five voters who form a clear and honest majority out of nine voters, when these five voters split their vote between two similar candidates so that A gets 2 and B gets 3 AND the five who absolutely do not want C, but C gets 4 votes, in our single-mark system C is elected. In Canada's 2008 election 64% or fully 198 MPs across the political spectrum are candidate Cs. And the largest collection of phony majority candidate C's into one party when all added up can represent less than 40% of the people's votes but more than 60% of the seats!

The solution is easy. If the citizens conduct their own preferential vote123 strawvote ballot prior to election day in order to collaborate with their civic democratically minded neighbour to find out who are candidates A, B, C... and then with this community minded information vote strategically accurately on election day for either B or C as any vote for A is a free vote for C! This eliminates vote-splits and the candidate elected has the support of an honest majority.

For one method on how to do this please see "Taking back our democracy!" at http://ereform.eduardhiebert.com/v123p.htm

Sharing

Oh yes, that's the very same magazine that just a few short months ago wrote about the banking crisis and the recession and said that, quote, 'Canada, a country that got things right.'

It is nice to see young people getting excited aobut politics.

It is about bloody time! The X-Gen folks can't ride theri mountain bkies forever. They had better grow up sooner than later.

R-man

The reason Canada got things right with it's economy was nothing Harper can claim as his doings. He relaxed lending laws after he got in. He and his band allowed US-style sub-prime mortgages, and 40 yr. mortgages etc.. When the world banking crisis became apparent to all, the Conservatives quickly reversed their studpidity.

The only thing that saved the day for Canada was that the Conservatives hadn't been in power long enough for there to be too much unsecured credit. Harper and finance minister lucked out. Even as it stands, they let the housing markets boil out of control by giving out credit too easily to people who can't afford it because wages have not kept up with inflation for the middle and working class workers. If the half million workers who are now on EI that are slated to run out of EI before the economy picks up, we will see a mortgage crisis with many houses being foreclosed upon. Damn, there go your bank stock dividends!

Gen X?

We are a long way past generation X. We are now into generation Y.

realistically, Mr Minority, the blind economist

... with all the ConBots for a chorus chanting, "Crisis? What Crisis?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gehQL0exBnk

“My own belief is if we were going to have some kind of big crash or recession, we probably would have had it by now."
Harper 15 September 2008
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/article709599.ece

How could anyone know better than the Pro-Rogator ?
"But on Friday, Harper ridiculed the suggestion that the government would need to slash spending or boost taxes to balance its budget when the economy recovers. "We will not start raising taxes and cutting programs. That's a very dumb policy and, to the extent, frankly, that the parliamentary budget officer suggested it, it's a dumb position," he said.
Harper July 2009
http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=1778259&sponsor=

His fiscal incompetence is surpassed only by his arrogance.

"A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy."
Benjamin Disraeli, Speech in the House of Commons, Mar. 3, 1845

Democracy? - Baahh - HUMBUG!

I am glad to have been to the RALLY even though it took over 300 km of traveling specifically to attend!

It is high time, that WE, the people take back what WE once were so proud of to pocess:

FREEDOM, OBLIGATIONS AND RIGHTS - in that order.

WE do not need any bean counters and economists to tell us, that all that counts is the bottom line.

WE need to re - member the quality of life, which nobody is even mentioning anymore!

Time to reflect and time to enjoy the fruits of our labour - WE should be the ones working, not some off-shore company!

WE should be happily working and earning a decent wage so WE can live the way WE want - not the way we are being told to "want".

Originally WE sent a Representative to Parliament to carry our voice to the 'law makers'.
Now, WE are being told to pay and shut up and pay some more and shut up ad infinitum ! ! ! .....

IT IS TRULY HIGH TIME WE TOOK BACK OUR LIVES !

Sharing - as we do in Canada

Tell me all about the massive inflation you speak of and all about the sub-prime mortgages. Neither of which occurred in Canada. It's all very well to have strong opinions but these two bleats are simply untrue. In Canada one still had to be approved for any mortgage and that is the huge difference between the Canadian and the US market. That is why we have NOT had a housing crash in Canada.

