The Thing I Learned Today...

ContractsInTheOffices
GroupsInTheNightVille


Today I learned that, no matter how old you are, partaking in Ska-Punk is pretty much guaranteed to make you feel like a kid all over again.

What the heckfire am I going on about this time?

Well, the Geezers are getting ready for their biggest show of the year....

And the rhythm section has decided that we should give Rancid's 'Time Bomb' a try.

For real.

So, given that, does anybody have any tips on how to play a super low-strung vertically-oriented guitar while screaming and twirling at the same time?

Don F?

Scotty?

****

Man.

I sure hope no one mentions The Pixies anytime soon.



________
All joking aside, Time Bomb is a straight-up, super infectious tune to mess around with no matter how you do it...And, while I'm not sure Mr. Beer 'N Hockey would agree, it almost seems like a Post-Hip-Hop-A-Lyptical westcoast-destylized version of Springsteen's New York City Serenade, at least from a lyrical POV....But don't quote me on that in Greasy Lake circles whatever you do....
Interestingly, Rancid's front man Tim Armstrong/Timebomb, who is on the front porch of geezerhood himself now, is still up to some most interesting DIY stuff on the side, a lot of which you can find....Here.
And, in the interest of full disclosure...We lived right up the street from where the two then young Armstrong's, Tim and that other guy, as well their two crews were honing their craft in the Berkeley flats as kids back in the early '90's...But as a junior science geek with a then newly born tiny e. in tow I really had no idea what was truly going on at 924 Gilman on the other side of San Pablo at the time.


.

The Golden Era's (Very) Long Tail...Mr. Coleman Celebrates Another Failure.

WhereExactlyDidAllThoseFamilies
GoVille


It never ceases to amaze me how, if you just pay attention, you can see the real and true failures of BC Liberals coming from miles and miles and miles away..

And I'm not just talking about the cronification of everything.

Instead, I'm talking about the ideologically-driven policy failures.

This time I'm specifically talking about the original Brownian/Campbellerian plan to get public housing off the public's back by selling all the public housing land to private developers to generate capital.

Which is exactly what the executor of the original plan, Rich Coleman, did with all that land at the foot of Little Mountain in Lotsuland's near Eastern Townships almost a decade ago now.

****

I remember it like it was yesterday.

And even then the kicking out of all the families and the tearing down of all that public housing when there was no plan in place seemed like madness.

And, according to Daphne Bramham in the VSun in it is still is.

Utter madness I mean.

Here is the lede of Ms. Bramham's latest on the matter:

Housing Minister Rich Coleman celebrated last week’s official opening of 53 units of seniors’ housing on Vancouver’s Little Mountain as “a milestone” and “a rebirth of a community.”

But a better description of the long-stalled redevelopment of Vancouver’s largest social housing site might be a disgrace or, at very least, an embarrassment to the province and the city.

Far from addressing the enormous problem of housing affordability in Canada’s most expensive city, the province’s sale of the Little Mountain site may have exacerbated it.

No one knows when — or even if — the site will be fully redeveloped. Yet, even if it is fully redeveloped, the net gain may be as few as 10 social housing units and, at most, 60.

For 50 years, the site that stretches from 33rd Avenue to 37th between Main and Ontario streets had 234 units that provided affordable housing to families and seniors.

Eight years ago, the first tenants began moving out with a promise that they would have first right of refusal when new units were completed in 2010.

BC Housing had sold the property for $300 million to Holborn Properties on the condition that it build 234 new units of social housing and an additional 10 for Musqueam band members. Fewer than a quarter have been built.

The old homes were demolished even though Holborn has yet to gain approval from the city for the redevelopment...


Gosh.

If it was only lemonade stands that these people can't run...

We might not be in such trouble.


