39 responses so far ↓

• 1 Richard // Sep 11, 2014 at 9:59 pm

  Who cares about this nonsense. Let’s stick to the issues. This painful back and forth just turns people off. Best to just ignore it.

• 2 Victor // Sep 11, 2014 at 10:02 pm

  Lets not allow this to be Frances game or promo. She is known by many multiple community activists both left and right, to to skewer towards Vision Vancouver .
  Move along folks and give her less creds

• 3 boohoo // Sep 11, 2014 at 10:17 pm

  Meet the new boss and all that…

• 4 Bill Lee // Sep 12, 2014 at 12:56 am

  Not much worse than BBM (Blackberry short messages), but often more, much more, public.

  And I am sure that Vision is full on it and uses their favourite Hootsuite twitter program to follow the elite twitters.

  And how are they doing in the non-English languages?
  그리고 그들은 어떻게 영어가 아닌 언어로하는거야?
  和他們如何在非英語語言在做什麼？
  ਅਤੇ ਉਹ ਨਾ ਅੰਗਰੇਜ਼ੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ ਵਿੱਚ ਕਰ ਰਹੇ ਹਨ?

  And then there are views like this of the twittersphere:
  https://twitter.com/search?q=fabulavancouver
  which one will not see in the straight Twitter firehose of verbiage…. because these are referrals, copies and so on.

  Such as: a poem, comprised of Vision Vancouver mass email subject lines.
  scamcouver.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/perverse/

  If only the NPA/COPE/Cedar/V-first/ were as unified in flooding the electron world with massages.

• 5 Jenables // Sep 12, 2014 at 1:21 am

  How are they doing in non english?
  Why not let gregor answer that:

  http://youtu.be/GtmBZe_zc6g

  The picture with the envelopes just KILLS me!

  Love zbigniew’s poem linked above

• 6 Jenables // Sep 12, 2014 at 1:25 am

  Of course, if mandarin ain’t your thing, there is always the Cantonese version. His Honour clearly hasn’t been coached as much in Cantonese, but i can only assume the message is the same.

  http://youtu.be/vBxTJTNKNpw

• 7 Jenables // Sep 12, 2014 at 1:28 am

  Oh wait, we weren’t supposed to post that crap here. Its certainly not an endorsement coming from me.

• 8 Warren // Sep 12, 2014 at 7:23 am

  So far Kirk is trying to ride the moral high ground, while commenting almost like a mildly interested 3rd party on what VV has done wrong over the past 6 years. Newsflash: We don’t need to know what they’ve done that upsets people. It’s all over the news and this fine blog.

  He provides no solutions on what he would do if elected. Reminds me of another opposition leader who thought he was the government leader in waiting…

  Meanwhile Gregor is ignoring him, which is kind of funny.

  I’m not really a VV fan, but you need to provide a legitimate platform if you want to get elected. The devil we know and all… 2 months and counting.

• 9 spartikus // Sep 12, 2014 at 9:04 am

  Behold the stupid side of Twitter.

  #vanpoli….tis a silly place.

• 10 teririch // Sep 12, 2014 at 1:23 pm

  @Warren #7

  ‘Gregor is ignoring him …’

  My guess, Vision is worried about Robertson being slaughtered during any debate. They (Vision/Robertson) had been invited to debate with no response, until now.

  I guess you can only hide for so long before looking ummm, scared

  Perhaps the Vision execs have been spending the time crafting cue cards for Robertson or figuring how to wire an ear piece for him.

  Because anytime Robertson speaks unscripted, it is a gong show. The man has no ‘words’.

• 11 teririch // Sep 12, 2014 at 1:24 pm

  @Frances

  This is only one of the many back and forths between LaPointe and Baillie.

  Try as Baillie might to bait LaPointe, he has not risen to it.

  Good for him.

• 12 Everyman // Sep 12, 2014 at 9:16 pm

  @teririch 9
  Who even watches Vancouver’s civic debates outside of posters on this blog and party apparatchiks? Gregor could speak in Swahili and it wouldn’t effect the election.

• 13 Otis Krayola // Sep 12, 2014 at 11:35 pm

  #11 E’man

  Exactly. And, if you really want to make Gregor squirm, deprive him of his majority.

  Talk about stumbling on his words…

  Forget the Mayor – (s)he’s just one more vote. Work on the coattails, and any regime is history.

