Same leftie idiots in our province Alberta, had to do much the same for a tree down by Burmis in the Crowsnest Pass. These useless idiots spent time and "someone elses money" the same way, propping up a dead tree by the hiway. Went by it last week, it has since met the ground and the steel and wire are left to harm "Gaia" my god! When people finally wake up and see these people are NUTS, nothing more, see James Hansens rant yesterday, the cupboard will not even exist. Spend the money on your in dept Oylmpic housing BC!

"Get beyond traditional politics".

Allow me to decrypt the message...

"Hopefully, there will be no visible or audible opposition and we can get this done quietly enough that the victim we are burglaring will remain asleep"

Leftist Mental Disorder is sad thing to behold, is it not?

It's nothing, but a rotting chunk of cedar that these idiots are preventing from returning to the forest floor to become part of the soil from whence it sprang some three or four hundred years ago.

My advice to these people is, get a freakin' life!

Where's that chainsaw?

Oh that's nothing! Some of the same twits were all set to spend $60+ Million to add bicycle paths to the outer edges of the historic Burrard Street bridge, just to let a relatively few bicyclists across ... and in the process, permanently deface the beautiful Art Deco bridge forever.

I've come to believe that there's no limit to the amount of money a Left-leaning mind is willing to waste. Incidentally, that's YOUR MONEY they're willing to waste, not their own!

Don't buy into the Olympic doom & gloom scenarios being pushed by the "what's the next crisis" MSM.

90% of what has been reported is usual MSM crap & lies. CTV last night saying the cause was that the condos aren't selling because the Vancouver real estate market has "collapsed".

Some collapse. Places that went up $700,000 in value in 10 years are now on the market at a price down by 5%-10% off the peak price. That's my kind of collapse.

Fact: Only phase 1 has been offered for sale. Places sold out in minutes at prices in excess of $1000/sq ft. The rest of the development will sell - it is prime waterfront property.

The problem is financing - can you say global financial crisis ? The financing firm (Fortress) got caught out and is having trouble getting the money organized. The village is 75% complete now - they are working interiors and as Vancouver city moves to be the financier the asset is real concrete, glass and valuable waterfront property.

The village will be built, the Olympics will be successful - Vancouver will get international media coverage worth $Billions in advertising. Great for tourism and real estate because it will mean people want to live here.

The reporting has been, as usual, 99% sensational hysterics - gotta sell that advertising space after all, and 1% fact.

The noise out of the media comes from the usual pollyanna sources who think the only good investments are millions of free needles for druggies, government funded warm & cozy shoot-up galleries and GLBT Summer festivals.

Ticket sales for the Olympic events sold out and very heavily over-subscribed. The vast silent majority of folks here are eagerly waiting for this time next year when we will be days away from hosting the world winter games.

What Robert W said about the Burrard St Bridge . .

This is what it looks like - well when the fog lifts :)

http://www.katkam.ca/

Common sense over nostalgia. We have pictures spaced about 25 years apart of various members of the family who went out to Vancouver and had their picture taken beside the hollow tree. Oh well ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Fred & Joe.

I thank you both for saving me a lot of typing.

Just wait until they realize that all the trees they planted to save the world release most of the CO2 when they die.

On the other hand some trees are worth remembering:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Tree

Go tree go!!!!

I love watching Chicken Little greenies, run around looking for their heads!

Just love it, har de harhar...

Just read Mark Steyn's latest. His article illustrates so clearly what's incredibly wrong with government - all government.

Midway through the piece I got to thinking, "Vancouver politicians probably regret they're not part of the U.S. Otherwise, they could have declared a Federal Emergency for the recent snowfall.

And they could also declare a Federal Dead Old Tree Emergency. Dear Old Tree, please come back to life. Dear Old Federal Government, please give us $265,000 to research why dead old trees won't come back to life. N.B. $50,000 for non-Xmas Xmas Party!

