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Monday, February 2, 2009
I agree with Shavonne- Vancouver is an awful city. I loved it 15 years ago, l left for 6 years and recently returned to give it another chance- to find that everything I disliked about it before has grown exponentially worse. I'm leaving for good this summer, and good riddance to a shallow, culture-free rat race full of greed, violence, and self-centered, unfriendly people. The only redeeming feature is the nature and location- the city is horrid. It's a shame that you can't go out for an evening's enjoyment without taking your LIFE in your hands.
My apologies for the rant, and my sincere condolences to those who lost their loved ones.
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Business Man
February 01, 2009 - 9:10 AM
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Sam when you add up the cost of land cleanup,raw land owned by the City, the 900 million to build the thing , getting rid of Fortress,legal fees, land taxes,interest for 3 to 5 years to carry the project, plus real estate commissions I may want to buy this. Looks like you would need about about 1.5 billion in money to make this work while being fair with the City of Vancouver to secure their land and costs accumualted to date.. That means we would need to sell all 1100 units at around 1.6 million each average to make ia profit ! When you consider todays market for 1,2 and 3 beedroom condos I come up about 500 million short. I am really not that bright only sucessfull . I see the only way I could make this pencil out budget wise is to hire Jim Furlong as the spokesman and have you and him do the numbers thing for my bankers.
How does one hire such gifted men as your self and Mr Furlong??? I am atteding a Bernie Madoff seminar this week in NewYork and will try to contact you when I get back.
Natasha
January 31, 2009 - 9:59 PM
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While Sam is an irritating little megalomaniac that thrilled to the attention he got via the Olympics ballyhoo, the fact remains that Vancouver electorate had a choice, and stupidly voted YES like a bunch of boneheaded pollyannas. It's long been clear that, no matter where they're held, Olympics and Expos are big-time money losers. The only people who benefit are politicians (all that international travel, networking with the movers and shakers, photo ops) and big business. It doesn't take much research to figure that out. But, no, the voters predictably bought the marketing manipulations (remember Expo 86 and the baloney about being seen as a 'world class city' - gee, we've sure benefitted from that!). So if taxes go up, let's root out the 'yes' voters and they can pay. - February 2, 2009 7:23 AM
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Pete McMartin
Photograph by: Sun, Sun
"One of the easiest ways to participate is by simply making some noise on Feb. 12, one year from the start of the Olympic Winter Games Opening Ceremony. At exactly 6 p.m. local time, in time zones across the country, Canadians of all ages are invited to make some noise.
"In addition to this national cacophony, Vanoc has created a One-year Countdown Celebration Toolkit to serve as a quick and easy inspirational tool to help get each community started on planning its own events. The guide contains more than 20 fun, practical and affordable ideas."
Vanoc news release, Jan. 28
Welcome to your One-year Countdown Celebration Toolkit! We hope you're as excited about it as your vast amounts of tax dollars have paid us to be!
Let's get started. The list of fun, practical and affordable ideas -- and by affordable, we suggest you try to keep things in the low millions, though these things tend to have a life of their own -- are listed below.
(Editor's note: All category titles below come from the Vanoc kit.)
1. Get cultured!
Invite a member of the IOC to your town! Learn about the colourful history of the Olympic movement first-hand from one of dozens of our foreign members, whose exquisite handmade suits, suave manners and air of noblesse oblige will enchant you! (Note: Hosts are expected to cover all costs, including limousine. Important: A good Bordeaux is to be served at all meals. It should also be understood that towns that have ski resorts or seaside spas are more likely to secure the services of an IOC member than those that do not.)
2. Youth art projects!
Want to bring that Olympic experience home to the young and impressionable? Consider a seminar on drug testing! Introduce the little ones in your town to the fascinating world of chemistry. What Atom division hockey player wouldn't want to be walked through the suspense of a test result, just like their Olympic heroes? Teach them about "the clear" and other performance-enhancing drugs, and their side-effects, such as dying. Let them stage mock press conferences, where, after a urine sample tests positive, they can insist they thought they were taking cold medicine. Remember to bring your camcorders, Mom and Dad! You'll be so proud!
3. Create stories about official Olympic mascots Miga, Quatchi and Sumi!
Did you know Sumi is a biathloner who had hormone therapy and sex-reassignment surgery because she felt she was trapped in the body of a man, and that her fellow competitors lodged a complaint against her because they believe her former gender gives her a competitive advantage? And that Quatchi is a stoner who has a thing for naked luging? And that Miga blames his occasionally bizarre behaviour on aliens who are in constant communication with him and tell him what to do? You didn't? Well, they could be! Anything's possible, because experience tells us that in the rich snack mix that is the Olympic Games, one finds more than a few nuts.