________
Funny thing about Big Rich's big plans for public housing....Back in the days when he was still running with Mr. Coleman, the CTF's man against transit mega-projects (who was, of course, for them before he was against them) Mr. Jordan Bateman used to argue with folks on various and sundry comment threads (back in the day the then Langley Township Councillor was a blogger too) about how Big Rich was going to transform everything for the better if we would just give him the chance...
The real kicker in Ms. Brahman's piece is the fact that Big Rich's original sell-off deal included no increase in actual public housing units despite the fact that the actual density of the planned private build up was something on the order of a seven fold increase...The City of Vancouver is actually trying to address that in its permitting process...Again, another epic fail for the Martyn Brown/Gordon Campbell doctrine of 'privatize everything!'


.

This Day In Clarkland...But Will There Be Sparkles On That Tiger?

WordSaladingThe
WorldVille


And she should know.

After all, she once saw Maggie Thatcher from her dorm room.

In Scotland.


.

Joni Mitchell's Pre-Blue Muse.

ArtMadeIs
JustThatVille


As you may have heard Ms. Mitchell was hospitalized a few weeks ago.

What you may or may not have heard about are the specifics of Ms. Mitchell's health problems, which are, unarguably, debilitating.

The cause of those problems, however, have led to considerable argument, the best and most balanced description of which that I have read come from Stassa Edwards writing at Jezebel.

Although, to be very clear here, I have, essentially, no expertise in such matters so you might want to read Russell Smith's take in the Globe as well if you are interested.

****

Regardless all that, there was a most interesting piece in, of all places, the Wall Street Journal by Marc Myers last week describing the inspiration for at least two of Ms. Mitchell's songs on the album 'Blue'.

Essentially, this is the story of a young kid who met Mitchell on the island of Crete at the end of the sixties whose first name is Car(e)y and who she once described as her 'Mean Old Daddy'.

It's a great read for all kinds of reasons, including for the anecdotes about Ms. Mitchell's songwriting process and the stories about just how different the world was for carefree kids who wanted to travel the world on a shoestring back then.

And reading such a piece it would go very well with, say, this...

________
Above linked-to piece is built from Cary Raditz' recollections...Ms. Mitchell's are...Here.


.

Translink Referendum Shuffle...Pouring More Untendered Gasoline On The Bonfire Of The Flack-Hackeries.

AllOurConsultants'RPaidBy
YouVille


As I've mentioned numerous times before, the only sure winners in this entire endless plebiscite thingy will be the members of the Flack-Hackery.

And now, thanks to the initial digging and Freedom of Information (FOI) requests of Bob Mackin and the follow-up work of Laila Yuile we know that even the contract extensions of the Flack-Hackery are untendered and, essentially undefined:

...The FOI on this contract is rather open-ended,with few concrete deliverable in place other than what is dictated in the Schedule A ( pg 8) and a proposal letter sent from Counterpoint to Translink VP Bob Paddon in June of 2014 ( Pg 9)



The timeframe for the original contract was June 2014 – December 2014 for $70,000 fees and &4,000 expenses.

An amendment to that contract was signed December 31st,2015 ( pg 15) extending the contract to July 31st 2015, for an additional $100,000 dollars.

No further changes to services were amended.

All of which leads Laila to wonder:

...What exactly is Translink paying for? Conversations? Meetings? Tweets?...


All of which are very good questions.

Perhaps folks should start asking them of  Counterpoint principals Bob Ransford and Bruce Rozenhart the next time they bump into them on the Twittmachine.


______
And here's something that, in my opinion at least, doesn't get said enough...Which is that this plebiscite thingy is non-binding...
In the interests of showing our work....Previous posts on Counterpoint's 'contract' can be found....Here....and....Here.


.

Cronification In Clarkland...Has The Lede Buried In Burke Mountain Been Split In Two?

ThePriceOfEverything
TheValueOfNothingVille


To his credit Les Leyne of the VTC has partially unburied a lede on the Clarklandian Crown Asset Sales Bonanza by writing about the leaked Emails that indicate both the speed at which this was (and presumably still is being) done and why:

...In a note from June 2013, a month after the election, to a team tasked with selling a parcel directly behind the legislature buildings, an official said that to be part of the sale and development “is a once in a lifetime opportunity. An opportunity that normally would warrant years of planning and preparation.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have unlimited time — our goal is to have For Sales up by Oct. 31 with sale proceeds in the bank by March 31 [of the next year].”....