Anyway, it's good to see the young becoming passionate about politics. It's been too long a time since they were. I would have liked to have seen complaints and demonstrations about Chretien proroguing parliament, as he did to avoid the tabling of the report on Sponsorship Funds, but it didn't happen. I guess that was because nobody started a Facebook Group.

It is somewhat disconcerting to see only, at best, 20,000 demonstrators across the whole country this past weekend, when the Facebook Group is supposed to be ten times that in size. Does this mean that when it comes to the crunch the rebels can only muster a 10% unhappy-voter turnout? You can get more than that out for a school-board election.

looking back to look forward

- we need to know what we're fighting, and there's no better place to start than a recent 'out of the box' look at what happened to our country since the neocon invasion - What Happened? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html

Gen-Y - the accidental activist

[i]It is nice to see young people getting excited aobut politics. It is about bloody time! The Gen-Y [sic] folks can't ride theri mountain bkies forever. They had better grow up sooner than later.[/]

Well, if the people's Facebook champion featured in the above interview is a symbol of the new youth activism, I wouldn't hold your breathe. A self-confessed 'c' conservative who has more respect for Harper this week than last, and who dislikes "professional activists", and who can't wait to get back to work on his thesis and focus on his real passion: making a low-budget monster movie.

Yep, this is Generation-Y in a nutshell.

Gen-Y - the accidental activist (take-2)

Let's try that again, with the intended italics :-)...

It is nice to see young people getting excited aobut politics. It is about bloody time! The Gen-Y [sic] folks can't ride theri mountain bkies forever. They had better grow up sooner than later.

Well, if the people's Facebook champion featured in the above interview is a symbol of the new youth activism, I wouldn't hold your breathe. A self-confessed 'c' conservative who has more respect for Harper this week than last, and who dislikes "professional activists", and who can't wait to get back to work on his thesis and focus on his real passion: making a low-budget monster movie.

Yep, this is Generation-Y in a nutshell.

R-man, Harper's flip flops - he was lucky

I spoke about unaffordability of overly expensive houses, especially if EI recipients lose their EI. Either you twisted my words or didn't read them carefully enough.

Median wage of Vancouver citizen in 2005 - $42,230, an 11% drop in inflation adjusted dollars.

B.C. hit by sharpest wage decline in Canada
British Columbians have less spending power than they did 25 years ago, 2006 census data reveals, but there is no single reason.
By The Vancouver SunMay 2, 2008

"He noted that the B.C. median wage is still the third highest among the provinces and higher than the $41,401 national average, but considering that B.C. also has the most costly housing in Canada, "it's a more troubling picture."

"In the non-economic elements of quality of life, the natural beauty [of the province], we probably do well," Peacock said.

"In terms of being able to buy things or go on vacation, a lot of British Columbians are stretched."

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=b64160e2-e51a-4162-bfbb-603ef20a6bf2&k=60612

Since that time, people's wages and incomes of small business owners has further eroded.

2010 - minimum wage: still 8 bucks an hour

A headline from yesterday's Sun

"Vancouver housing 'severely unaffordable'
VANCOUVER - Vancouver is the most unaffordable city in Canada for housing, and ranks 15th worst in the world, according to a study released last week."
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=ff7fd1e0-f52e-4de7-af5b-6117dc6cded5

Article in the right-wing publication, Digital Journal, showing Harper's government having to do the 2-step (that's two steps back) to cover the dergulation they introduced into the mortgage business.
"The tightening of amortization and minimum down payment requirements are to be expected. What is shocking is that a "consistent minimum credit score" was not an established criteria before these changes."
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/257263

realistically, Mr Minority's minions

... can try minimizing, but their girth borders on Garth. As in Turner:
http://www.greaterfool.ca/

Reporting on Demographia's housing affordability study which finds Vancouver is number 1 !!
Severely Un-affordable that is. Using the “Median Multiple” (median house price divided by gross annual median household income) - note well ; 'average' be banned - at a staggering 9.3

Abbotsford #25 at 6.6
Kelowna #38 at 5.9
...

The bubble burst in UK and US after Lehman Bros collapsed "which signaled the 'mortgage meltdown' and the 'Great Recession', the steepest economic decline since the Great Depression."

We can all rest assured that Harper's ConBots won't see that happen in Canada.