4. Organize a winter sport/culture/sustainability festival!
We know, lame, right?
5. Torchlight parades!
Once the festivities are over, and the extent to which they have bankrupted your town's finances becomes public knowledge, townsfolk will want to brighten up the post-Olympic winter gloom with their very own torchlight parade! Gather the celebratory mob in the town square, where every participant will get to light and carry his or her very own facsimile of the Olympic torch. To merry shouts of "Shame!" and "Trough-feeders!" the celebrants can march to the homes of their town's Olympic organizers to show their gratitude. Suggestion: Bring along effigies or, in a pinch, Sumi, Miga and Quatchi souvenir dolls. It might be prudent to have the local fire department attend in case a stray torch finds itself on to an organizer's roof. Serve hot cocoa and S'mores around the bonfire, or, for that special touch, tar and feathers.
And finally:
6. Let's make some noise!
At exactly 6 p.m., Feb. 12, Canadians across the country are asked to make as much noise as they can to celebrate the one-year countdown for the 2010 Winter Olympics. They might honk a car horn or bang on a pot.
If you are at a loss at what noise to make, we have provided below easy step-by-step instructions on how to make a recommended noise.
(a) Extend tongue.
(b) Place lips firmly around base of tongue.
(c) Blow.
pmcmartin@vancouversun.com
604-605-2905
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Your Comments
Bob
January 31, 2009 - 10:37 PM
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To Westender: I can think of less expensive ways to get 'wonderful positive energy' thank you. A good film and a bag of popcorn does wonders if you're that desperate, and no need to take money away from health care and housing to enjoy it.
Natasha
January 31, 2009 - 10:32 PM
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I'm with you, Pete! (It's so galling how those Olympic Committee parasites get wined and dined by grovelling, obsequious politicians - noblesse oblige indeed.) I'll start practicing my blow right away, so I can do my best noises when the time comes!
Westender
January 31, 2009 - 3:47 PM
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Having experienced the wonderful positive energy at the Calgary 88 and Montreal 76 Olympics, I look forward to participating in "making some noise" on February 12th. I'm disappointed that so many, including members of the media, are playing the "doom and gloom" game. Sit in your basement and sulk if you like, but as Mr. Geller says, the games are coming so let's make the best of them for our visitors and our residents.
Michael Geller
January 31, 2009 - 10:22 AM
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While I publicly admitted that if I knew then what I know now...I would probably not have voted for the Olympics, they are coming, and I think we should now start to make sure our city benefits as much as it can from this once-in-a-lifetime event. As Edward de Bono once noted, it is often easier to criticize than applaud, but I will be clapping at 6pm on February 12, and I do invite others who are still not sure if this is good or bad for the city to get on board and join with me. Let's enjoy the opportunity the Olympics can offer our city.
Hal
January 31, 2009 - 9:41 AM
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You'll have to count me out of the festivities, Pete. I suspect that I'll be all cried out long before then and unable to moan loudly enough to contribute much to the Olympic miseries. When will the IOC introduce a sport open only to the local citizenry? Throw open a category such as the Death of a Thousand Cuts and just watch the masochistic taxpayers rush in.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Folks in Quebec and Ontario must be wondering what they’re getting for the $5 million that their politicians tossed into the pot, if they even know that’s been done.
Then there’s their portion of what Ottawa is spending on the Games. Its spending is more transparent than British Columbia’s; its website shows a total of $654.65 million in Olympic “investments”.
But that doesn’t include the full cost of security, which may be close to $800 million more than the budgeted $175 million. Another nearly $23 million has been paid by “official sponsors” Canada Post, the Royal Canadian Mint and the Vancouver Port Corp. That doesn’t include any travel expenses for politicians and staff, who went to the Olympics in 2006 and 2008 as fact-finders and glad-handers.
Add it up and — ka-ching! — it’s more than $1.55 billion.
But why should other Canadians know? At Ground Zero, none of us has any real idea. B.C.’s auditor-general, John Doyle, can’t dig out the province’s costs and he has all but thrown in the towel.
In December, he reported that B.C. has not fully disclosed the risks associated with the cost and revenue projections and still refuses to include what he and two previous auditors believed should be counted as Olympic-related costs — the billion-dollar Sea-to-Sky Highway improvements, the near-billion-dollar trade and convention centre and the $2-billion Canada Line.
That’s close to $4 billion, plus the $600 million the government admits to. And even that’s not the full story.
There are million-dollar odds and sods strewn throughout different budgets.
The auditor-general has pegged the total of some of those bits at $170 million — $47 million for the 2010 Winter Games Secretariat, $21 million for the pavilions in Turin and Beijing, $15 million from BC Hydro, $15 million from B.C. Lottery Corp. and $6 million from ICBC.
