The folks in the Cedar Party are at it again, telling us stuff that we already know. Like how there was only one bidder — WestBank Corp, owned by Mayor Gregor Robertson’s bestest pal and big time Vision Vancouver supporter, Ian Gillespie — on the property where the much-touted Gesamtkunstwerk Vancouver House will be built. We say, so what? If the Mayor wants to gift his good friend Ian with ‘special favours’, so be it.
But are the noisome folks in the Cedar Party prepared to leave it at, “That Ian Gillespie fella, he has this in with the Mayor, and with Vision Vancouver, you see, and there’s just something a little unsavoury about the whole circumstance where there was only one bidder allowed on the Vancouver House site, and don’tcha know that bidder was Ian Gillespie, and doesn’t it somehow seem wrong to you that Ian Gillespie ‘was allowed to tie up this property for several years without paying for it until final approvals were granted, which only occurred recently?” Nope. They just can’t leave it alone!
That Glen Chernen fella — you know, he’s the Mayoral aspirant for the Vancouver Cedar Party — and his hearty band of civic miscreants — I mean, really, who are they to be asking questions of our esteemed Mayor and his fabulous gang of demogogues at Vancouver City Hall, the once and forever Vision Vancouver party that will rule over us for our own good, whether we like it or not, for generations to come — where does the Cedar Party get off having the temerity to ask a question like, “How can the interests of Vancouver residents be seen to be looked after if our local government gives itself the unilateral right to sell off city-owned land without even passing consideration being given to the notion of competitive bidding for the sale of our precious, ‘belongs to the people of Vancouver’, property?”
Who do the folks at the Vancouver Cedar Party think they are? Heck, you’d think they live in Vancouver, and have a dog in our 2014 civic electoral fight.
Oh, you mean, these Vancouver Cedar Party folks, they do actually live in Vancouver, and they’re running candidates to defeat Vision Vancouver this November 15th. Good luck to them, those newby civic electoral naïfs — as if that’s going to happen, given the millions of dollars that developers have poured into Vision Vancouver coffers these past six years, and more!
And to top it off, Chernen and his bothersome, irksome group of detectives go about quoting a July 28, 2014 Sam Cooper article in The Province newspaper — but three weeks late, cuz Green Party of Vancouver Council candidate Pete Fry had already written a blog post about the 52-storey Westbank project at the north end of the Granville Bridge.
And, just like the folks at the Cedar Party, Pete Fry goes and sticks his nose where it don’t belong, and casts aspersions on the character of the Mayor and his Vision Vancouver colleagues, in having approved the Vancouver House development (you remember Vancouver House, with that annoying ‘star’ architect Bjarke Ingels on our TV every night, endlessly overselling just how wonderful Vancouver House will be once it’s finished) — not that anyone in Vancouver will be able to afford to live there, but like who cares anyway, except maybe the Cedar Party, and Pete Fry, both of whom point out that Vancouver House is being marketed exclusively (an allegation since corrected) to wealthy overseas buyers — replete with (gosh, wouldn’t it be nice?) “special absentee owner concierge services and a fleet of luxury BMWs on reserve”. But there you go again, with those annoying Cedar Party folks, and Fry, chiming in with a quote from Cooper’s article:
“According to the South China Morning Post, two sales offices were opened in Hong Kong in June … (with units) marketed in Singapore … reserved for overseas buyers … (meeting with an) overwhelming response.”
As we say, looks like folks from Vancouver won’t be able to afford Vancouver House, anyway — well, certainly not you or me.
Like, so what, eh? The folks who live in Vancouver have bigger things to worry about — will the kids be back in school on September 2nd, or when to set aside some time to go to the PNE, and important stuff like that.
Who does that Pete Fry guy think he is, anyway, questioning his betters — I mean, Geoff Meggs and Andrea Reimer, they done got themselves elected to Council, and the folks who live in Vancouver put their trust in them, and now youse got this Pete Fry fella askin’ questions, like somehow he’s got a right to ask questions of his betters. Gosh, we think not. Heck, you’d think that there was an election going on, or sumptin’ like that there.
And, don’tcha know — probably under a threat of a lawsuit — The Province pulled the original story, and all readers can find now is this correction.
Thank goodness the Non-Partisan Association seems to think that the Vancouver House skullduggery is just fine, with nary a peep from NPA Mayoralty hopeful Kirk LaPointe — although, one supposes, these are early days in Campaign 2014. LaPointe will certainly have to enunciate a position on development once the civic election campaign begins in earnest.
Let us hope that the NPA narrative on development in our city differentiates itself from the Vision Vancouver development narrative, which is …
“Hey folks, it’s only development we’re talkin’ about here. You should let your betters make decisions on your behalf, cuz we know what we’re doing, and you don’t. Honest, there’s nothing to see here folks, just move along. Don’tcha know, the PNE is on, and there’s this darn teacher’s strike that’s happenin’, you don’t want to worry your pretty little heads with something as stupid and arcane as development. Ewww, that’s yucky stuff — you’re not really interested in that. Oh look — a bright shiny object. Pretty, isn’t it?”
And thank god, too, that the naïfs and ne’er-do-wells over at COPE headquarters could give a good goddamn about secretive and unsavoury development in our city — gosh, they’re only concerned with turning our city into a communist paradise. Me, I can’t wait til they issue the drab grey uniforms that we’ll all have to wear when COPE takes over — gosh that’ll be no fun, and don’tcha know that’s exactly what COPE wants, for all of us to live under the yolk of COPE oppression. Gosh, that oughta be great!
And best of all, thank God we’ve got such a subservient media, who wouldn’t say shit if their mouths were full of it. Well, it is Vision Vancouver, after all, and who in the media would dare to question the majority party that has reigned supreme at Vancouver City Hall these past six years?