Dear eco nuts:
In a system, a process that occurs will tend to increase the total entropy of the universe. -- second law of thermodynamics. Read and weep.

It could be worse - instead of clinging to a dead tree they could be clinging to God and guns...

For a $215,000 engineering fee, you could have some sculptor come up with a way to make a cast of the tree and replicate it in all it's glory.

The Burmis tree:

Then

http://tinyurl.com/9pq89r

And now

http://tinyurl.com/9aryh8

Still had traces of green the first time I saw it.

"i talk to the trees
but they don't listen to me...."

anyway...been thru the tree since i was in diapers.....and now i know she's DNR,ready for the boneyard i intend to drive by today and cut me a piece off.....i will keep the genetic information safe for future generations who will hopefully see the folly of their ancestors...then i expect a cloning will be possible....and then Stanley park will reassume it's environmental balance...Vancouver and it's citizens will profit from the return to Gaian harmony....

The hollow tree in Stanley Park is a well known spot for queers to hookup with each other and have sex in the surrounding bushes. Maybe they're simply trying to stave off the widespread confusion and misery that would ensue if it were removed.

As to the real estate thing, I have friends in real estate who have been telling me for a couple of years now that the condo market in Vancouver has been overdeveloped for some time...a slump in prices is inevitable.

The best thing that happened in Vancouvewr a couple of years ago was the big winter storm that flattened about 1/3 of the trees in Stanley Park. The eco-nuts set their hair on fire. After preventing the city from removing 13 trees along the highway to widen it mother nature came along and destroyed 15,000 trees.

What these stories show is that when you don't adhere to good business practices problems occur.

Same problem we have in Langley. After getting a grant from the B.C. province to build an Events Centre the township went ahead and started construction without having ALL the financing in place. They suggested to the feds they needed another 5 mil to complete but never officially applied for the loot. Of course it didn't come and the taxpayers are on the hook for 5 mil. They could'nt understand why the feds wouldn't come up with the money. After all they did send a letter to Ottawa saying they were building this facility and it would be "nice" if the feds could help out.

Politicians, especially left-wingnuts are stupid.

Horny Toad

So, perhaps to save the tree they could pray to Obama, "da ONE, da Messiah":

"HOLLOW be thy name...eh."

These are people who live in the past. The tree is deead. Let its disintegration feed a forest of new trees!

These are people who live in the past. The tree is deead. Let its disintegration feed a forest of new trees!

That is such a powerful image. Wow. Just wow. A dead tree, propped up by humanity's vain attempt to save the world.

My God people!
We bailed out Montreal in '76
We bailed out Bombardier (over and over again)
We bailed out Jean Chretien and his Adscam followers
We are throwing money at the auto industry to delay their demise..

WHY NOT just fire up the printing presses and bail out the Left Coast? Fair is Fair....

Just hold off long enough until I can afford a wheelbarrow to carry the money to purchase that loaf of bread!

"As an artist I love the power of the Hollow Tree--the great hollow that that was carved by wind and time--its great size, the fifth-largest ever recorded for a Western Red Cedar,"

Of all the comments at the link, this one stood out for me, as indicative of the mentality of the people interested in "saving" a dead tree.

I spent 11 years in the BC Forest Service, many of them as a timber cruiser, measuring the height and diameter of the trees, then laying out the cut blocks for the logging companies.

I can't tell the diameter of the tree pictured, but it doesn't look nearly as big as dozens of trees we "D-taped" on the Coast North of Pemberton. There's nothing special about this tree, other than it's location, near the heart of environmental looney country.

Trees have a life cycle, just as everything else does, and it's kind of sad that some folks don't seem to be able to accept it. As someone said earlier, cut the damned thing up, and plant a new one.

And for any that are so f***ed up about it, sell them each a little piece at $25 each. They can put it on their coffee table, and some day explain to their grandchildren why they paid 425 for a little piece of wood.

Why not cut that thing into matchbox-sized pieces, and sell them for $100 each?

