May I suggest a slight

May I suggest a slight change and call it Campbell's Crown of Scorn.

Campbell Quites but Liberals Still in Power

Nothing much will change as long as the same corporate party reigns supreme. Personalities will come and go through the revolving doors of power. When one screws up, he/she gets the boot and another supplicant takes their place.

However, any sudden change amongst the ruling elite is an opportunity for democracy. If we can take advantage of it. That opportunity is presently available to us. We will need to move quickly before this little sliver of instability is closed.

Great coverage from BC's best news media!

An excellent article, Geoff.

A good summary of why it is clear the emperor had to go. You have summarized the problem with him in "autocrat, Dictator, Bully". When combined with a "corporate shill" it is a very dangerous combination.

Don't forget....

...the roof can't be opened or closed when it's actually raining. It's all surface veneer without a lot of substance or function behind it. And it costs a fortune....Sound familiar?

its a start

Nice to see someone retrace a little of the Campbell track record but we really must move away from laying all the blame on him as conveniently announces his retirment and transition to the multitude of business tasks his masters will reward him with.

Please do not regurgitate Liberal speaking points it only encourages them to reinvent themselves now that the bad man has announced he is leaving.

Stay focused on the disasterous track record and lay the blame where it belongs across the party and even over in HST Land.

Finally, please write that the most significant chance for real change is slowly slipping away if the people do not correct the NDP and soon it will the default party of business as we have seen in the past and there will be no change.

Focus on leadership and let the change begin.

the tributes will be trying

Be prepared to be insulted by an endless outpouring of accolades painting the man as the best premiere in the history of the province. You can bet MSM commentary will avoid any discussion of the damage done during his reign.

Have we really seen the end of Campbell? What’s the likelyhood of finding him enlisted in the Harperite [OFFENSIVE COMMENT REMOVED. - MODERATOR.]?

KWD

That is true.

The Bildergbergers dont tap you on your way to the grave.

"Burglar King..."

"...where Bilderburglars are King."

Gordo certainly ruled like one, prancing at royal balls and debt-financing his way to posterity building personal monuments to pride and ignominy in the best manner of Louis Quatorze.

Only when the nobles threatened to join the peasants in storming the Bastille did he come to his senses and avoid the headsman's axe.

For now....

Bilderbergers and Corporate Elite

They've thrown us a bone and it's called Gordo SCampbell. Don't forget the rest of the dead animal is still in Victoria. They will attempt to resuscitate the beast with a new head, but it's still the same beast with the same masters!

Perhaps Gordo's reward will be with the Bilderbergs. I can only hope it is. His incompetence will surely cause them to implode and reveal the real truth they hide.

The BC Liberals Missed The Boat

The BC Liberals forgot something very important in their time in office. The talked a lot about it during their very first election campaign in 2001. Accountability, Open and Honest. What tripe!. Campbell and Co. have made more of mess in BC than anyone the led prior to his term(s). The BC Liberals have clearly failed as a government and what I want to know is why?. Although we had a recession and the Olympics and other major issues and they are important but the BC Liberals decided to play the "We know best card". By doing this they developed a "hate vs" hate" relationship with the electorate. British Columbia has a lot of work to do to not only restore BC to an economic powerhouse but more importantly to restore the trust and faith in the democratic process. This I think is going to be one of the biggest challenges for the next BC provincial government. Big Changes are coming to our beautiful province. I think it's high time that we as citizens have say in the future of a) not only working on solving our challenges but b)holding government accountable. That's my take. Cheers jim1966

Thanks Premier Campbell!

If Premier Campbell could have been charged with anything - including subversion - he would have been taken to court by the legions of zealots that seem to infest Vancouver.

Tyee was born in 2003 after the NDP debacle. Will be interesting to see how critical your hacks are if Carole James or her ilk ever get into power again.

Legions of Zealots

Or Tyee readers will be critical to the fault and will not leave Carole James or her ilk alone if they get into power. Its because most of the readers of the tyee have a political savy that is worth taking note. What do you call those who who hacked away at the NDP? Campbell's media friends and sleezy aids that can't wait to get on the gravy train.

