The Write Stuff

Ink-Stained
ButNotWretchedVille


By day Irwin Loy covers the City and writes for 24 hours, presumably for a living.

The rest of the time he writes on his blog.

Here's an example, wherein he lays waste to the puffed-up puffery of the newly re-minted NPA councillor, cum quisling, Peter Ladner.

And in the 'Ironic Exaggeration' category, Ladner says in his e-mail:

"If I could get $10 for every mis-statement, exaggeration and uninformed accusation about the new council’s changes to the Southeast False Creek plan, I’d have enough to buy every low income person in Vancouver a waterfront suite."

If, like me, you're curious as to how many misstatements, exaggerations and/or uninformed accusations a city can hurl upon its esteemed councillors, here are a few quick calculations.

• Assuming a low-income rate in Vancouver of 19.1 per cent, as it was in 2000 according to Statscan (incidentally, a 3.3 percentage point increase since 1990)...
  
• ... and assuming a population of 560,000, according to the City of Vancouver website...
  
• ... there are 106,960 people in the city who qualify as low-income.
  
• Multiply that by $299,999, the price of the cheapest online MLS listing for a waterfront condo...
  
• ... and you get some $32 billion (rounded down $88 million or so).

And it only gets better from there.

I, for one, am looking forward to reading much more from the intrepid Mr. Loy.

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