I've seen a lot of people buy treed building lots, and save the wrong trees. The big old trees don't adapt well to surrounding development, while the young trees grow with the new surroundings.

If they really want to keep that old tree in its natural state, it should be allowed to fall over, naturally. A new generation of kids could crawl through it horizontally.

Fred- You say a 10% drop in condo prices is acceptable when you consider past price increases. Tell that to all the people who just bought one last year. Some of them have mortgages that amount to more than 100% of the present value of the property. Throw in an economy in decline, and a slow real estate market, you have a whole bunch of people about to walk away from their homes.

To quote Albert Brooks, "Save the trees: I'm so sick of that. What are you going to do, build your house out of MEAT?"

Those kooks are doing the same thing that they accuse us of doing: affecting nature's course.

dmorris nails it !

It's not about the tree - it's about them.

You do have a way of getting to the common sense of an issue rather quickly Kate.

dmorris- You got the idea in ahead of me.

My brother was a timber cruiser in the 60's. My family has always been connected to the forest in one way or another. The sooner they get this snag out of there, the safer that park will be.

DMorris.....up Toba Inlet in the 60's i logged a BIG hollow shattered of course red cedar....and afterwards measured the stump....22 and one half foot diameter !

John Cleese:

the tree is dead. bereft of life it rests in peach. it has joined the forest invisible. it is an ex-tree. had you not nailed boards to it it would be lying on the bottom of the forest

Tree Shop Owner:
perhaps we better replace it then.

there is not a much loonier place than Vancouver. a city in a rainforest that claims a water crisis. a city council so opposed to Walmart that they put so many environmental retrictions ( not imposed on others) on them that they build the Walmarts in the suburbs so people have to drive three times as far. cutting of lanes on bridges for bicycles only so 50 bikes an hour can ride on the bridge while traffic idles for miles on the approaches.

I don't know why any of this is surprise, we live in the age of Viagra where nature is defied nightly.

The entire world is becoming nothing more than a giant prop for those who wish to live in fantasy land.

Let's pretend is the name of the game. We have all just pretended ourselves into a depression of sorts.

A lot of us pretended we were "richer than we think". That was a slogan used by the Scotia Bank until recently.

Jack nails it also !!

Why not just wedge Dr. Fruitbat and Algore against it?

As their egos slowly deflate the tree will come down safely and no one will hear any of them fall. Or care.

The problem with idiots like this is that they cannot tell the wood from the trees, the trees from the forest, the forest from concrete and that nature cannot be defied.
I was a faller on the West Coast of Vancouver island at Franklin River, in its heyday, when it was the biggest logging camp in the world. Trees like this were regularly cut. The biggest I saw was 24' in diameter. If these nutcases think spending money to prop up this relic is of value to tourism, then they need to expand their cultural lives and get out of Vancouver and into the bush.

*
well kate, on the other hand, a dead tree isn't gonna run around
robbing folks and burglarizing homes...

"So, to recap... three hundred thousand taxpayer dollars
to facilitate drug use... and nothing to stop it."

*

if you compare the tree base of today with the base as pictured circa 1920,it is obvious that about 4-6 ft has rotted of the base as the trunk settles into the ground.This is not the historic tree any more. It would be great for fencing or one honking big traditional Coast Salish fish barbeque.

Fred, prices in Vancouver are not off 5-10%, they are off 19% and counting. The correction is barely 5 months old and you're calling bottom? Good luck with that. The real estate religion kool-aid drunk in Vancouver is similar to the Liberal kool-aid drunk in TO it would seem.

Norman.....

i'm almost speechless with shock.......so you murdered untold numbers of trees in their prime.....and then you have the gall to come here and boast about it....i tell you, if there's any kind of justice in this life you'll get a septic red cedar sliver in your chain saw throttle finger one day....that'll show you.

i at least made sure my victims were quite dead before i wrapped chokers around them and hauled them with as much dignity as possible to the landing...i often sotto voce hummed "how fair an earth and loving"(which seemed fitting) by Sibelius as the corpse slowly bumped it's way to the ovens...oops..i mean the bullsaw....