"He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong. "
Benjamin Disraeli

Its sure good

to see the neo-con zio-ogre camp being exposed for what they are... sanctimonious whores liars and murderers. End of story. It appears they may be planning for a false flag during the Olympics.

These reptiles have been demoralizing the populace with their brain raping MSM as usual. This Facebook group snowballed and teaches each and every one of us a valuable lesson on how quick and easy it is to organize and evolve ideas. As things get worse and worse, we will come together more and more. On the positive side we have gained moral leverage and are spotlighting these creatures on the center stage.

Currently, most Canadians have no bloody clue what is on the horizon. Harper and his zombie bot brethren have been wearing their God helmets too long, now they sell their souls and our country for crap.

One thing that angers me the most is how certain alternative Canadian news sites do not talk about critical topics. Maybe they can't? The probable false flag attack on the Olympics appears to be right around the corner and yet it is flying right under the radar of most alternative S&MSM. These 'alternative' online Canadian news sites have been compromised into providing banal entertainment and garbage news. Granted, the comment section is where its at.

People are more worried about losing their jobs than losing their freedoms and their Country...Harper & his international banker buddies may be about to pull something big.

Two tons of 6,000 tons of Ammonium Nitrate, have gone missing from a shipment to a storage facility in the Vancouver area from a company that was recently bought out for $22 billion by some of the world’s largest financial companies. These companies are Goldman Sachs, AIG, The Carlye Group and others. The company that was purchased is called Kinder Morgan. Kinder Morgan didn’t report the two tons missing for over a month, when they did report it they came back a week later only to say they simply made a “clerical error”. Soon after the announcement, the RCMP started their investigation and came back only to say they can’t confirm that it was really accounted for. With all of this said, the question arises, who has the capability and motive to steal two tons of Ammonium Nitrate?

http://dprogram.net/2010/01/25/could-vancouver-2010-could-be-the-next-911/

Yes, there are websites where people discuss this subject, and I recommend you familiarize yourselves with it and others...

kudos to Christopher White, Shilo Davis

Kudos to Christopher White, Shilo Davis, and Monte Paulson. Please keep up the good work. You are much admired by Canadians who care.

Christina weighs in

"I spent some time in the library at Queen’s Park recently, checking Rae’s record as NDP premier.

I called Rae the King of Prorogues, having suspended parliament three times — and for much longer periods than Harper has done.

He prorogued three times in a four-and-a-half year mandate. In 1991, 1992 and 1994, Rae prorogued from mid-December to April. In 1994, he shut down the legislature on Dec. 9 — and the House did not return. Parliament was dissolved April 28, 1995, for an election without Rae delivering a budget.

Why? Because his government was in tatters and he wanted to play for time. How’s that for a slap at democracy?

Yet Rae now has the nerve to talk about Harper’s “assault on democracy”? ..."

http://www.ottawasun.com/comment/columnists/christina_blizzard/2010/01/26/12621411.html

r-man, please acknowledge

This article is about facebook activism. When you took us down the path of lies about Harper, I was patient and showed you the error of your words.

Rae isn't the leader of the NDP nor the Liberals. You are right, he has little right to discuss prorogation of the Canadian House of Commons by Harper if Rae, himself, used it as a method for avoiding scrutiny as Premier of Ontario. If, indeed, he prorogued the Ontario Legislature for dubious purposes, then I guess that's why he's a Liberal, now: he wasn't really suited to be an NDP leader.

CAPP is a truly non-partisan essentially leaderless movement that exists because people do not like the reasons Harper prorogued Parliament. The Harper government needs to face the torture allegations and its foolish avoidance of taking responsibility for the environment.

realistically, my parents taught me

... that just because 'all the other kids were doing it' didn't cut it for an excuse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t97bAsKe48I

Maybe Stephen Harper's parents didn't love him.

Just who would you support?