{snip}

...Another email read into the record was from an assistant deputy minister, written in May 2013, just days after the election. It was addressed to dozen officials charged with asset sales across government. It makes crystal-clear what various cabinet ministers are having trouble this week confessing. “As you are aware, asset sales is a key initiative for the government to balance the budget in fiscal 2013/14. The fiscal plan includes a net gain of $350 million from this initiative this year which we are collectively committed to achieve.”...

But here's the thing.

When it comes to the big sales atBurke Mountain, which Mr. Leyne talks about specifically as well, there is not one mention of who actually bought most of the land for, as the buyer claimed yesterday, 'fair market value'.

Curious that, no?



________
And, for the record (and, yes Record Store Day Is Coming!), some idiot bloggers lacking in establishment credibility saw this exercise in budgetary ponzification for what it was BEFORE the last election.


.

This Day In Clarkland...The Simultaneous Dissing And Word Salading Of The Supreme Court Decision.

SayethUntoTheThingymabob
DoesThouSpeakethPremierishVille


First, as recorded by Sean Leslie of CKNW, the 'Dissing':

Premier Christy Clark says there are no plans to phase out the daily prayer that opens each sitting of the legislature.

This after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled a municipality in Quebec can no longer open its meetings with prayers, as the state must remain neutral on religion...


Next, as also recorded by Mr. Leslie, the 'Salading':

...“You know the thing in British Columbia is, the prayer is sometimes it’s a prayer that’s completely non-religious. Sometimes it does refer to God or Allah or Jehovah, or any of the other names that people use for God.” (said Clark)...


Now.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised by this.

After all, it's not like the good premier hasn't dissed the court before while dribbling  the lettuce and the dressing out of both sides of her mouth.


________
And just so you know, it would appear that the good Mr. Leslie  kinda/sorta sees a method in Ms. Clark's madness salad given that he ends his piece with the following: "In fact, some MLA’s who deliver the daily prayer don’t mention God at all."....Hmmmm...I wonder if Mr. Leslie though to ask any of those MLA's if they did that on purpose to, for example, make a point?


.

Mr. Khosrowshahi's Wesbild 'Fully Stands By The Integrity' Of Its Burke Mountain Transaction With The Clark Government.

AllTheSuccessfulBids
ThatFitVille


How do I know this?

Because Wesbild has released a statement to that effect:

Posted Apr 15, 2015

In March 2014, Wesbild purchased 370 acres of land in the Burke Mountain area of Coquitlam via a competitive and public tender process administered by Colliers International on behalf of the Province of British Columbia. Our firm submitted a bid for 14 of the 21 parcels that were on offer, and we were the successful bidder for these lands. We paid fair market value and fully stand by the integrity of this transaction.

Wesbild has also participated in other provincial land sale competitions in British Columbia with unsuccessful bids.


Fair market value on all 14 parcels that the very fine Wesbild bid on?

Gosh.

Does that mean that Wesbild knows what all the other bids were?

And, more to the point, I suppose, is a question we have for the fine Clarklandian minister responsible, the good Mr. Virk.

Which is...

We're there any other bidders on each of those 14 parcels?


______
And we very much thank the fine folks from Wesbild for letting us know that they have had unsuccessful provincial land sale bids in the past, although it would have been most helpful if they had let us know if they have lost any such bids since, say, May 14th, 2013?
Tip O' the Toque to Cassidy Olivier on the Twittmachine for the heads-up.


.

The Bard Of Sliverville Weighs In On The Recall Thing.

DidBukowskiEverWorkInA
SawmillVille


From Mr. Beer 'N Hockey's latest:

...Elections are best left to election time. Takes a lot of steam to build up enough pressure for people, in their masses, to change a government. Recall campaigns allow some of that steam to blow off.

Not a good idea in my opinion.


Hard to argue with that, I reckon.



.

The Justin Trudeau Waffle Suit.