That particular tree was a great attraction to the park. 30 years ago u could back your car in and park inside. It would hold a Volkswagon beetle.

However over the years so many people banged the tree that it had to be walled off.

Its been dead and an eyesore for a very long time.

The parks board in Vancouver has been and still is a socialist bastion impregnable by any but the most stalwart lefties.

I'll confess to a much worse crime than you old loggers. When I was a surveyor in the Peace Country, I used to cut huge old growth trees that were left to rot. I once cut one that was at least 36 inches (we had to cut out a block to get the saw into), and dropped it into a ravine. It was big enough to build a small bungalow. If that's not bad enough, I was working for an oil company.

Consider if u will the influx of chinese immigrants to Vancouver. Now some 45% of the population. Most of whom are considered wealthy.

How much of that wealth is dependent on the Hang Seng (Hong Kong stock market) that has collapsed. And what portion of their influx contributed to Vancouvers inflation.

Also Greedy Mayors increased the housing densities of most cities and municipalities in and around Vancouver with out matching infastructure improvements to handle the increased housing densities these density increases were of course to increase the tax base without added improvements to roads and such so now Vancouver is in perpetual grid lock with almost a quarter of the population just having learnt how to driver in the last 5 years,

Can you say disaster.

Ageing and death are inevitable; Leftards being, - well, leftards - , they can't get the point (not before the terminal care ward, anyway). Even buildings show their age after the first 800 years.

Whilst the NDP ran the provincial Government here for 8 years during the 90's they managed to put the province into recession during the greatest economic expansion in history the dotcom boom.

An example of their stewardship. There were 2 people in coma's at one of the major hospitals. Because they were special needs the government in its sensitive nature kept them alive at $450,000 per person per month. These 2 were brain dead. Thats right they were legally dead.

The NDP ran the provincial debt from some 16 billion to 30 billion dollars. That legacy has been kept intact by the Liberals who now run the place.

California has 32 billion in debt with a population of 30 billion people BC has 32 billion in debt with a population of 4 million people.

Heard any stories lately on how California is fairing with its massive debt.

That would be 30 million people in the Great State of California

Also the dollar quotes are US dollars.

If I had that tree on my lot i'd make it into kindling so I could lite my un pc wood stove.

Some of Vancouver's finest idiots no doubt. So many green Vancouverites, yet the businesses on Robson that keep their doors blocked open in +2C seem to find plenty of customers.

Some of Vancouver's finest idiots no doubt. So many green Vancouverites, yet the businesses on Robson that keep their doors blocked open in +2C seem to find plenty of customers.

I don't know, $215,000 for an unsafe eyesore or 2 cents for a package of matches and an end to the saga? Just sayin.

Thanks for the embarrassing coverage of the dead stump, Kate.
As far as the Olympic village goes, the project is touted as the “greenest” in Canada in the most desirable location in Canada. Divide the total cost by the number of condos, and each condo costs more than a million dollars. As a compromise, revised downward, 20% of those units are “social housing” units.
I’m going to quit my job, sign up for one of those “nonmarket” condos, rent it out and move to the Kootenays.

I think the real agenda here might be a trial balloon for the old-growth forest greenies: eventually we will prop up, rebar, and finally spend $215K each on every old-growth Red Cedar, Sitka Spruce, and Douglas Fir here on the entire coast from Juneau to Northern California (Ecotopia dontcha know). After all - they need to be preserved for future generations.

Hey speedy, $214, 999.98 would buy a lot of marshmallows. Just thinkin.

There's some confusion amongst the commenters here. The Stanley Park Hollow Tree has nothing to do with 'green' or trees in general. This tree business
This is another example of the 'heritage' line of thinking. If it was here a hundred years ago then we gotta save it!
Hell, there's some buildings in Vancouver that were an eyesore when they were built; spending millions gutting them and rebuilding the interiors to modern building code doesn't make them either heritage OR attractive.
The Architects and city planners are out of control at Vancouver City Hall.