• 14 Haggis // Sep 13, 2014 at 8:55 am

  @teririch you never say anything bad about Lapointe or the NPA at least have some interesting analysis. I would say Baillie has gotten the upper hand on Lapointe a few times on twitter. Look if Lapointe wants to win then this little show the NPA is running will need to do allot better. All I hear about on this blog is how Vision has a big machine blah blah– well thats likely true and if you think those folks are just screwing around then I think Baillie will be carving a leg off the Lapointe turkey by thanksgiving.

• 15 Brilliant // Sep 13, 2014 at 9:08 am

  @Haggis 19 – I expect winning a Twitter fight is more important to Baillie. Or 13 year old girls.

• 16 Silly Season // Sep 13, 2014 at 9:48 am

  To paraphrase a quote:

  A reminder that ‘snark’ is not just a philosophy.
  It’s a value-added campaign social media strategy.

  It’s one of the few things the current regime does well.

• 17 Kirk // Sep 13, 2014 at 10:11 am

  Hmmm… Maybe they should do at least one debate in Cantonese and one in Mandarin. Maybe thats why the turnout is getting lower every year.

• 18 Haggis // Sep 13, 2014 at 10:51 am

  @brilliant what are you talking about– that comment makes no sense.

• 19 F.H.Leghorn // Sep 13, 2014 at 10:53 am

  Yes, if only offshore condo owners could vote. As things stand Vision must rely solely on contributions from the ocmpanies that build those condos.
  What’s the difference between a communications consultant, a marketing firm and a turd polisher?
  Which one is Ian Baillie?
  Bet Vision thinks their new strategy is pretty clever: never mention your opponent by name and instead run against the big, bad foreign corporation that threatens the security of Kerrisdale’s zuchinnis. I look forward to the photo-op of His Worship laying down in front of the bulldozers, maybe draping a couple of wilted zinnias on the front-loader’s bucket.
  Let’s see, Vision vs CPR. Personally I don’t see the point of fighting this one through the courts. All the other developers have had no trouble buying Vision politicians. It’s only the citizens that sue the City of Vancouver to get Council’s attention.

• 20 Silly Season // Sep 13, 2014 at 6:27 pm

  Sorry, not exactly the right spot, I know, but here’s the question du jour. Although since we’re talking about OTP rhetoric and snarkfests, why not?

  The word ‘bullied’. Has it jumped the shark?

  Downtown Eastside social enterprise ‘Save on Meats’ faces multiple lawsuits.

  Owner Mark Brand vows he won’t be ‘bullied’.

  http://www.biv.com/article/20140912/BIV0107/140919969/downtown-eastside-social-enterprise-save-on-meats-faces-multiple-lawsuits

• 21 Silly Season // Sep 13, 2014 at 6:34 pm

  PS Can someone pls explain to me why these ‘non-profits’ keep spinning off other non-profits?

  This sounds a little like another recent case down on the DTES.

  And why is VanCity funding them?

• 22 Brilliant // Sep 14, 2014 at 7:39 pm

  @Haggis-Really? Baillie doesn’t come across as a bitchy little schoolgirl to you?

• 23 F.H.Leghorn // Sep 14, 2014 at 8:29 pm

  Went to the annual fundraiser for the Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden last night. The Mayor got there kind of late, no speech but hung around getting his picture taken with everybody, including me. No video crew, just a guy with a stillcam.
  I made a couple of jokes about how , if we weren’t careful, CP might bulldoze the garden we were in. It’s hard to tell whether he understands what is said to him, but he has lovely manners. He’s no Phillip Owen but then who is? He’s looking well, tanned and relaxed, but of course he’s got a room full of obsessive hacks to do his worrying for him.
  NPA had everyone but LaPointe working the crowd but no sign of Meena.
  The garden looked beautiful and the weather was perfect.

• 24 Bill Lee // Sep 14, 2014 at 10:35 pm

  More on twitter followers, 1300 words,

  http://justinmcelroy.com/2014/09/14/the-13000-new-followers-of-vision-vancouver/

  September 14, 2014 by Justin McElroy
  The 13,000 new followers of Vision Vancouver

  There’s something about having untold “fake” followers on Twitter that bugs me. More than most things bug me.

  Part of it is the blatant dishonesty. The new followers aren’t, in any common usage of the word, real people. Or even a real (shudder) brand. They’re plants. Phonies. Deliberately added to create a false impression.

  The second irksome thing is that deliberately gaining fake Twitter followers is a sign of vanity and status-pushing. The only reason to add fake followers is so people think you have more real ones. So they will hold you in greater esteem.

  Which is fine, in the sense that most people are needy. But most don’t take such big shortcuts on social media to achieve it. Which goes back to the dishonesty.

