The big downside to voting is that when you do it seems to put you at the top of the list for jury duty. Anyone else have that experiance?

The justice system is so fucked up that they sentence 99% of the criminals to either a native healing circle or Nintendo time at home with go out privelages since the court never follows up on sentencing. Whats the point of getting screwed up by an indeterminate time in jury duty when the judge disregrds everything thats said or proven during the trial and sends the perp home to shoot dope for 6 months.

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The good old days of getting laid off and going on UI are long gone for sure. Back in the good old days you could go to Mexico 6 to 8 months and surf Puerto Escondido and have your housemates fill out the UI cards for you when they came in the mail.

YES YES YES NO YES, this was the sequence of questions on the card. Houseloads of people were rotating in and out filing each others cards. The checks would pile up in your bank account and another groovy year would pass. It was a real blast to be on UI in the 70′s. Ah the good old days.

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OK silly buggers it is then.

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Thats the pits alright. 2 months is a generous notice these days. In some business they just walk you out one day and take your pass. The EI peeps aren’t your friends either. If your friend gets any severance EI divides it up into the sum you would recieve in weekly terms and you have to exhaust the severance before they will kick in.

Am I wrong anyone? I think thats how they work.

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“But I still feel obligated to vote after so many have died for the right”

Yes I agree wholeheartedly, go and vote, we owe them a lot for their sacrifice.

===

Also good to see the empathy out there for others…the economy may have a silver lining in that it forces us, or reminds us or makes us realize what IS truly important in life, and to be there for friends and family.

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Remind your friend to use all resources. Being on EI gives him access to retraining programs and counseling. He can even make something good out of this if can train for an even better career.

There is no shame in using these resources as he has paid for them all those 20 years through his premiums.

To be blunt, if I landed in EI tomorrow, I wouldn’t just grab at any job. I could just get laid off again. I would concentrate on the skills upgrade while living on reduced income.

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I’ve been laid off before. I thought I’d look forward to the time off, I have enough emergency savings to cover the bills, and I’ve got a lot of side projects I’d like to do.

It didn’t work out the way I planned. After just a few days I started getting depressed and I’m generally a positive person. The low feeling caught me completely off-guard, because there were all these thing I wanted to do with my free time.

The thing I missed was the moment to moment feeling of people NEEDING what I was providing that I had regularly while I was at work. The one thing that helped distract me from my self-pity was visiting with friends.

Go for coffee, invite them out for lunch, have them over for a chat. Just be there for them. Let ‘em rant a bit. Don’t complain about your job if you have one, because they miss the very things that you’re complaining about.

Be there for them now and it’s far more likely that they’ll be there for you in the future when you need them.

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Unelected you say? What member of the government was unelected?

When you vote in a provincial election, you are electing your MLA for the next 4 years. The party with the most MLA’s forms the government, and the leader of that party becomes premier. It’s up to the parties to choose their own leaders, and they can do it any time they want. If you don’t like their choice, you can vote for the other party in the next election.

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Anyway, it sucks all around. My friend worked in customer service for a large company btw. Most of us are scared as more and more friends seem to be heading to the chopping block.

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My husband just had a shuffling of his schedule but no hour cuts. I think I’m getting a wage freeze, but at least I’m not on the chopping block yet. Tough times.

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Hopefully your friend has some savings cushion built up. There can be a long gap before the EI kicks in after you lose your job, you need to be able to cover about a month of lost income before you get the reduced income from EI, which is usually about half the normal income you’ve just lost. I don’t know how anybody would be able to get by on welfare in Vancouver.

Support your friend by taking them out (or better yet, inviting them over) for dinner. Pass on any contacts you have that would help her find new work. It’s tough out there, this is the time to be a good friend.

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I say he appoints a successor and bails. We had that fiasco rained on us when the NDP kept naming ‘nominee premiers’ remember. We had three years of unelected government culminating in the unelected idiocy of Ujjal Dosanj when the NDP wanted to run out the clock and pound through all those crazy union contracts.

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Golden Gate Bridge? Exactly what came to mind….there would be riots in San Fran if they ever thought about demolishing that. Same with other classic bridges.

I am no fan of the NDP, but I am getting tired of Campbell, I think he is seriously losing it. His autocratic style has left him with a bunch of ass -kissers…with few if any challengers to his Crown. Pulling a $3 Billion bridge out of his ass? , WTF is he smoking ? He’s exposing himself as a wonk for vested interests ONLY, probably setting himself up for nice Private Sector job as a reward .