Eg. if you jack up and gut an old house (in a specific zoning) they'll let you put in 3 condo units. If you demolish the decrepit old shack and build from scratch to look exactly the same when finshed...you can only put in 2 units. And people wonder why housing is so expensive in Vancouver.

Hey, Kate could offer one of her trees as a replacement. We all know that Saskatchewan doesn't need any more trees ;-)

I think a lot of folks here are missing the point. Go to the CTV link, and you will find that, so far, $50,000 has been raised from private donations.

That's the way things like this are SUPPOSED TO WORK, in an ideal world. Not out of the taxpayer's pockets, but out of the pockets of those directly concerned.

As long as the preservation of this icon doesn't come to be financed by the taxpayer, I'm OK with it.

And there goes one of the reforms that I suspect many worked long and hard to get.

Those idiots could pull together a referendum vote within days if they had a previous plan in place for such emergency referendums, but somehow I doubt they bothered in an effort to convince people that the "delay" in allowing a free vote could be "costly" to Vancouver.

Boy ... can't you just smell it .........

Obvious reults of worshipping the creation instead of the Creator.

We had a similar tree down here in Maryland, USA, called the Wye Oak (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wye_Oak). It was propped up with steel supports and wire, it's core was filled with concrete. The difference was it was actually alive. And when it knocked down by a thunderstorm, it was cut up for office furniture for state officials, and souvenir crab mallets.

The problem as I see it Gord is when they have the whole amount go for it. What is common however is "Look we raised this money so people like it. Wouldn't it be a shame if the taxpayers didn't kick in too?" We re-built a hospital that had to change the reason why we re- built it because another hospital "raised" enough money to dig a hole in the ground. So we ended up with two. The one that was re-done would have better served as intended. One thing I have noticed in hospital renos is Admin always comes out well. I'm not griping about hospitals but WE spent a lot of friggin money so someone could have a baby in a religious hospital as opposed to one that was set up for that.

"I've come to believe that there's no limit to the amount of money a Left-leaning mind is willing to waste. Incidentally, that's YOUR MONEY they're willing to waste, not their own!"

Posted by: Robert W. at January 18, 2009 10:46 AM

Right...unlike Gordon Campbell and the undetermined BILLIONS spent on the winter olympics.

and some in the west keep harking about separating

I say STAT

and take Kweebec with you, Pulleez

Face it - the tree is utterly pathetic looking. This is extreme tree hugging. These trees were known as "widow makers" to loggers - hollow rotting trees that can fall without warning.
Perhaps the strategy to use in this case is to re-direct the bleeding heart sentiments toward the dead tree to the living homeless. On my last visit to Vancouver, I was shocked when I inadvertently took a wrong turn and ended up on Hastings which was definitely in a much more pathetic condition than that tree. BTW - how many homeless can fit inside that tree?

Matty wrote:

"That is such a powerful image. Wow. Just wow. A dead tree, propped up by humanity's vain attempt to save the world" Bang on - HMO

Jack wrote:

"A lot of us pretended we were "richer than we think". That was a slogan used by the Scotia Bank until recently" lol

I'm not sure if your political analysis is very accurate on this one. The people who want to save the tree are probably mostly older people who may not be very political at all. I don't think this is a David Suzuki type of issue at all, it's the nostalgia that older people have for a familiar landmark. To an outsider it looks like a wrecked old tree about to fall. To long-time Vancouver residents it looks like a symbol of the past about to be destroyed. So who knows, maybe the issue crosses party lines (gasp). And another thing, if Vancouver taxpayers want to save the damn thing, why shouldn't they? I've been to Drumheller and seen all the quirky painted dinosaurs, not sure if I would want my taxes going to their upkeep either.