  But the final strike is that it’s hard to directly and specifically call people out this practice. We inherently know it’s ethically dubious. Yet we often discuss inflated follower counts with whispers and gossip.

  There are plenty ways of determining the veracity of followers, but most are fairly broad and don’t bore into the absurd details of ghost accounts. This is mostly because most people have better things to do with their lives.

  Well, I don’t have better things to do with my life. And after Chris Parry said that Vision Vancouver had increased their Twitter account by about 11,000 followers in one day, I decided to do some snooping. The nice thing about Twitter is that it lists followers in reverse chronological order, so all you have to do is press the spacebar many times. [ MORE ]

  [ and he does, many times ]

• 25 tedeastside // Sep 15, 2014 at 1:43 am

  vancouvers addiction to gambling and real estate..or (‘ficto finance’) has gutted this town of its ability to produce and maintain revenue, many many homes sit empty as holding properties, housing nobody, theres nothing quite as soulless as vancouver and its tear down culture, and self back slapping trying to be everything…and ending up being nothing

• 26 Everyman // Sep 15, 2014 at 8:42 am

  @Bill Lee 24
  It does seem rather pathetic that Vision is having to buy followers.

• 27 Julia // Sep 15, 2014 at 9:07 am

  what is more interesting on the twitter front is the explanation coming from the Vision PR department. Spam? really? Google tells me it is dead easy to buy them – and it’s cheap. Spam? sure – one at a time and they flood your account with trash. One is deliberate by the account owner and one is not. How stupid does Vision think we are. Fess up. Some over enthusiastic volunteer thought it was a good idea – thinking we are all daft. buytwitterfollowersreview.org

• 28 boohoo // Sep 15, 2014 at 9:11 am

  Who gives a shit how many twitter followers they have? Talk about a waste of energy caring about this.

  I’m still waiting (surely will I wait forever) from any party, to hear about actual policy initiatives, directions, anything concrete.

  So far, and totally unsurprisingly, it’s nothing but ‘other guy bad’.

• 29 Brilliant // Sep 15, 2014 at 9:22 am

  LOL enter boohoo, Vision water boy exfraordinare. Sounds like your boy Gregor ( or whoever makes his mouth move) is worried about theiir plummeting popularity.

• 30 boohoo // Sep 15, 2014 at 9:25 am

  @29

  ? I don’t know how you take my statement as pro-vision? If I were pro-vision, wouldn’t I be making excuses or some other thing?

  You’re a weirdly sad person. I just feel sorry for you.

• 31 spartikus // Sep 15, 2014 at 11:05 am

  Tip: Condemning overnight growth of fake followers on a political party’s Twitter account is 23% more effective while wearing a chicken suit.

• 32 F.H.Leghorn // Sep 15, 2014 at 3:03 pm

  Hold, I say, hold on there just a darned minute. To us chickens, the use of chicken suits in cheap ad campaigns and professional sports franchises is deeply offensive.
  Suppose we went out on strike, what then? No more wing nights at the bar, nothing but burgers and hot dogs on the kid’s menu, bankruptcy at last for the evil Colonel from Kentucky.
  Oh sure, you thought that when you invented the alarm clock I would be automated out of a job. Fine, no more crowing. I can still do one thing no clock will ever do and that’s make more chickens.
  So wear those erzats feathers with pride, mascots of the world. Next season it might be a pig suit.

• 33 Julia // Sep 15, 2014 at 4:52 pm

  if growing twitter followers by buying them is such a yawn, why did they do it?

• 34 boohoo // Sep 15, 2014 at 6:41 pm

  @33

  Because they are desperately trying to spam us with great PR rather than policy or tangible discussions. Same as all the parties. This is not surprising, I’m baffled as to why people think this is in anyway shocking or surprising.

• 35 gman // Sep 16, 2014 at 11:20 pm

  No big deal Boo,it just shows how fake Vision really is.

• 36 gman // Sep 17, 2014 at 12:13 am

  And Boo as you said ” Same as all the parties.” I would like to see the evidence of your claim.

• 37 gman // Sep 19, 2014 at 1:06 am

  mmmmm…..crickets,that’s what I thought.

• 38 boohoo // Sep 23, 2014 at 7:47 am

  Sorry bud, your disgusting rants have you ignored.

• 39 Gerald Dobronov // Oct 9, 2014 at 9:39 pm

  Following someone on Twitter isn’t the same as getting off work, going to a polling station, standing in line and voting.