There is little doubt that Stephen Harp[er is a troglodyte who can't stand any light being shone on his n'er do well party of neocon reform party rejects.Every time the heat gets turned up he goes on vacation.It would be nice if we all could just quit working when we felt like it.What the man is saying is that he has no respect for those who employ him and he'll do whatever the hell he wants whenever he wants to.What is so appalling is that there is really no one out there that really expresses what we as Canadians want.Harper has taken us from peacekeepers to militarists ans has abandoned our countrymen that find themselves in trouble abroad.That is unless the person happens to be a real criminal alcoholic drama queen with a friend with a computer and the knowledge of how to use it.In that case you get a plane trip home after your release from prison.The one thing I am sure of is that the politicians in Ottawa just don't get it and probably never will.I have watched the political scene ever since the Diefendollar days and I have never been so disgusted and ashamed of my government.Well,perhaps during the Mulroney days.Conservatives are a blight on the political scene.

Sharing - please acknowledge

That it was a poster with the name of SharingIsGoo... that first wrote a post here entirely dealing with mortgage rates and the economy - as opposed to the subject at hand.

Your claims about unaffordable and overly expensive houses is a sideline. This may be true if one wants to own a house in central Vancouver but so what? The marketplace corrects itself. If homes are unaffordable they will come down in price. If they are not they will sell. What's the alternative? Federal taxpayer cash to buyers that would make sellers richer? Federal cash to sellers that would raise prices? More product and density that would reduce scarce product supply? That's a municipal issue.

If this is about proroguing and those that like ex-NDPer Bob Rae who are in a tizzy because of it, it's perfectly natural to point out how Bob Rae himself employed this same tool. If we are talking about the perceived cynicism of politicians then Liberal-leader-wannabe Bob Rae as NDP premier certainly is a good case study.

As for your EI concerns; if you look it up up you will see that a long-tenure-worker EI program was introduced by Stephen Harper last May and Bill C.50 was introduced to extend EI payments too, as well as a proposal for EI benefits for the self-employed.

Finally, the environment slur. Canada is one of only four countries to have signed the Copenhagen document so far. The deadline is this Sunday. Next week will be the Enviro-News special and we shall see who's in and who's out. We already know that China and India will not sign.

http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article93870.ece?homepage=true

Signing a document with apologies to the Bard...

Signing a document with no time lines, no hard targets and no unanimity with respect to 'real' action is exactly the kind of think Pee Wee Rambo loves to do.

To borrow from 'Macbeth', it is, as is everything the dictator Harper does: '...a tale (t)old by an idiot, full of sound and fury, (s)ignifying nothing.'

One only hopes that Pee Wee will prove to be little more than 'a poor player...(who) struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.'

Now there's a 'consummation devoutly to be wished.'

Canada's Green - Vancouver's Green. Mother Nature says so.

Signing that document makes the world look up.

"Destination of the Week: Vancouver
City's planned green spaces are the envy of sprawling cities everywhere. Plus: Vancouver is ready for the Olympic spotlight. ..."

http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/travel/stories/destination-of-the-week-vancouver

for your pleasure realisticman

You said:
"...Sharingisgoo...that first wrote a post here entirely dealing with mortgage rates and the economy - as opposed to the subject at hand."

Previous to that you made the (quoted below0 post that said this in relation to the article and quotes I posted on prorogation:

"Oh yes, that's the very same magazine that just a few short months ago wrote about the banking crisis and the recession and said that, quote, 'Canada, a country that got things right.'"

I then showed how the article you referred to may have said that Canada got things right, but that it was not Harper's doing. I merely followed the lead you had made so as to dispel any uncertainty, then I attempted to bring the topic back to prorogation. You then blamed me for taking it off topic; but then, of course, you remark that my info was not realistic as only Vancouver is unaffordable. The truth is, BC has three cities in the top 25 least affordable:

"All of Canada's "severely unaffordable" cities are in B.C., including Victoria, at seventh, Kelowna, at 19th and Abbotsford, at 25th."
http://www.fcpp.org/publication.php/2595

Harper's relaxing of lending laws did nothing to help these cities. It further stirred an already overheated West Coast market by allowing speculators who could not afford to ante up at the poker table to have chips and play the the game without the usual buy in. Harper didn't backtrack on his risky legislation until after the US mortgage crisis hit. He got caught with his pants down, but he went largely unprosecuted by the bank-backed MSM. The Canadian banks were just as guilty as Harper in this - after all, they bought whopping amounts of US sub-prime paper.

The truth about proroguing is that Canadians get it - Harper is out of line on proroguing. Canadians, of all parties know that Harper did this as an avoidance tactic, and they don't like it- especially out of a minority government that has to work with parliament. Parliament is not a game to most Canadians. It is not about tactics, it is about going there and facing the music for your actions.