Vancouver-bashing is so easy, but you have to keep in mind, it is not the locals who adopt the homeless hippie lifestyle, it is various losers from all across the country who come here because anywhere else they would freeze to death in the winter. So don't forget that, what you see in Vancouver is a national personality disorder, not a local thing as you seem to assume across Canada.

It's so easy to get rid of the problem people and let somebody else take care of them, then sit back and congratulate one another on having achieved some imaginary moral superiority. A better country would never have allowed all this degradation in the first place.

Watched an extremely well done documentary on Her Majesty and the business of the Royal Family a couple years back.

Prince Philip had the same kind of issue in his position as Ranger of Windsor Great Park. There were a number of dead trees that he wanted to remove. The local econuts kicked up a stink and those dead trees sit there to this day.

There was no doubt in anyone's mind as to what he thought of them.......LOL!

Things die. Get over it.

Elvis..I knew you were alive!

Jeff Cosford
When the NDP first took over from the Social Credit. BC was dept free.

Right...unlike Gordon Campbell and the undetermined BILLIONS spent on the winter olympics.
Posted by: ulianov at January 18, 2009 4:41 PM

*sigh*

Ok, Uli, let's try to get through this just once, okay?

Saving this tree is nothing but sinking money into a lost cause. There is no greater good at stake here. No social cause being addressed. No reasonable redeeming attributes to "saving" this dead tree stump.

The Olympics, by contrast, is a revenue generating venture. Direct Olympic related expenses will (hopefully) be offset, and them some, by Olympic revenues. That's the purpose. You can bitch after the Olympics if money is lost, but until then, shut yer pie hole.

And, I'm quite pleased the Olympics has been a catalyst for other long-overdue infrastructure projects in the lower mainland, not the least of which was the Sea-to-Sky Highway expansion (which despite screams to the contrary by leftards like yourself Uli, the Sea-to-Sky Highway expansion is not an Olympic expense).

The positive legacy of the Olympics will be felt in B.C. for years to come. Can you say the same for saving a tree stump.

There was a Sequoia tree you could drive through in Yosemite National Park. Driving through it was a mandatory part of any visit to the park. After age (and the big hole in the trunk) had weakened it sufficiently to be dangerous, the Park Service forbade driving cars through it. One windy day, years later, it fell over. Nobody propped it up.

And why is it that Canadians think they're oh so superior to their southern neighbor?

"The positive legacy of the Olympics will be felt in B.C. for years to come."

Yeah, in Vancouver. Maybe. The rest of BC got screwed. And if the Olympics are such a great investment, why didn't they build without government funding?

BTW, the Malahat has way more traffic, but you don't see it getting upgrades...it doesn't go to Whistler.

The TREE must die, or else the circle of life is incomplete. The Tree people must know this vain attempt to be futile.

As One wit said on here this is a perfect picture of the falling kleptocracies we have created. With a moral foundation about to collapse from an insane world view.

...maybe hack it up and incorporate splinters into each altar of environmentalism at your local cannabis store?

Ulianov, are you the best the leftards can send here? You the best of the best? Their front man, their their poster boy?

If so, we have nothing - NOTHING - to worry about. Yawn. Go fire up the bong and let adults converse, you frickin' gormless no-lobes mong.

What is it about living by the ocean that breeds crazies? San Fran - Vancouver - New York, and others. Not all coastal cities mind you just several notorious ones.

Oh - don't you know.
You don't go to San Francisco
You better be ready
To tie up your boat in Idaho.

Ah sh-t! Let me rethink that. Forgot about Toronto! Well, it is on the shore of a big lake. Could count - no?

"Only through incredible incompetence or incredible arrogance could a struggling company think it is a good idea to spend millions on sponsoring a circus every few years. "

The only difference is the number of rings...

why didn't they build without government funding?
Posted by: ulianov at January 18, 2009 8:33 PM

*sigh*

OK, Uli, let's try this again.