PerhapsHeWouldRatherFormA
CoalitionWithThePancakesVille


Yesterday we learned that Justin Trudeau would rather form a coalition with an NDP party-party led Tommy Hunter than Tommy Mulcair.

Or some such thing.

And now, today, it would appear that the good Mr. Trudeau has decided that he won't work with anybody from the Rusty Staub party-party whatsoever.

Not even one led by Tommy Tu-Tone and/or the ghost of Tommy Douglas.

Gosh.

One can only wonder if the FedCons are even going to bother sending out the Junior Segretti Division (TM), for real, on this one.



_______
Just in case you've forgotten...There really was a Dipper 'Waffle' faction back in the good ol' days.
And, for the record....In a fit of stupid, couldn't stop myself from hashtagging a theme on the Twittmachine last night after I got home and should have been working on Geezer Rock cover tunes instead...Honestly thought that one of my better ones was #JustinWouldRatherWorkWith Holly Golightly, not Audrey McLaughlin...As you might imagine no one, not even executors of Truman Capote's estate, cared.


.

Does It Even Matter What Mr. Fassbender Knew And When He Knew It?

DuelingAudits
'RUsVille


You know the story....

The Vancouver school board decided to audit itself and soon thereafter the Clarklandian Minister responsible for privatizing all learning in British Columbia, Mr. Peter Fassbender, announced his own audit of the VSB.

Well now, according to Carlito Pablo writing the GStraight,  the new chair of of the VSB, Christopher Richardson, has stated that he notified Mr. Fassbender's ministry of his board-ordered audit prior to Mr. Fassbender's announcement.

Not true said Mr. Fassbender on Tuesday in the legislature:

“Neither I nor the ministry team were aware prior to our announcement of the special adviser that Vancouver had made an in-camera decision, which was in camera and happened the Tuesday before the Thursday that I made the announcement.”


So.

Somebody is flat-out lying (and/or prevaricating - notice the word 'team' tagged onto the word 'ministry' by Mr. Fassbender, for example).

But does it even matter given the following from the CPablo piece:

...Fassbender also said that upon learning of the Vancouver school board’s contract with Price Waterhouse Coopers, he offered to “pay any cancellation charges that they may have incurred or would incur in cancelling the review that they had done”.

“I did that for a very specific reason. They are not the same review,” Fassbender also said...


In other words, Mr. Fassbender was going to get what he wanted no matter what.

Which just further demonstrates what a sham-of-a-shamified shim-sham-shimmy is going down here.

OK?


_______
And, just to be very clear here...I, for one, do think that what Mr. Fassbender knew and when he knew it very much matters with respect to the timing of the Casino Industrial Complex deal (scroll down a little)...


.

Burke Mountain Land Deal...Two Different Views From The Local Media

AllTheRealMediaThatFit
Lotsuslandia


As we noted yesterday, the Dippers revealed that all of that Burke Mountain land was sold to one group, whose principal is a big BC Liberal supporter, for considerably less than the appraised value.

Initially, all we got from the media was stenography.

But now, a day later, the analysis is starting to come in.

And, as you might expect, some media folks are taking the travesty of all of the land going to a BC Liberal connected buyer seriously.

And some are not, at least not at the moment.

First the serious stuff from Norm Farrell. Here is his lede:

Less than three weeks ago, a 2,100 ft² house on a 3,350 ft² lot in east Vancouver sold for $2.2 million though the asking price was $1.6 million. Two weeks ago, a modest 60-year-old home near my North Vancouver residence sold for $1 million, also above the asking price. The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver said February sales were 20% above the 10-year sales average for the month and the average price for a single family detached property in Metro Vancouver is over a million dollars. Houses are routinely selling 100 to 200 thousand above asking price.

In other words, the residential real estate market in urban British Columbia is hot, hot, hot. In the Burke Mountain area, small building lots are listed over $600,000. Yet, the Province of British Columbia made a hurried deal to sell vast tracts of residential property at a fraction of appraised values. The buyer is a company controlled by Hassan Khosrowshahi, a large BC Liberal contributor. The responsible Minister? None other than Amrik Virk who was party to a scheme that demonstrated minimal dedication to protecting taxpayers' financial interests...