Hydro, ICBC and the Lottery Corp. are all “official sponsors.”
Still, there are other items that might have slipped under the auditor-general’s radar.
One of the big-ticket ones was the $300-million “Olympic bonus” that unionized government employees got for signing a four-year contract that ends after the Games (and after the election).
The province will also be paying employees to “volunteer” at the Games. The government says it won’t cost a thing. Hard to believe.
And, how much did it cost for BC Ferries to wrap its three new fast-ferries in Olympic promotional material for the maiden voyages from Germany? That’s not included in Olympic costs.
There’s also no accounting for the cost of the Education Ministry developing an “Olympic curriculum.” But there’s no accounting for that.
Then, there’s Vancouver and the other municipalities, which are paying about $250 million to get to the party, as my colleague Bruce Constantineau outlines in his story. There’s probably more, but it’s almost impossible to obtain full copies of contracts they signed with Vanoc.
Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts didn’t think it would be a problem when I asked for Surrey’s agreement in early December, nor did deputy city manager Dan Bottrill. But Vanoc had to sign off on releasing it. I’m still waiting.
This is taxpayers’ money, our money. We don’t know exactly how much is being spent.
But by our incomplete tally and with another year to go until the Games, it’s more than $6,000,000,000.
All this money, and only Vancouver residents had a choice about the Olympics. No other Canadians did.
Maybe a majority would have said: “Yes, let’s have a big winterlude” and “Yes, we’d rather spend $6 billion on the Olympics than on homelessness or literacy or a million other worthy projects”.
We’ll never know.
Seven billion dollars is a lot of money. But that’s not the Games’ highest cost.
The biggest price is another bit of democracy lost.
By Peggy Zahniser
Former Vancouver mayoral candidate Darrell Zimmerman, 37, appeared at a press conference in Mexico City Monday morning and denied all knowledge of the 100-million dollar Vancouver Olympic Games deficit. Zimmerman, who was convicted for attempting to rig the Chicago Board of Trade to the tune of 12 billion dollars in 1992 called rumors that he had siphoned off 55 million dollars from the Olympic budget “absurd.”
“The idea that my band Darrell Zimmerman’s Amazing Vancouver Jazz Forum is a front for some kind of elaborate swindle is completely ridiculous,” said Zimmermann. “My lawyers will be out after anyone who perpetuates this outrageous libel.”
Rumors were detonated after Zimmerman met a Canadian male, reputedly former mayor Larry Campbell, several times in the course of the summer. Campbell, a colorful drug legalization campaigner, first opposed the 2010 Vancouver winter games before becoming a vocal supporter. Completing the triad of Vancouver public servants in Mexico this summer was Sam Sullivan, Campbell’s successor in the mayor’s office who according to sources close to City Hall went to Acapulco for a long weekend at the end of August. Neither Campbell nor Sullivan could be reached for comment.
Zimmermann, after whom the so-called “Zimmerman rule” on the Chicago Board of Trade was named, has been living the last three years in Mexico City with actress Gabriela Reynosa. He has been playing regularly for small crowds with his band the Amazing Vancouver Jazz Forum featuring Jamal Jefferson and Evil E in the legendary Jazzorca club, owned by German Bringas, a prominent Mexico City musician.
Members of Evil E’s entourage have commented that Zimmerman has bought a large villa in Acapulco’s Punto Diamante district, valued over 45 million dollars with pool, tennis court and outdoor jacuzzi.
“He invites us up to this big old place in Punto Diamante, it’s like party paradise, chicks, drugs, music, I couldn’t even begin to tell you what goes on there,” said a Mexico City free jazz musician who requested anonymity.
But not everybody is Mexico City’s free jazz scene is happy with Zimmerman’s larger-than-life lifestyle.
“There is no way anybody could make that kind of money playing free jazz in Mexico,” commented Jazzorca regular, drummer Gabriel Lauber. “Free jazz is a spiritual thing, it’s about unleashing energies, drugs and sex are just a corollary, with Darrell they are becoming the whole story. He’s selling his soul, if he ever had one.”
Meanwhile in Vancouver the preparations for the 2010 Winter Games drag on in an atmosphere of increasing financial insecurity and complete lack of transparency. Cost overruns are hitting the roof and nobody seems to know where all the money went. Did Zimmerman pull off the heist of lifetime? We will probably never know. He is certainly not telling.
“Don’t look at me, I was against these stupid games from the beginning,” said Zimmerman, as he checked his Rolex. “Now if you will excuse me I have a flight to catch.”
Think of the old parable, "The Emporer And His New Clothes".
Until we look a little deeper, we cannot expect changes in our society to be profound rather than the superficiality we've come to expect in politics.
Please excuse my interuption and let the "Games Begin".
Ron.
( ;-} >