Holding Government Accountable

Is how Campbell came into power.
How are you going to get around it as politicians tell you what you need to hear as Campbell promises accountability and transparency and we can all see through his lies so how do you make government accountable
when the entire system is corrupt.

morechatter,

The electoral process itself, our ability to cast a vote and have the results count, is more gamed than corrupt.

The different sized electoral districts and populations skew results; the expensive propaganda campaigns we tend to follow like hungry mutts at feeding time manufacture our consent; and the conventional wisdom we so freely accept as true has us working against ourselves.

But these are forms of gaming the system which we can completely circumvent IF we got wise, collectively, to the con. And that's the rub. People are pretty stupid when it comes to thinking for themselves rather than being led along. Peer pressure is not just a teenage affliction.

Christ morechatter

They won't leave Carol James alone as it is. In fact, there's a certain category of poster here at Tyee which seems to take malicious pride at leveling accusatory remarks at the woman for everything she's done (or not done) since she became the leader of the party.

These same folks also tell us what supporters of the party they would be if only Ms James would, variously:
a) Grow some balls;
b) Stop being so shrill and critical;
c) Come up with a costed program and agenda;
d) Stop promoting a program and agenda which is exactly the same as the Liberals;
e) Openly promote electoral reform;
f) Forget about electoral reform.

Whatever else one says about the NDP it is undeniable that Carole James has brought the party back from near oblivion to the point where it is odds on to win the next provincial election.

Whether or not she's the right person to achieve that victory is, I suppose, a reasonable subject of debate - but the suggestion that she hasn't, thusfar, been equal to the task(s) she's tackled and mastered is not only fuzzy thinking, it's incomprehensible.

Personally, and given this place is a hangout for anonymous posters, I've always been a little doubtful about the bona fides of these phantom NDP supporters.

an interesting viewpoint of the "crown"

It's interesting that the viewpoint of the photo that the Tyee used for this article comes from a viewpoint David Podmore, chair of BC Pavilion Corp and chair and CEO of Jack Poole's Concert Properties and another of Campbell's appointments, wants us to see.

The photo isn't real, it has the stadium as they would like you to see it. However, most of us will never see it from a helicopter or plane but from the ground...and the King's Crown is omnipresent at this human level!

It sticks up into the sky twice as high as the old bubble or white pillow ever did. The dull battleship grey metal posts are as appealing as the underside of a bridge deck.

I heard the price tag for Campbell's Crown has risen to over $600 million which is par for the course given that the new Convention Centre went over budget by more than $400 million (a project chaired by another Campbell appointment, his old bud and former Vancouver City Manager, Ken Dobell).

When the local mainstream media get over piddling on themselves over what a great legacy Campbell has left, perhaps we will have others enlighten us about what he really has left behind during his 9 years of autocratic reign.

On the river front..."He's harnessing our rivers to the North American power grid and trying to turn B.C. into an energy exporting superpower".

The trouble with this statement is that it doesn't tell us who is going to pay or help subsidize this export...can you say more hydro rate hikes?

G West

Sure it's deniable. I maintain that she didn't bring anything anywhere, and that, as I said, the party would where it is right now, or at least close enough as to be a negligible difference, with a bald hedgehog at the helm. She's done squat, G, I don't get your position. She drops critical balls, overlooks critical malfeasance of the "enemy", avoids making substantive statements about just about anything, completely misses perfect press opportunities ... so on and so forth.

Lowest corporate taxes in Canada...

Gordo can claim we have the lowest corporate taxes in Canada. Maybe we do, but so what? Problem is, we have the most expensive real estate market, so no companies want to locate here because there employees can't afford decent quality housing in a decent location at an affordable price. We have lost head offices in the last decade and they have not been replaced.

One of Campbell's legacies that is not often mentioned is his focusing the economy on real estate. The impact of the new Port Mann bridge and an expanded Hwy. 1 will be huge development activity south and east of the Fraser. I commented to someone recently about Vancouver's shallow, narrow economy, and he replied, "Vancouver doesn't have an economy!"

