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

On Predicting Budgets and Speculation Being Vancouver’s Best Hope

It’s budget day! It’s budget day! I could hardly sleep last night! /sarcasm. Will BC Get the Bold Budget We Badly Need? No. But also yes. But also probably no. There will be some concessions to tide us lefties over, but it will mostly pander to the tired middle class masses and their unquenchable thirst for property.

But because I was raised middle class I don’t actually know why this is bad, so here’s a quote from Stop Displacement:

The framing of the housing crisis as an exception within an otherwise stable system forecloses a systemic critique of global capital, and produces solutions that evade rather than centre the interests of those who experience the housing crisis at its highest, most violent level -— poor, homeless, non-citizen, and Indigenous communities.

That’s totally what I was going to say.

Michal Rozworski is more optimistic about the budget: “Remember, if we dedicated same share of GDP to public spending yearly as in 2000 there’d be $6 billion more available for childcare, healthcare, housing and more”. It’s almost like redistribution of wealth is actually a thing that we can do.

But hey, let’s not allow our disappointment in the NDP to be limited provincially! Jagmeet Singh not picking sides in pipeline battle. Um, didn’t he already take sides? You know, in his campaign for leader when he explicitly promised he would?

Related: NDP convention ends without taking a ‘Leap’.

“Delegates were more interested in looking forward … as opposed to looking inwards and debating issues that have been debated in the past or could be divisive or explosive. So there’s a sense of unity coming out of this,” he said.

Yeah, because that kind of strategy totally worked out for Hillary Clinton too.

Ottawa cancelled B.C. event on child care amid pipeline dispute. Hey, remember when Amor de Cosmos threatened to leave the confederation because of delays in the construction of the transcontinental railway? Those were the days.

Reminder: there’s a lexicon entry for this.

Elizabeth May: Is the pipeline really in our best interests? Well, the nation state has never been about what is good for the collective, only what is good for the crown vis a vis the settler colonialists. So, yes. Also, I am smart.

I guess Elizabeth May is, too: “So ‘national interest,’ according to the NEB, does not include energy security, net employment benefits, environment, climate, GDP or anything other than getting the pipeline approved.”

Hey, you know what else is in the national interest? Letting people from a different nation use our houses as investment vehicles: In Vancouver, foreign capital is part of the housing solution. Yes, says the man who also thinks Ponzi schemes are a good idea.

Not the Beaverton: Speculation is best hope for housing supply, developers say. Yes, and smoking cures cancer.

Vancouver criticized for boasting about low pay of its tech workers in Amazon HQ bid. It’s almost like global capital operates best where inequality is worst. Weird!

TIL what art washing is: Artists Align with Anti-Displacement Movements.

This tent and the total work of shit inside are a pathetic attempt to valorize the life-work of a developer parasite, it is nothing short of a sick insult to those who have lost their homes and livelihoods to one man’s greed and egomania.

Here is the part where I try to relate all of the above to hockey. I mean, our team is owned by a fucking developer, after all.

Quick don’t look at the gross display of late capitalist pomp and rampant patriotism, here is a guy drinking beer! Olympic curler’s husband double-fisting his third and fourth beers at 9 a.m. is a legend.

Bonus: Apocalypse Whatever. ‘The making of a racist, sexist religion of nihilism on 4Chan.

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.