You are right…I also predict he’s gone after the Olympics…but then again he has legislated fixed election dates has he not? or will he change that too ?

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I laughed hard when The Great Gordo said that because the ” Port Mann’ bridge was now forty five years old that it would have to be torn down anyway”. And that was the reason he was spinning to us as to why we should be willing to fork over many billions for the new 10 lane fantasy bridge over the Fraser.

May I remind myself how old the 1st and 2nd narrows Bridges are? What about Burrard St? All tear downs Gordo? Howz’ about the nasty old Brooklyn Bridge or San Francisco’s Golden Gate. All functionally obselete according to the Mighty Gordonski.

He also went loo loo in his speech when he said ‘that BC infrastructure development was good for the country”. Is that a hidden threat that you’re leaving us for national politics Gordy? And since when should additional BC tax dollars go for national Infrastructure when we’re alleady taxed through the nose by the Feds? Isn’t that double taxation Gordy?

Is Gordo really just setting us up for a big tax hike to mitigate the huge deficit he thinks he needs to get him through the Olympics?

I’ll betcha Gordo steps down ” for personal reasons’ the day after the Olympic games. I think thats why Carole Taylor bailed in advance.

Man , he really thinks we’re gullible.

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I notice that the Friday’s open discussion, where we first saw major arrow clickage, resulted in my good friend blackdog being seriously modded up. I’m assuming our troll wouldn’t be stupid enough to highlight his own handle, would he?

Anyway, I have some UNIX/Apache/PHP skillz, if you need some help in that department.

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Good to hear you are on top of it.

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Yes…

Unlike other commodities, RE tend to last. Oversupply in perishable items (such as farm prodicts)relegates them to be recycled or even outright composted. Marketing boards are used to keep supply and demand in a stable equilibrium.

However, our Gov’ts have failed us miserably, by allowing the market to reach such “Tulipmania” levels that it has not just flatlined, it has imploded like a black hole and taken everything down with it. IMHO, we have a Metro Vancouver which should work in sync, but each member seemed to want to enter a pissing match of their own individual Local Gov’t share of the development pie . Drving throughout the Lower Mainland, I couldn’t beelive the pace of construction, and I have lived through several booms.

These new homes condos will not be recycled or composted like a perishable…..they will instead sit until they attract a buyer. Given this oversupply there is little or no demand for new, the normal cycle has been both corrrupted and overwhelmed.

I still predict the condo market will be the worst disaster, for many reasons….which leaves townhomes and detached SFH. My prediction is while all RE will be subject to declines… townhomes and SFH will do “less badly”, as in my view many prefer this to hi rise..hi- rises simply lured more suckers into a BIG TRAP yet all sorts of BS Marketing tried to state otherwise.

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We’ve been quietly banning IPs to try to cut down on the trolling, and we’re working on fixing the comment rating system to stop abuse. If you try to load up this site and see this page instead, you’re on a banned IP.

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Man, does he look like he needs medication (or a stiff drink??) to calm the nerves…..he looks choked and shaking, can his hair go any whiter?

However, re the Bridge…IS now the time to build a $3 Billion bridge?(and double the size that previously suggested)?

Who will gain and who will pay ? The economy is tanking, the news is more and more in sync with what we VCI posters are stating…so Campbell has no way to accurately determine what funds he will have available. Back to deficit financing ?

Sorry, throughout the world there are bridges far older than the Port Mann…and still in use.

If its getting “too old”, that is often the fault of the maintenance aspects, or the old trick of delaying or denying maintenance so it looks old and decrepit “as the paint peels and the rust exposed ” so as to foster the hidden agenda, which is often lobby groups who “coincidentally ” benefit from the new replacement.

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I have had to contact the moderator twice this week about how the VCI site is being hi-jacked in various ways, …and was informed that the moderator is getting a bit overwhelmed by the trolls.

My own definition of troll is those idiots who think advertising ONNI is a good deal for umpteenth time and that type of BS.

If a troll wants to post that continually THEN PUT UP THE FACTS OR SHUT UP !!!!

SUGGESTION: Perhaps a warning from the Pope and then a 3 strikes YER OUT rule should apply to these trolls.

We have to keep in mind that the TROLL CONSPIRACY /PLOT may be to piss off the Pope/Moderators so he pulls the plug on VCI and the TROLLS win…(BAD!!!). In addition , many of us have the suspicion that many of these TROLLS are the Realturds etc. who don’t want free speech and the facts to affect their bottom line and that the “Big Lie” if repeated enough is beleived by greater fools (IF there are any left).

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