by Sean Orr | Wither Vancouver? “It’s been more than six months now since the Vision Party-dominated Vancouver City Council fired the City’s last Director of Planning, and still no replacement is in sight.” Yeah, whatever. They are getting shit done. When right wingers do it, it’s deemed necessary pragmatism, but when lefties do it they-re a bloated, out of touch, ideologically-driven bureaucracy. The point is moot, anyway: New senior Vancouver city planner seen as consensus-builder.

Meanwhile, former planner Brent Toderian dishes on The Games: What Vancouver Gained By Hosting the Olympics. “Who could have predicted warm weather with no snow?” Um, not only everybody, but also those people whose job it was to predict such things. Oh, and Greenpeace.

Fontaine says London Olympiad crashing before it starts. He’s still mad about those Guardian articles ripping Vancouver? Don’t you get it? The Olympics as a entity is the problem. It’s an expensive, over-hyped exercise in boosterism.

Canadians wait almost twice as long as Americans for new, life-saving cancer drugs. This is canceled out by the fact that Canadians don’t have to pay ridiculous hospital bills in order to get said cancer drugs. What’s more, it turns out that it’s class division that causes poor health.

Am I first one to use the term oiligarchy? Oil Wealth: Should Norway Be the Canadian Way? “Norway produces 40 per cent less petroleum than Canada and has one-seventh our population, but has saved more than $600 billion in oil revenue and counting.” Also, just wait until a new tar sands is discovered underneath all that melting ice!

Goldcorp posts 45% drop in second quarter earnings – gold prices under pressure. This alleviates a lot of the guilt I had watching the Restaurant Rumble in a theatre sponsored by Goldcorp.

Drug Money: Harper’s anti-drug strategy gets a little less compassionate. If we’re gonna get all Norwegian about our oil we should definitely get Scandinavian about our drugs, too. But then again, I guess we have to do something about the drastic decline in our rate of crime. What else are we going to do, close prisons? Bwah ha!

Dear all Randian, Fraser Institute shills: Enslaved by taxes? Not necessarily. It’s why I named my band Taxes. The word has an emotional connotation now. All you have to say in a rebuttal to anything these days is “yeah, but taxes.”

Waste Coast: My City and the Yoga Pants.