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The Geller and Ladner kids invite you to a party in the Downtown Eastside

November 4th, 2008 · 11 Comments

This election has to be setting records for wild and wacky things the candidates are willing to try in order to generate noticeably scarce media coverage of the civic election. David Cadman’s YouTube “Vote Beard” video (posted earlier on this blog) is probably the prize-winner so far. David says that the viral success of this […]

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The real civic election — mudslinging and praise — gets underway

November 2nd, 2008 · 20 Comments

Some days, all you can do is watch the river of news go by and observe the patterns you see. And, from the riverbank, it looks like the campaign is entering its final stage, where people solidify their opinions and any nasty stuff one party has on the other gets leaked out. The story of […]

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Split among council candidates on shifting business taxes to residential

October 29th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Sharper eyes than mine have noted that in the Vancouver Sun survey of council candidates, two of the seven Non-Partisan Association candidates who answered the question said they did not support shifting more of the business share of tax to residential. Michael Geller, a development consultant and expert on how real-estate economics work, is not […]

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London Olympic athletes’ village having its own meltdown

October 10th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Hey, we’re not the only ones. While people here are wringing their hands over Vancouver’s problems with the Olympic village construction (developer Millennium Developments is facing significant cost overruns and the city, which is legally required to make sure the village is ready on time, is facing some pressure to provide a guarantee for the […]

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Highlights of the NPA day

September 14th, 2008 · 8 Comments

This is a bit late, but since I spent four hours of my short time here on earth listening to this stuff, you should at least get the benefit. As all you political junkies know, the NPA acclaimed most of the final set of candidates on Saturday and had a vote-off among the four park-board […]

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Tags: 2008 Vancouver Civic Election

Internal war breaks out among Vision candidates

September 8th, 2008 · 10 Comments

The situation is ugly and tense, according to just about everyone I’m talking to, as Vision Vancouver members and candidates head towards the Sept. 20 vote for their slates. People are threatening to quit; Vision women are demanding a meeting with Vision leader Gregor Robertson; and there’s just a lot of unhappiness. What’s going on? […]

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Tags: 2008 Vancouver Civic Election

The master list of would-be candidates for the Vancouver civic election

August 27th, 2008 · 10 Comments

Everyone owes me a drink for this labour of something or another: The complete list of candidates. I started to compile it because I realized that I was completely losing track of all the people popping on and off the list. As well, I wanted to get a handle on just how many Vision candidates […]

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A lovely non-partisan event

August 14th, 2008 · 2 Comments

A multi-political crowd came out for a nice little evening party in Douglas Park last night to launch Sarah Blyth’s candidacy for a Vision park-board nomination, with cake out on the playing field. The DeGenova family (Allan, Wendy, Melissa) was there to support her, even though Melissa is now running for the Non-Partisan Association park-board […]

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Tags: 2008 Vancouver Civic Election

One more NPA council candidate; one more Vision

August 12th, 2008 · Comments Off on One more NPA council candidate; one more Vision

I’ve just had it confirmed that David Lee, a retired HSBC vice-president, will be running for the NPA council slate. Lee had been considering running strongly enough that he went out with NPA mayoral candidate Peter Ladner to some functions on Saturday but hadn’t decided at that point. But now he’s in. Still no word […]

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Tags: 2008 Vancouver Civic Election