Tea & Two Slices is a long-running local news round-up by NEEDS frontman and veteran dishwasher Sean Orr, who lives and works in Gastown, deeply aware of his privilege.

Vancouver towing RVs and campers parked on city streets. Good grief. “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread” – Anatole France, 1894.

These forlorn RVs should form a convoy and block the port. They should surround the CMHC offices. They should storm the banks like they were the Bastille.

‘Like a landlord on speed’: Documentary shows how trading homes on the stock market can increase your rent. Any time someone says socialism is when lazy people take the wealth of people who work hard and give it those who don’t, show them this article.

Millennials are killing the economy. Millennials will save the economy: Millennials are flooding into Canadian cities, signalling housing won’t go bust any time soon. The following quote is from an ‘expert’. Like, this person actually gets paid…

“Housing demand isn’t at risk of falling anytime soon,” Hogue said. “What could fall, however, is the rate of young households who own a home. High housing prices set an impossibly high bar to clear for many millennials to become homeowners in a big city. Expect a greater proportion of them to rent in the future.”

How do so many people conflate the housing crisis (let’s call it the ‘being able to own a fucking home and therefore have some semblance of security so you can raise a family’ crisis)  with the affordability crisis (let’s call it the ‘I can’t afford rent and either have to live in an RV or move to fucking Powell River crisis’)? Obviously they are linked, but having an influx of renters isn’t going to stop the bubble from bursting. Sorry.

Parq Vancouver opened in splashier times, but could it be in debt distress?. Wow, nobody could have seen this coming except for literally fucking everybody.

Massive cruise ship stops in Vancouver, prompting calls for port changes. As a precariously employed restaurant worker this is vital to our industry. As an environmentalist, this is thousands of times more damaging than people in cars. “They could be (doing) everything from potentially looking at ‘Is there a way to raise the Lions Gate Bridge by a couple metres?’ to finding another location to develop a cruise terminal outside of downtown”. Yes, let’s raise the Lion’s Gate Bridge a few metres so we can get a few more fat Americans ordering fries at an upscale French restaurant. Nobody will have a problem with that. Totally fine.

Looks like those clowns down at Congress City Hall did it again. What a bunch of clowns: Time for city hall to start acting locally before posturing globally. “I am not in the denier camp, and I know the most serious consequences of our inertia will be felt after I am gone. But look: right horses for right courses, right time and right place.” This sounds like it was written by an AI bot that has painstakingly studied entitled Baby Boomer discourse for the last 5 years. “The extra-territoriality of the city council would be fine if the streets were first clear of garbage”. Believe or not, the government can do a bunch of things at once and planning to, you know, have a city that isn’t under water in 20 years doesn’t mutually exclude basic fucking sanitary engineering, you nitwit. This is why you lost in 2014.

Mike Smyth: Gas-pump politics could run over John Horgan at election time. “Are the New Democrats and the Liberals both a bunch of hypocrites? Darn right they are. But I’d say Horgan is the one who will take most of the blame from B.C. drivers, especially if gas prices soar even higher.” Leaving gas companies off the hook…

Interesting timing for sure:

Wholesome content of the day: 400 students wave final surprise goodbye to grandmother who waved them off to school for years.

RIP: Wayson Choy, author of The Jade Peony, dead at 80.