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On The City’s Biggest Eyesores And Quantifying Our Own Racism

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by Sean Orr | B.C. NDP’s Jenny Kwan, who represents one of Canada’s poorest neighbourhoods, buys $1.9M home in another riding. This is the same sort of petty indignation as when a climate change denier points out that an environmentalist drove a car (god forbid). Also, $1.9 million in Vancouver means absolutely nothing. It’s not like she represents the the new aristocracy.

Besides, Vancouver’s cheapest house already got sold…for $643,000.

Meanwhile, speculation runs rampant: Absence of data on Vancouver real estate market ‘mind boggling’. It makes life especially hard when we don’t know how many foreign buyers there because we don’t know how racist to be. Clearly, capitalism isn’t working.

Renoviction isn’t a word. Thanks to Scout’s own Vancouver Lexicon, it most definitely will be! Also, fuck the poor, right?

A constant desire to continually re-invent ourselves: Vancouver’s 10 biggest eyesores. Note the Vancouver Sun’s strange, classist overtones on this list as they include the beloved, working class Vancouver Special. Meanwhile the gaudy, green glass condos of Concord Pacific get a pass, as does the newspaper’s own ugly, ominous headquarters at 200 Granville.

Laureen Harper interrupted by protester at Internet cat video festival. “That’s a great cause but that’s another night.” Really? Can we circle the date when Conservatives will raise money for missing and murdered aboriginal women in our calendars? Or was this just an attempt to leverage her popularity?

Meanwhile, in the Guardian: Aboriginal rights a threat to Canada’s resource agenda, documents reveal. You just know that somewhere an greedy oil executive is wishing he could buy their silence for blankets and beads. Also in the Guardian: Canada becoming launch-pad of a global tar sands and oil shale frenzy. Oh great, now we’re role models for Israel? How bad can it get?

Possibly worse: Yellowknife is sitting on enough arsenic to kill every human on Earth. Yeah, but who’s got all the old lace?

The following story is just really very quite amazing, literally: Ten words to cut from your writing.

A special kind of pain to those who steal a band’s gear: Thieves steal $20,000 worth of equipment from 4 Vancouver bands.

There are 3 comments

  1. I was on the receiving end of a fkin Renoviction in New Westminster (where there is also homelessness. Numbers in Vancouver proper have been declining) Unfortunately there wasn’t really anything to be done. There needs to be more renters’ rights in this province. Now still living in a dump cause it’s what I can afford, and there are far more people around these parts who are earning less than myself.

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