GWest a la W. Shakespeare answered the question about Harper and the BS Copenhagen document. Harper did not act on Kyoto when he had the chance (for 4 years), then signed something that has no meaning. Canadians get this too.

BS

Vancouver is nothing more and nothing less than the most unaffordable and expensive city in the world in which to try and buy a home...

The annual report on housing affordability around the world by Canada's Frontier Centre for Public Policy said, "Vancouver is the most unaffordable of the 28 housing markets measured in Canada and the most unaffordable of the 272 metropolitan markets ranked in Ireland, the UK, New Zealand, Australia, the US and Canada.''

Vancouver is followed by Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, London , New York and San Francisco as the world's least affordable places to own a house today, according to the report.

With the median sale value of a house at $540,900 and the median household income just at $58,200, Vancouver was the most unaffordable place on earth to own a house today, according to the report by the Winnipeg-based centre.

But then, some people seem to think that's a good thing.

Nothing the slightest 'green' about it though.

Thanks realisticman. I saw a

Thanks realisticman.
I saw a guy in court a few years ago get fined for spitting on the street one time only. His defense was that he saw others spit on the street a lot more than he ever did. It didn't work.
Chretien had a majority that Harper can only dream about and he still resorted to prorogue?

Hi Frank. I did look up the

Hi Frank.
I did look up the meaning. It's sort of like me hiding when my wife is mad.
And Frank. I know they can, but should they? I have seen over 100 of those flags draped over hero's coffins in the past few years.

Heros...like who edh?

How in the name of heaven do you 'deface' a piece of bloody cloth?

Getting yourself blown up in Afghanistan doesn't make anyone a hero...in fact, quite the contrary.

Speaking up against a dictator is a far more courageous act.

Not saying it's Good or Bad, Westie

but it's probably better, much better, than being the most affordable. In fact, it just keeps going back up.

“Home sales neared or passed monthly records in Greater Vancouver throughout the latter half of 2009. In fact, last month’s home sales rank as the third highest selling December in the 90-year history of our organization.”

http://www.rebgv.org/news-statistics/slow-start-strong-finish-housing-market-2009

No judgment. Just the facts. The realistic facts.

If you think there is a big downside to this the decent thing to do for your children is sell now, bank it and rent until the market crashes and then buy back in.

Anyone selling? Anyone?

Sharing

I know you like to quote The Economist.

Remember what The Economist said is the world's most livable city? Yes, Vancouver.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Most_Livable_Cities

Albert Einstein:
"There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

bull shit - as observed elsewhere, the tendency to drop

Albert Einstein into a conversation is almost ubiquitous:

...this famous scientist gets used in clapped up legends whose plots call for a smart person, one whom the audience will immediately recognize as such (i.e.; modern tellings of an ancient legend about a learned rabbi who switches places with his servant feature Albert Einstein in the role of esteemed scholar). This venerated cultural icon has, at least in the world of contemporary lore, become a stock character to be tossed into the fray wherever the script calls for a genius. (Thankfully, contemporary lore has other uses for him too. In a legend of entirely different character, Albert Einstein was rumored to have made a guest appearance on the television western Gunsmoke.) Thx to Snopes.com

In fact, Einstein is the LAST person who should be trotted forth as an exemplar for anyone of 'how' to live life - miraculous or otherwise.

Adam Smith is a much better model - and he knew exactly how to characterize greed and selfishness and their corrosive effects to society and decency.

Happily, more and more people are recognizing what precisely Vancouver has become.

realistically, some people like quoting

... The Polls ;
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/01/27/ekos-poll027.html

Except when they're nervous.

Ah well, never fear - the realistic facts are that Mr Minority's fiscal and economic incompetence will continue to show for a while yet:
http://www.investmenttools.com/futures/bdi_baltic_dry_index.htm

Will Harper's winter of discontent
lead him to clothe his naked villainy
With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ,
And seem a saint when most he plays the devil?

... hhmmm, a miracle? That he sleep nights :
http://www.youtube.com/user/richardIIIjg#p/u/3/SsfRV43V13Q

If you prefer the Bard

Malvolio:
"Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em."

