The Municipal Election is Perplexing
A couple of weeks ago, I admitted my ignorance about our upcoming municipal election. As time has permitted, I’ve done what I can to read the paper and online resources and get, if not up to speed, then off the starting blocks.
Yet, as I scan pages A4 and A5 of today’s Vancouver Sun, I’m confused. On the one page we’ve got COPE candidate Tim Louis ignorantly criticizing the downtown soccer stadium proposal as ‘corporate welfare’ when, in fact, private money is going to pay for the entire thing. On the other page we’ve got the NPA criticizing Southeast False Creek plans.
Vision Vancouver seems to be making more promises than a sixteen-year-old boy on lover’s lane, and Sam Sullivan is clearly kind of nuts. And the other day I read about Tim Louis’s support of a non-profit brothel for Vancouver prostitutes, which doesn’t sound like a bad idea. What’s a barely-informed voter to do?
At least at the provincial and federal levels there are lines of delineation. They’re wavy lines, but you’ve got a sense of where the parties stand. I may just borrow a parakeet, bring it in into the voting booth, and let it decide who I’ll vote for.
On a related note, here’s the website for the new Whitecaps soccer stadium. Both the site and the stadium look pretty slick–check out the artist’s renderings.
I know I’m a blogging advocate, but is there a better example of a site that could use a weblog? Let’s see…timely information? Check. Provide photos, audio and video from an ongoing project? Check. Foster public involvement? Check. Have dialogue with stakeholders? Check.
And shame on Radiant Communications, the site’s developers, for not at least including an RSS feed. I tell every one of my clients the same thing: in two years, every site will have an RSS feed. You can get one now, or get one later, but you’ll need one.
UPDATE: Just saw a piece on another mayoral candidate, with a familiar name: James Green.
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