Grren energy 'powerhouse'

The reality is we're six to eight years behind on green energy. Alberta with its much-attacked tar sands was getting more than 5% of its electricity from wind power before a KWh of wind-generated electricity fed into the BC grid. Forget offshore wind power, it will be staggeringly expensive.

So, we'll get some employment, but we will import the key equipment. We will also import the key expertise until we have enough in BC. Not much long-term stimulus for the economy, but lots of opportunities to spin and spin and spin. "We're so Green!" "We're so Wonderful!" NOT!!!!!

John Greg

Hey, she's far from perfect...I've acknowledged that many times...but, compared with Gordon Campbell or Ujjal Dosanjh, or even Glen Clark or Mike (what me, take a position?) Harcourt she has managed (with almost no money) and coming from a very low start to bring the NDP's fortunes up out of the sub-basement (21.56 per cent of the popular vote) to the level the are today.

I don't think I need remind you that the party's fortunes were so dismal in 2001 that the Green Party - the fucking Green Party - got more than half the votes Dosanjh did as leader in the 2001 election.

Only one other provincial government has ever, in the history of the whole bloody country, had its ass kicked as thoroughly as the NDP did in that election.

I can't prove a negative any more than you can, but I honestly believe the woman has done wonders for her party AND, she has managed to do it without being a firebrand, a demagogue or a man.

This province is a deeply sexist place - and it doesn't have a progressive or even a 'liberal' tradition. In fact, quite the opposite.

I can tell from the way you write that you've been around for a while and I expect you've been in a few political or union backrooms. This is not the same province it was thirty or forty years ago and the job of knitting together support to get enough votes for a party that's regarded with suspicion by a good segment of the population is no picnic.

It's especially tough when you never, ever have the kind of money Gordon Campbell has without even snapping his fingers; it's tough when virtually everything you try to do has to be accomplished by volunteers - many of them past their best-before date.

And it's even tougher when you are, from the get-go - up against the biggest and best-funded newsroom in the country in the PUBLIC AFFAIRS BUREAU...

When there is little or no money in the kitty and you get more attention from the media for being a woman than for anything positive you might say the job of leading is fraught.

It's especially fraught when that 'media' is so far from being independent that they've tripped over themselves while spilling cream of Gordon Campbell Guccis during his phony long goodbye.

I've heard Carole James make all of these points time and again over the past several years.

Have you heard even a breath about the same things in the Vancouver Sun?

See list to follow:

Here's just a partial list

Our minimum wage – Remember the ‘training’ wage – is now lower now than it was ten years ago and is the LOWEST IN CANADA – great stuff from the ‘best place on earth’;
The imposition of new hospital user fees and higher medical premiums
The adoption of numerous higher public service fees and user charges, particularly road and ferry tolls and transit fares – including a useless Carbon Tax that is a net drain on the provincial budget.
The continued reduction of funding increments for public school funding and the accelerated transfer of tax revenues to private schools,
The transfer of taxpayer support from community arts groups to foreign film and video producers through tax holidays – a lot of great help for an industry that’s loyal only to the region offering the highest public subsidies;
A reduction in legal aid availability and a huge increase in court costs while shutting down local court services so that most private citizens have effectively been denied access to the civil courts;
Enormous increases in residential electric rates and the loss of the competitive advantage BC businesses once had in the commercial electricity field;
The purposeful and short sighted prevention of BC's public utility (BC Hydro) from developing new power while allowing an Alberta public utility (Epcor) to take a large share in BC;
The reduction in corporate income taxes with no demonstrable increase in corporate loyalty to this province – how many head offices have we lost since the business friendly Campbell came to power?
The reduction in gas royalties and increased exploration tax credits;
The reduction in the sales taxes on luxury vehicles;
The increase in executive salaries and benefits in public corporations like BC Rail and BC Ferries even as those assets have been alienated from public ownership and control;

The discouragement of unionization in private sector and an outright attack on unions in the Health and education fields;
A reduction in labor standards and reduced enforcement; the decimation of environmental standards and the loss of hundreds of vital jobs in the public sector – Forest rangers and the like;
Enormous increases in tuition for university and college students; huge increases in provincial debt to pay for future obligations under P3 contracts.
The lowest provincial per capita grants and support for the arts in Canada.