I prefer

THE TRUTH.

The truth is that Vancouver is the most disgustingly unaffordable place in the world.

Others seem to prefer some kind of cheesy soft version of what 'they' would like to believe - both about themselves and the place they live.

Bellowing like Bruce Allen clones they come across as a latter-day Polonius mouthing nonsense nostrums for the feeble-minded.

That, like so much else about the place and its mindless one-note cheerleaders, is a disgusting fact. There is nothing 'great' about it.

...and nothing but the Truth.

Vancouver expected to post best economic growth of any Canadian city in 2010

(CP) – 2 days ago

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jG8Nh42lg3xDN1q021uunemaGibg

“Sometimes the truth hurts. And sometimes it feels real good.”
Henry Rollins

As has been pointed out

Vancouver is the most disgustingly unaffordable place in the world.

Economic growth measurements are a function of metrics which don't mean a damn thing to the poor, the working poor and the vast majority of the middle class. This city is a whited sepulcher inaccessible to anyone except a precious few like our faux-green mayor riding his bike from daddy's money to City Hall each day.

The past 3 decades ought to have been proof enough of that reality for even the most dewy-eyed Polonius in the crowd.

Apparently not it seems. When the truth means something only to a small elite it's not much different than Tony Bliar's pusillanimous refusal to admit he and his government broke the law.

No different here. The liars are out in force, spouting full-on Bruce Allen umbrage, their engorged wattles shaking with emotion.

There are alternatives

Take Sarnia, for example. You can get a decent pork-bottom burger for $7.49 at Stokes. Maybe some fish at the China Buffet on London Road. Heck, you can pick up a good sized fixer upper for a hundred and fifty grand - maybe less if you're handy.

Go for it!

Absent justice - we move toward Adam Smith's nightmare world:

The misery of one who is merely their fellow creature is of so little importance to them in comparison to even a small convenience of their own. They have it so much in their power to hurt him and may have so many temptations to do so that if the principle of justice did not stand up within them in his defense and overawe them into a respect for his innocence, they would like wild beasts be ready to fly upon him at all times. Under such circumstances a man would enter an assembly of others as he enters a den of lions.

When all else fails and rationality deserts the donkey of irrelevance trots smilingly onto the stage.

And even 'justice' fails the poor...

Economist article about Vancouver - R'man

I read the article when you trotted it out some months back. I don't need a refresher.

You've quoted the Economist numerous times to make your points on The Tyee, that is why I gave you an article you may have missed. I also remember the Economist article that you talked about out of context and were subsequently set right by Zalm in the comments of a previous Tyee article:

http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2009/10/06/WithALittleHelp/

Concerning Livability:
You know, Realisticman, if I want to find a most livable place, it will never be a big City. "Most livable [big] city" is a contradiction in terms to my way of thinking. Water, Air, Noise pollution, Traffic congestion, concrete, bright lights and wires everywhere, people walking by other people lying helpless in the street - none of those things are anything that I want. So, please, don't mind if I don't take too seriously the words of a magazine called The Economist (which caters to big city accountants and such) when it tells me that something is the best of what I consider a really bad lot. Now, when the Economist has articles telling me that Vancouver is unaffordable, and that the Harper government was lucky more than smart about its economic policies, I take more notice.

Now, how about those wonderful Canadians exercising their right to free assembly and free speech in showing their disdain for a proroguing, cut-n-run Harper? Isn't it wonderful?

Small towns can be pleasant

Good to see that the Liberals will be sharing the Senate now but they are no longer in the driver's seat. Good too to see so many new women Senators. Proroguing has it's uses. Now some work can be done, instead of repeated stalling by those Liberals.

Red Herrings

Not that one gives a tinker's damn about either Pee Wee or Ignatieff, the record does need to be set straight.

The Justice bills Pee Wee and his band of right wingers are so exercised about were on the order paper in the HOUSE OF COMMONS. Harper's acolytes, with their usual disregard for the facts, always omit to mention that those bills (about which so much noise has been made) are now defunct - defunct because the hero of the right wing, Stephen Harper, prorogued Parliament and let them die.

Of course, the neocons never let the truth get in the way of a good story....to claim that there is any stalling going on which isn't the result of Pee Wee's own choices is disingenuous in the extreme.

