What is New November 2002 :NotSorry: Web Page Diary / Blog

What Was New: November 30, 2002

Vancouver civic politics, Dance Party Party

(Gregory Melle's Web Diary / Blog)

My What Was New pages from 1999 to 2006 include

Earlier Page - October 2002

Later Page - April 2003

Things are going well. I am getting a lot of software studying done. The perfect job is still waiting just around the corner. We have had some great weather. A little rain mid-month but also a lot of warm sunny weather.

November 24th was Grey Cup day. I spent the afternoon watching TV with my mother. Felt very Canadian. A great day on an icy Edmonton field.

I am once again being a bit creative. Cutting and pasting onto my apartment walls. The effect looks good.

Vote, Vote, Party, Party. In Vancouver, it is often the civic elections that we struggle over. Instead of struggle over remote world problems we battle over trees, public transit and sidewalk trash. The biggest current issue here is not drug use prevention but the creation of safe drug injection sites. The other big current issue is having fun in FunCouver.

The day before the November civic election I rode on the Dance Party Party VotesMobile. Sarah Albertson and Ryan Millar deserved to win. They had a great platform and a great attitude. For a quickly organized political party who operated on an extreme budget they achieved great results. Sarah got 11,132 votes and Ryan 6,086 votes.

We had a lot of fun encouraging people to get out and Vote -- or at least dance.

Part of the strange fun in Vancouver City elections is the great number of candidates and choices. Unlike almost any other city, we choose not our one single choice for council, school board and mayor. Rather we will vote for our 10 favourite Councillors, 7 favourite Park Commissioners, 9 favourite School Trustees and 1 favourite mayor from a massive slate of 118 candidates.

I browsed the Internet to make my civic election decisions. When I was younger we had interesting politics in Vancouver. Mr. Peanut was getting thousands of votes in the race for Mayor and Harry Rankin was everyone's favourite communist alderman.

But then things got rather boring:: -- first we had three-term Vancouver mayor Tom Campbell.; -- then Vancouver School Board member Kim Campbell left, rising to the position of Canadian Prime Minister before sinking to the job of Canadian consul general to Los Angeles.; -- then we had mayor Gordon Campbell who went on to become the boring current Premier of BC.; -- now we have a reactionary ex-cop who named Vern Campbell who is a NPA city council candidate.; -- and an ex-cop / ex-coroner / ex-screenwriter named Larry Campbell who has a good chance of becoming our next mayor.
What's with all the Campbells!!! Can't we find an imaginative name or two? Can't this city create an interesting Lee, Singh or Tanaka with city wide appeal?

Well, Vancouver has a chance of being fun once again.

The Marijuana Party has the right-wing vote all sown up and the Rhino Party got way too serious. The FunCouver group -- which is organized by Vance Campbell and endorses Vern Campbell -- tries extremely hard to liven things up here but I suspect them of being just a bunch of spoiled night club owners.

But Vancouver's new Dance Party Party has just the right cheesy but earnest attitude. They have my vote. Lets all party and have some fun.

(As for candidates with a higher chance at being elected, Larry Campbell -- despite that rather strange name -- seems to have some good ideas; but I would like to see him at a dance party party before giving him my full endorsement).

Earlier Page - October 2002		Later Page - April 2003
Also visit my Trip 2003 pages.

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