VancouverIAM Daily Blog Report: Carole James not leading by consensus, Canucks 8-2 loss was hideous, Betty Krawczyk for mayor?

This is a selection of recent popular blog articles from VancouverIAM where you will find the best blogs from Vancouver, British Columbia as well as video uploads, social networking, rumors, and blog authoring.

Betty Krawczyk will run for mayor

According to a recent post in The Tyee, “Vancouver's most famous raging granny” is officially planning to run for mayor following her recent release from jail. Betty Krawczyk was quoted as saying “I got out of prison and the city's in shambles! There's garbage everywhere! Anyone can do a better job than this.” Krawczyk was incarcerated at the Alouette Women’s Correctional Facility, her eighth prison stay, for failing to observe a court order instructing her to stay away from a construction zone near the Eagle Ridge Bluffs. She is currently involved in a Supreme Court case challenging the legal reasoning behind commercial injunctions, which according to Krawczyk, “strip people of their legal rights, their rights under the charter. It's the same kind of legalities that are used to toss poor people out of substandard housing.”

In fact, the post noted that Krawczyk considered Vancouver’s homeless problem to be akin to the scenario that played out on the Eagleridge Bluffs. She declared, “it's like the homeless people on the downtown eastside. We're destroying their habitat. Where are they going to live? They're like the spotted owl, an endangered species. It's all the same.”

Surplus surprises Translink, bad service surprises nobody

A recent post from Stephen Rees’ blog has warned of “a real issue of credibility” in regards to Translink’s 17 million dollar surplus forecast for 2007. Rees noted that “this is the organization that recently hiked fares. The same organization that cannot cope with current demand and has little in the way of current plans to deal with that.” The 17 million dollar surplus will be thrown into the 386 million dollar pile that Translink is currently sitting on. However, the post quotes Translink board chairman Malcolm Brodie saying that the surplus is needed to “address long-range plans, particularly because the annual surplus is expected to end after 2008 due to rising costs.”
Rees was incensed that Translink could offer such terrible service and overcrowding while sitting on a nearly $400 million surplus that is doing nothing more than sitting in a bank accumulating interest. The whole scenario left Rees declaring “I wonder if anyone at Translink thought that perhaps they might actually spend some of this ‘found money’ on improving service?”
Carole James: a consensus of one

The latest post from Walter Schultz’s blog reveals that he is adamant that NDP leader Carole James is leading by no other consensus than her own personal one. Schultz declared that “Carole James is fond of saying that the NDP caucus has a consensusposition and then issue by issue, one of her MLA's contradicts her. I wonder if she even knows what the definition of consensus is?” Schultz cites several specific instances when James said her party had reached a general consensus on something and then failed to act accordingly. For instance, in a speech on May 2nd she stated that “the New Democratic Party caucus wouldn't take the proposed 29 per cent pay increase proposed for MLAs.” The post goes on to quote NDP Yale-Lillooet MLA Harry Lalli stating “I am in support of this package that the independent panel has put forward. And so when I go into the legislature I will be supporting it.” In Schultz opinion, that doesn’t sound like much of a consensus.

Additionally, Carole James dropped the c-word again during a press conference on the Tsawwassen treaty. After the vote was ratified, James called a press conference “to announce that the NDP supports the Tsawwassen treaty and has for some time. She had initially delayed taking a stand on the treaty. Then after the Tsawwassen band voted yes, she announced a caucus ‘consensus’ in support of it.” James later suspended NDP MLA Michael Sather for saying he would vote against the Tsawwassen treaty. In fact, this left Walter Schultz lamenting that “it is becoming down right comical when ever Carole James uses the word consensus in her speeches.”

Canucks 8-2 loss was “just ugly”

The Canucks 8-2 defeat at the hand of the Philadelphia Flyers was not a good performance by any stretch of the imagination. According to the latest post from the Canucks Hockey Blog the whole thing was “ugly. Just ugly… The Canucks were awful. Poor defensive coverage, odd-man rushes, giveaways you name it, there was lots of it.” The post was adamant that Vancouver’s lack of possession was one of the chief reasons for their undoing.

The Canucks Hockey Blog was insistent that Jesse Boulerice’s cheapshot on Ryan Kesley deserves nothing less than a suspension, a thought shared by the Flyers coach, of all people. The post declared “his team was already up by five goals when he decided to break his stick on Ryan Kesler's face… Was he trying to finish his check like Steve Downie?” Although, it was noted that after Boulerice’s crosscheck, the Canucks at least started to play with a bit more fire, alas, it was too little too late. At the end of the game, the Canucks Hockey blog firmly believed that “as good as the Canucks were on Saturday, they were just as horrible last night. It's been a while since I've watched them sleepwalk through a game like that, playing with absolutely no emotion.”

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