Private funding was in place, but got kaiboshed due to the global credit crisis. I assume you watch the news, and have heard of this. If not, I suggest you google same.

Such a contingency could not have been forseen several years ago when the bid was made. I wasn't even forseen a year ago.

But, don't let such inconvenient facts from clouding your (commie) red coloured glasses.

As suggested before, shut yer pie hole

Is this hollow tree an art installation, or what?

How sad.

When an old person is ready to die, they can turn their face to the wall. Here's an ancient tree that's ready to go the way of all trees, but the green fanatics won't let it.

Where's the Trees' Rights' Brigade when you need them?

Perhaps this is the famous "money tree' that socialist governments run to to raKe up the fallen money leaves to fund their whacky dreams?

Why not move to a new money tree orchard?

different bob, I hear you. I moved here to Vancouver 19 years ago. Nothing - NOTHING - in a normal, sane upbringing can prepare you for graffiti reading "kill the rich" everywhere you look. The more you learn, the more you realize how stupid and willfully ignorant these people are. Over 83% of the $295 billion USD donated to charities in the States in 2006 was contributed by private individuals; you'll never see them acknowledging that tidbit, or the simple fact that the USA has the 3rd-highest corporate tax rate in the world (it's been 2nd before and no doubt will be again, if not first, under the Dems).

You wonder how these people have enough neurological activity going on to continue drawing breath. And yet they go from strength to strength, each week bringing new revelations of how some remnant of dim anthropoid low cunning is the only thing getting them from day to day, like memorizing the location of the nearest Money Mart.

Sample thoughts I've heard were of course the classic "now the USA has gotten exactly what they deserve" post-9/11 - there was a friendship that died within the space of one sentence - or "I understood their reasons, but it was just a bit too much" regarding the videographed decapitation of Daniel Pearl. Or calling or Prime Minister a "Fascist" because of his personal views on abortion. there's pure West coast for you: "anyone who disagrees with anything in my Little Red Book of Correct Thinking is a Fascist." Like wowwww...some deep thinkers, eh?

Colin from Mission:

OLYMPICS: FANTASIES AND FACTS

DO THE OLYMPICS GENERATE MONEY FOR THE ECONOMY?

FANTASY:

Olympic boosters portray the Games as huge money-making events that benefit all of society. Gordon Campbell and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympic Bid Corporation say the Games will cost only $600 million and will generate $10 billion in profits.

FACTS:

No modern Games have made money when all costs, including public money and land transfers, infrastructure costs, and security are factored in. The source of most of these numbers for the Vancouver Games is the provincial government’s own documents (reported by Vaughn Palmer, Vancouver Sun):

Bid process: $34 million (ends July, 2003)
Convention centre: $500 million
Sea to Sky highway: $1.7 billion
Rapid transit line plus buses, etc.: $2 billion
Staging the Games: $1.3 billion
Security: (not included in current bid) - cost for Salt Lake City: $560 million

Total: > $6 billion, not including other hidden costs (see below)

This is a best estimate, given that land giveaways and other deals are kept “off the books”.

Provincial and federal tax contributions earmarked so far: $620 million.

Bid-boosters have excluded a number of projects (e.g., Sea-to-Sky) from estimates of cost but included them in estimates of profits.

Other hidden costs: compensation for Whistler ski resort (est. millions, due to disruption of tourism!), the cost to B.C. taxpayers of providing a blanket indemnity against legal and financial risks associated with the Games, land giveaways (including the $90 million Callaghan Valley.

Excluding such expenditures from the bottom line is nothing more than Enron-style accounting that hides the true cost of hosting the Olympics.

http://2010watch.com/articles/fantasy.html

No Olympics has ever made money so there is no net benefit to the taxpayer. Period. So shut yer piehole.

Michael H. Anderson:

People that use their middle initial usually have an inferiority complex. Which is understandable, since you can't even get a discussion going with your fellow wing nuts.

