A no messing around guide to the coolest things to eat, drink and do in Vancouver and beyond. Community. Not clickbait.

On Trading Refugees For Xenophobes & Picking Up After Racoon Dogs

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by Sean Orr | You don’t say: PBO report warns recent university grads are overeducated, underemployed. This is news? I thought it was more like a long standing tradition or at least a rite of passage.

Kitten Face: Kit and Ace to investigate raccoon dog fur claims. Now we just need Chip Wilson to come out and say that raccoon dog fur isn’t for everyone’s body types and maybe that’s why they are so upset.

Speaking of pets: Vancouver considers making it illegal for landlords to ban pets. I don’t think this is unreasonable considering how most people live in tiny cages and are basically pets themselves…

Can you imagine if Harper had been the Prime Minister during the Paris attacks? Our Response to Paris Says Something About Us – But More About The State

And so I view our response to Paris, terrible as the tragedy is, with great optimism. As France and Germany threatens to close their borders, Canada promises to open them. There is a thoughtfulness and optimism here, that is a genuinely new thing from what has been for a decade a rather thoughtless and cynical federal government.

Unfortunately at least one person on my FB shared this link: Stop the immigration of refugees to Canada. 25,000 signatures? How about we trade them for the refugees…

Oh, and the Premier of Saskatchewan: Sask. Premier Brad Wall asks feds to suspend Syrian refugee plan. Of course you can never be 100% sure that you’re not letting in a terrorist, but that’s a risk we must take in our march of freedom. 750,000 refugees have settled in the USA since 9/11, and not one of them has been a terrorist. To win this so-called “war”, we must make Canada a more enticing place to be a part of than the alternative.

Of course, this kind of reaction is exactly what the terrorists want, as Crawford Killian writes eloquently in The Tyee: Five Things We Already Know About the Paris Attacks (and Ourselves). “A routine terrorist goal is to delegitimize its enemy by goading it into violent repression.” Box duly ticked.

Not even the right religion: Canadian man’s selfie altered to look like Paris suicide bomber. So…wait, you can’t use a Quran to take a selfie?

City of Vancouver settles with Ivan Henry in wrongful-conviction case. Why did the COV settle out of court before the women could testify?

Liberals under fire after Vancouver School Board gets bank loan. Just look at all those shiny condos in the background not paying for a school through CAC’s from developers…

Has Gregor Robertson kept his promise to ‘do better’? Hmm, I’m sure the Betteridge Law of Headlines has something to say about that…

There’s a Canadian News Hall of Fame and We’re Pretty Sure It’s Real. “The Canadian News Hall of Fame has no hall, no wall, and many people in it are not that famous…” How apropos!

Reddit of the day: Chefs/cooks at Vancouver restaurants, what should we never order or eat from the place you work?

Bonus: Whistler man falls down mountain, lives.

TEA & TWO SLICES ARCHIVE

On Ken Sim’s So-Called “Swagger” and ABC’S Class War

Sean Orr is back from his hiatus with a rundown of the local headlines that have been running on a ticker tape through his mind over the past six months...

On Post-Election Recuperation, Platform Paradoxes and Refund Communities

In his latest read of the local news headlines, Sean Orr finds irony in "safety, affordability, and sustainability", and shouts out a bunch of amazing local organizations working on the frontlines.

On Running for City Council, Playing Whack-a-Mole with Homelessness, and the Public Washroom Deficit

In his latest read of the local news headlines, Sean Orr finds a park ranger with a grudge, a gross misuse of air quotes and Tripadvisor slander.

On Living in a City Preoccupied with Street Cleaning, Chandeliers, and Campaigns Against the Homeless

In his latest read of the local news headlines, Sean Orr hones in on the recent Langley shootings, and the ongoing criminalizing and dehumanizing of the homeless population.