Happily, the Canadian public seems to be waking up and catching on about what this blackguard dictator is all about....

Small towns are indeed pleasant but as long as the tiny proportion of the population who can afford to live in Vancouver want services the slavery of the poor and working poor to the big city will be a sad but unavoidable fact.

One day, I hope all the working people actually walk out on these upper class twits and hypocrites - I doubt they'd last 72 hours on their own mettle.

realistically, if Mr Minority, the Dear Leader

... had won a majority, like the Great Leader Mulroney, he wouldn't need to stuff the Senate.

Oh - umm ... well anyways ...

Small countries can be pleasant too - and without all that pesky Parliamentary stuff to stall the real work to be done unto us:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVKBJwxok7E

Pro-Rogue indeed.

'Reform'. The Senate.

It's just an obligation to fill senate seats. The Liberals never expressed any interest in reforming the senate. Harper hesitated in appointing senators but the Liberals wouldn't budge. OK. The new Senators will help reform it. No big deal, the Liberals ruled the senate for, what, a couple of decades. Squealing aside; everything changes.

G West

Sorry to hear that you are sad that the pending Bills are defunct. Perhaps you regret the demise of the crime bills. They will arise again.

Dishonest interlocutors

Aren't just in Ottawa. My only regret is that they're here at Tyee too.

In fact, I'm only upset that democracy is defunct in Pee Wee's Palace.

Dishonest interlocutors

"My only regret is that they're here at Tyee too." This has to be the funniest thing I 've read or heard all day.

The TRUTH just unrelentingly and multifacetly gushes!

Vancouver Sun January 29, 2010

"VANCOUVER — Gee, shucks. Can Vancouverites take all the compliments?

First, The Economist calls Vancouver the world's most livable city (2009 ranking) and now Conde Nast Traveler says in its February issue that the city has the best Chinese food in the world.

With apologies to Hong Kong, Beijing, Singapore, Taipei, San Francisco and other contenders, Vancouver humbly accepts the honour.

Tracked down in Toronto, Conde Nast Traveler writer Mark Schatzker says: "I would say I've eaten Chinese food all over North America and in China and the best I've eaten in the world was in Vancouver. Hands down. From the point of view of Conde Nast Traveler, that's unquestionably so. ..."

Why DO the lefties hate this kind of story?

Chinese food

I love good food. If good Chinese food can be had in Vancouver - sounds fine to me. Too bad all of the people living in poverty in Vancouver can't afford to eat in those Chinese restaurants very often.

I can't say I would move anywhere just because the food was good; I'd rather grow and cook my own.

Like I said before, Highly unaffordable Vancouver may offer some of the best of what I consider as a whole a very unappealing lifestyle. To me it is like a person living with an abusive mate and minimizing his behaviours by saying, "He's not as bad as some I have seen." Enjoy your Vancouver, Realisticman; just remember the wealth transfer from the Interior helps you live in all that congestion, concrete and pollution.

Now, how about those cool FaceBookers who aren't going to let the pressure off of Harper for doing what they believed to be wrong! Don't you totally admire them for being active about their beliefs?

Sharing

City-Country. Chacun à son goût (each his own taste).

Everything changes, including wealth transfers.

"Forestry, mining, fishing and agriculture are still important, especially in communities where they are big employers, but they are no longer the dominant force in BC's economy. Since the mid-1990s, there have been fewer people working in these industries than in other types of goods production.

At present, only nine percent of BC workers have jobs in resource harvesting and extracting industries such as agriculture, fishing, forestry and mining. That's down from about 13% in 1990. Employment in other types of goods production has picked up in recent years after declining during the 1990s, and accounts for about 12% of all the jobs in the province.

Wholesale & retail trade is the biggest employer, providing one out of every five service sector jobs. Health care & social assistance is the second largest employer, providing 13% of the service sector jobs. Accommodation & food services, and professional, scientific & technical services each account for about 10% of total employment in the sector."