I was just watching a program about volunteer medical services travelling the globe repairing horribly disfiguring cleft pallets & cleft lips on young children. The program was called "operation smile" with a website operationsmile.org

They were asking for $240 in donations for each child that needs an operation.

The gift of time and professional skill that these real life angels give is a real modern day miracle. Each operation is a life changing event. There's precious few ways to invest $240 for such a huge potential return.

They can't get to every child that needs help - it was heartbreaking to watch the tears on the mom's faces that waited over two days to learn that their child wouldn't get the operation. All that was needed was money. By the program's estimates they could only get to one child in 40.

When I see a large waste of taxpayer money to save a piece of rotting wood, or here in Calgary, to build designer $25MM footbridges that aren't needed for twice the price of a standard bridge there's a visceral anger that reaches deep into my soul.

What real important differences could we make in this world if there was a strong public will to hold those that waste our money accountable? By this one example, letting a formerly majestic Stanley Park tree just simply rot away naturally is worth 1000 changed lives. If the two Calgary designer bridges were reduced to one and changed to a standard design that would be worth 150,000 changed lives. It's staggering that our politicians can't understand any value beyond their own selfish wants.

Posted by: ulianov at January 19, 2009 1:11 AM >

Hey, I’ll agree with you – The Olympics is a huge multi cultural sinkhole that we could all do without in Canada. It brings us no benefits, only costs.

I say “BAN the Olympics in Canada”!

That said I also think they need to let the dead tree drop and use the money elsewhere. Maybe there’s a family of granolas living in it and no one checked? Oh well they’ll find another little hidey hole once it’s gone.

You know, I am not a big fan of the lefties (since I live in the province and have to put up with the consistent stream of idiocy that spews from their collective mouth), but I would like to point out that this is not really a lefty thing. The tree is a tourist attraction, so they are trying to keep it around.

It may be stupid, but not lefty-stupid.

The 1 Bedroom condos that were 750K are now at a remarkably affordable 650K.

What bargains to be had in Vancouver!

The recession will be felt in other parts of Canada long before the Wet Coast starts to suffer.

It was 19C at the top of Grouse on Saturday. Need a blanket eastern folks?

I remember the ulianov guy in Vancouver a few years back with the lefty zealots of the Vancouver Parks board when the Lions Gate bridge was trying to be upgraded.
With over 1,000,000 live trees in Stanley Park, uli and his whiner brethren were screaming Y2K-type doom about cutting down any trees so that the drive through the causeway and bridge could be widened by two metres and sidewalks installed. uli's doomsday brigade succeeded in allowing only 15 trees to be cut down (aghast) and the main bridge into Vancouver's downtown is still only three white knuckled lanes.
No surprise he's at it again with the zealots at the Parks Board to save the very tired old hollow stump. By the way uli, whatever happened to the $9 million donated to rebuild the seawall and clear out the storm damaged fallen trees. Yeah I know it was cleaned up...but what happened to the whack of money left over from the donated $9,000,000.? Parks Board/white paper doves hung from all the trees with a certain mideast political message....Parks Board/poster campaign to replace animals which are no longer allowed in Stanley Park Zoo....Parks Board sponsored midnight vigils for peace...
uli...deny deny deny..undermine deny

Leans to the left, so therefore we will be further robbed of our hard earned money by the monopoly of force and our chance of being killed by the same gubmint hand will be further increased.

Or maybe a drunk driving premier will pile into it while NOT on vacation.
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0012438

Kinda fond of the old stump. Have pictures of five generations in that stump at different times, starting with a picture of my grandparents in a buggy years before I was born and last year with my grandkids.

Won't spent a dime to prop it up, though.

PaulaA: Just be thankful for the memories!

ITS GOOD NEWS WEEK

Someone found a way to give
The rooting dead, the will to live
Go on and never die.

(hmmm...only in some left-behind universe)

ITS GOOD NEWS WEEK

Someone found a way to give
The rooting dead, the will to live
Go on and never die.

(hmmm...only in some left-behind universe)