Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Fueling the Madness


The world-wide reaction to skyrocketing fuel prices is becoming increasingly violent.

Prices at the pump are high enough here and then you realize that they are cheap relative to prices in the US, in Europe and around the globe.

Solutions?

Now You're a College, Now You're Not


Vaughn Palmer, as he often does, got it completely right is his column this morning about the Premier and Higher Education.

In April, Campbell re-named 5 Colleges as Universities.

Within days, the orders went out from his government instructed everybody on how to not spend money and how to live with less.

Read this excellent piece here, and think about this government's continuing pea and shell game with the public it was elected to serve.

Holy Theft, Batman


Congratulations to the "unsophisticated Lower Mainland career criminals."

It is encouraging to see that we are raising our level of culture and crime in one fell swoop.

Stealing Bill Reid art objects from the UBC Museum of Anthropology puts us on the map, for sure. I'm surprised Ladner or Sullivan or one of the other city boosters wasn't there for the ribbon cutting.

Cutting Deals on Bad Guys No Way to Run the Shop


It is not enough to know that once again Corrections Canada and the National Parole Service has failed the community by putting a dangerous violent sex offender in a Vancouver half-wit house. It is not enough to know that, of course, the maniac simply walked away and is now being searched for across the country.

What you have to understand is the complex and dire melodrama that surrounds a story like this.

The half-wit house should refuse this kind of client. We did for 10 years. Why risk your other resident clients and your reputation for one lunatic?

The answer is simple.

Because they (the half-way house) have to.

They are funded by government and piper calls the tune. "Take this putz or else" is basically how their contract runs.

What remains when the lights go out is how do you live with yourself running this kind of operation?

Bargoons


The Sun business section reports today that prices are coming down in "rec property."

Ha!

If your idea of a little get-away cabin is $1.3 Million at the bottom level, than you might buy that tripe.

Salt Spring Island is basically off limits for most people. Forget waterfront. Try finding even a 50-year old wood frame 2 bedroom, one bath house in the woods for under half a million.

We live in a dream.

Tom Waits - Waltzing Matilda