By the way - Sharing

Thought I might share this clip. You might see negatives; I hope not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xMz2SnSWS4

employment and the video - Realisticman

Yes, Realisticman, since the BC Liberal government allowed for the doubling of shipping of whole logs out of BC, much of what used to be export-related manufacturing has left the Interior (and the province) so that many citizens have found themselves moving to city apartments to get jobs in wholesale and the wholesale, accomodation, and retail sector - coffeeshops, hotels, Walmart and various distribution centers. Those wholesale, hospitality and retail-type jobs don't pay as well as primary and secondary industries, nor do they help with bringing capital into the province from outside as compared to value-added manufaturing of resources that are mined, logged or farmed. And, yes, we need more people in health-care with an aging population, and all of those "industries" do grow when you increase the population of the cities by starving the hinterlands of resources and employment that they need to maintain themeselves. The same thing happened to Rome.

Under the BC Liberals, median earnings have decreased and the minimum wage has remained stagnant. Generally speaking, all but the highly-educated, the already haves and the greedy have seen their earnings decrease. I remember reading a speech delivered by Campbell just a couple of years after he took office where he was bragging about how the BC Liberals had reduced the earnigs of the average citizen! Even though I knew he be lied it to be a good thing, I was gobsmacked to find that he had the audacity to let the words actually leave his lips! It seems the Campbell/BC Liberal utopian ideal has always been to remake BC in the image of the USA. I imagine Campbell bought into the USA way of doing things as soon as he sported his first Dartmouth tie. I believe he sees primarily himself as a globe-trotting member of the Ivy-league elite and secondly as one of the citizens of BC, Canada.

That Vancouver clip was artfully done by a person who clearly loved some of the surreal aspects of coastal rainforest Vancouver. I understand that the concrete, artificial lights and bustle of a city can be very attractive for many - but not for me! When I see things like that video clip, I don't even need to close my eyes to imagine the spaces defined with ferns and old-growth firs and cedars, punctuated by deer and salmon. To me, it will always be, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

We must remember, Realisticman, Vancouver was one of 4 BC cities that are in the top 25 of the world's list of unaffordable cities - Abbots ford, Kelowna, and Victoria are also on that list. That is a large chunk of the province's people living in the least affordable places. More than one paradise has been paved. With a maximum 100 year life expectancy for concrete structures, the bulk OzymanCampbell's dreams will age into crumbling hulks before his youngest living progeny are cold and gone.

More unattributed quotations from the usual suspect.

Which, one needs to bear in mind, are very easy to ignore.

I do like the Ozymandias reference Sharing. Always have been a bit of a Shelley fan too.

Must be a bit of a sad reminder for our expat Brit friends though.

Sharing

Very sad that the young are migrating to the city where the authorities are implored to build more structures to house them, so the city grows. That it is expensive has much to do with the fact that so many keep coming from elsewhere too.

Without a strong engineering, business, liberal arts and design oriented educational system in the BC interior it will only continue.

You don't need a weatherman ....

R-Man

"Without a strong engineering, business, liberal arts and design oriented educational system in the BC interior it will only continue."

I couldn't agree more, by raping the Interior of its wealth without including value added jobs, the BC Liberals have engineered the exodus from rural BC to the cities. Further, the BC Liberals have removed supports (like hospitals and conservation officers) from the rural lands thus leading to a deeper erosion, a disparity, of services. In the last couple of years, we find that the BC Liberals have been giving one-way bus passes to improvished and often drug-addicted Vancouverites so that they may move to rural communities. Isn't it grand that the golden decade has allowed that we might share some of what big city living brings. Thanks, but I preferred it the other way.

Vancouver need not grow. Zoning laws could keep the city smaller and less of a social/emotional/environmental disaster. Europe has many old cities whose size remains relatively fixed , and they can do nicely. You cannot have unlimited growth within a finite system/environment, Realisticman. Sooner or later the laws of nature and infrastructure required to service the needs of a blooming population become so scarce and expensive that it is foolish to continue. Vancouver has reached that size.

My spies tell me

...that zoning laws regarding height and density only push up the price of property. This is one reason that Vancouver is so expensive. In a free society one cannot physically stop people migrating to Vancouver. In much of Europe the suburbs have grown too.

Now Surrey

http://www.townshift.com/

realistically, we don't need spies

... to see how the Dear Leader's ConBots nervously distract from the issues.

I wonder why they have nothing to propose to prevent the PM going pro-rogue again ?