Next, the not so serious stuff from the Dean of the Legislative Press Gallery, Vaughn Palmer who, essentially, sees this as part of the 'game'. Here is his lede (please note the missing party):

When the B.C. Liberals set out before the last election to balance the budget by selling off government landholdings, they dressed up the exercise as “release of surplus assets for economic generation.”

More like a “fire sale” said the Opposition New Democrats, and in the legislature this week they produced evidence to support that characterization in the case of one major asset sale in Metro Vancouver.

Early last year, the Liberals sold off 14 parcels of land in the Burke Mountain neighbourhood of the Tri-Cities area to a single developer for a combined price of $85 million.

On Tuesday, the New Democrats released a government-commissioned appraisal that estimated the properties could fetch as much as $128 million in the right circumstances.

The key consideration being that government maximize the potential bidders by offering the land for sale for up to nine months. Instead, the deal was rushed through in three months, according to supporting documentation provided by the NDP.

“What possibly went wrong?” Opposition leader John Horgan challenged at the outset of question period. “We had $128 million worth of property, and to meet your single-year budget objectives, you sold them for $43 million less than they were worth.”

Answering for the government was the cabinet member currently in charge of the asset disposal program, Citizens’ Services Minister Amrik Virk. Unhappily for the Liberals, one has to add, for if there’s a weaker link in the cabinet lineup, he or she has so far escaped general notice.

Nor did he fail to live down to those expectations Tuesday...

Surprised?

________
And, for the record, the good Mr. Khosrowshahi's name shows up in graph #23 of Mr. Palmer's piece, which is the third from the bottom...Ledes buried and all that, right?
And, just in case you were wondering, Mr. Leyne has his fun while he does his own burying too.

And finally...You may have noticed what I did there re: the local 'media'.

.

English Bay Botched Oil Spill Response v.43....Breaking: DFO Closes Area To Fishing.

ButIThoughtYouSaidItWasJustAMilkJugFull

EthicalLubricistsUber-AllesVille

It was small.

It was inconsequential

It's all been cleaned up, so stop complaining.

Oh.

And by the way, we've closed the fishery.

But just as a 'precautionary measure':

....Effective immediately and until further notice, the following portions of Area 28: Subareas 28-6 to 28-9 inclusive are closed to fishing for all shellfish and groundfish species. This area includes those waters easterly of a line drawn between Point Grey to Point Atkinson to the westerly side of the Lions Gate Bridge. 

 This closure is in response to a fuel spill in English Bay on April 9, 2015 and is a precautionary measure...


Go figure.


______
Subheader got you scratching your head?....Well....This.


.

The Hosing At Burke Mountain: But... "Both Sides"!

AllTheAssetSalesThatFit
GoldenEraNeverendingVille


Given that all of the proMedia reports so far (at least the ones that I have seen) are, essentially, CP-based stenography I thought I'd go straight to the Dipper source on this one:

...The provincial government hired an independent appraiser in 2013 to determine the value of 14 publicly owned parcels of land in Coquitlam’s Burke Mountain neighborhood. In its detailed 137-page report, Equity Valuation and Consulting advised the government that these public assets would command a $128 million sale price if exposed to the markets for six to nine months.

But Clark’s ministers wouldn’t wait, and only weeks later began accepting offers at dramatically lower prices. Fourteen parcels were sold to the same buyer for only $85 million, fully $43 million less than the appraised value. The Clark Liberals parted with one 16-acre parcel, valued at $5.6 million, for only $100,000.

“The appraiser told the government to wait nine months and get a good price,” said Mike Farnworth, New Democrat MLA for Port Coquitlam. “But the Liberals threw the report to the wind and rushed to sell the land at a massive loss to the taxpayer just so they could pad their budget numbers.”

The purchaser of all 14 land parcels is Hassan Khosrowshahi of Wesbild Holdings Ltd. Khosromshahi and his companies have donated close to $1 million to the B.C. Liberal party since 2000, and a quarter of a million dollars just since the B.C. Liberals began their fire sale of public assets...

But.

Of course, you are sure to soon hear from the usual suspects that the good Mr. Khosromshahi has also given money to the socialist hordes.

So, no harm no foul, right?

Sure thing.

Except it turns out that, at least according to the Province's Cassidy Olivier on the Twittmachine the green handed out to the Dippers comes to a grand total of....

Wait for it....

$9,500.

'Nuff said?


_______
And anybody who is surprised by what went down on Burke Mountain re: the bogus balancing of the Clarklandian budget is forgetting what happened with a wee bit of asset-backed bait and switcherly switcherooing on the easterly downslope of Little Mountain awhile back.


.

Botched English Bay Oilspill Resonse v.37...In Which Mary Polak Is Given Her Marching Orders.

DoNotPayAttentionToThoseWizardsAndPAB-Bots
BehindTheCurtainVille


It would appear that the wizards of Clarklandia have taken the full measure of the extended newscycle's longish tail and have decided, tentatively, that the way to make hay might just be to pivot and start paying attention to the bleatings of the unestablished and not-so credible idiots (i.e. bloggers).

In other words, it would appear that they have decided, at least for the time being, to start ignoring very finest of the fine folks and opinion makers like the Keef and start blaming the Coast Guard.

To wit, this morning's story in the Globe from S. Dhillon and J. Hunter. Here is their lede:

British Columbia’s Environment Minister has accused the Canadian Coast Guard of a lack of leadership, saying it took the agency that was supposed to be in charge of an oil spill on Vancouver’s English Bay more than a day to assume control.

The spill, which occurred last Wednesday, has revealed potential gaps in the country’s marine-response system at a time when major pipeline projects that would dramatically increase tanker traffic along the West Coast are being hotly debated. It has also spurred a round of finger-pointing among three levels of government...


Which takes, us way back into the depths of time (i.e. yesterday) to see which way the wizards might go next if this ploy plays well with the plebes.

What the heckfire am I babbling on about this time?

Well, here is the key bit of foreshadowing from those misty mountainish and hoppy times, in the form of J. Hunter's piece from Sunday evening that hit the streets in dead tree version on Monday morning:

...Ms. (Christy) Clark has repeatedly warned that B.C. is not ready for additional oil tanker traffic, and had demanded that Ottawa reopen the Kitsilano Coast Guard base as a starting point...


Hmmmmm....

That's some emphatic statement there, the one about Ms. Clark's previous 'demand' that Ottawa re-open the Kitsilano CG base, don't you think?

Not sure I remember things going quite like that.

I mean, wasn't Ms. Clark essentially backed-into a corner by hordes of irate rubes before she finally said stuff like, say, the following:

...“When they get to the outcome (i.e. increased oil tanker traffic in and out of Burrard Inlet), it’s going to have to include making sure that Kits Coast Guard base is reopened, and the outcome is also going to have to include a beefed up Coast Guard response up and down the coast” ...


Now, Ms. Clark said that in the early spring of 2013.

So...

What has the good Premier actually done since that time to ensure that her so-called 'demands' have been met since then?

And, finally, while we're on the subject...

What's up with the land that that the base used to be on?

You know that 'asset' that is currently under the control of Clarklandians.

Gosh.

Certainly hope it doesn't get sold to some big BCLiberal party donor(s) for less than appraised value to help balance Cookie Dough Mike's books.

After all, it's not like anything like that has happened recently around here.

Right?


_______
And why are we considering this latest move by the WizzesO'CLandia to be 'tentative', at least for the moment?...Well, if they were really sure that this is the right play we're pretty sure they would have had the word saladeer herself up there babbling on about it like, say, yesterday...Or even last Friday when she was still downplaying the loss of the Kits base in the schmozzle...
And I suppose, to be fair, in addition to a bunch of idiot bloggers, the Wizzes might also be paying attention to the real investigative journalistic-type work of Shane Woodford of CKNW who has refused to buy into the FedCon's Pravda on The Rideau-type efforts to change the channel on this thing from the beginning.


.