This personal blog is now in its 18th year. Financial contributions from readers keep the lights on and I thank individuals who provide support. If you judge IN-SIGHTS to be worthwhile, please contribute by clicking above on “Note to Readers.”
This personal blog is now in its 18th year. Financial contributions from readers keep the lights on and I thank individuals who provide support. If you judge IN-SIGHTS to be worthwhile, please contribute by clicking above on “Note to Readers.”
Found on the internet. As a recent traveller through YVR, I would argue with Jonathan Winters. Getting to the airport is relatively easy; getting through airport to the aircraft is the hard part. Regardless, enjoy these online observations.
With commodification of housing in Canada, homes are treated as investment assets, not just shelter. Investor-led speculation has led to soaring prices, rental increases, and rising homelessness. Housing has been turned into a wealth-extraction tool, impacting low-income families and essential workers most severely…
Professor Patrick Condon compares Vancouver’s adverse housing policies to the highly successful public housing projects in Vienna.
Patrick Condon is a Professor at the University of British Columbia. With UBC law student Thomas Kroeker, he authored The 50 Year Vancouver Experience on Housing Affordability with Adding Housing Density. The paper is republished here with Prof. Condon’s permission.
Billionaires control a massive and growing share of global wealth. The most affluent 1% of adults control roughly half the world’s assets, while the richest 0.001% have three times more than the world’s poorest 50%. The rich accumulate assets at almost double the rate of everyone else, so extreme concentrations of wealth worsen from month to month…
Four months ago, BC Premier David Eby and Housing Minister Christine Boyle received a letter signed by 27 housing and urbanist experts. Text of the letter follows:
I paused to think about changes that have occurred in Vancouver during the past half-century. Most are positive; some are not.
Former RCAF F-86 jet fighter pilot and air transport economist Erik Andersen has firm opinions on Canada’s acquistion of Lockheed Martin F-35 single engine jet fighters. Here, he shares his warning letter to Prime Minister Carney.
Western Canada’s foremost energy journalist has provided information about Eavor’s geothermal project in Bavaria. If the subject interests you, be sure to follow Markham Hislop at Energi Media. It is interesting to […]
This video illustrates how AI is used to spread disinformation. YouTube (Google), Facebook, TikTok, and other social media sites facilitate the publication of falsehoods. It’s all about generating money from increased online traffic. Outrageous and obviously untrue statements are recognizable examples of clickbait.
“Over the past 40 years, many health-care systems that were once publicly owned or financed have moved towards privatising their services, primarily through outsourcing to the private sector. But what has the impact been of privatisation on the quality of care? A key aim of this transition is to improve quality of care through increased market competition along with the benefits of a more flexible and patient-centred private sector.
“However, concerns have been raised that these reforms could result in worse care, in part because it is easier to reduce costs than increase quality of health care.”
Lancet Public Health 2024; 9: e199–206.
Department of Social Policy
and Intervention, University of
Oxford, Oxford, UK
(B Goodair MSc, A Reeves PhD)
I have not been active at IN-SIGHTS for a while, but I intend to resume. Wife Gwen and I have done a little travelling recently, including days in Amsterdam and three weeks in France. During recent months, we have also been involved in home renovations, a task that consumes time, energy, and money…
Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov wrote this and more in The Atlantic. Donald Trump likes to say he doesn’t actually lose elections–only the “rigged” ones. Such comments are not mere bluster, […]
American comedian Tom Papa says individual billionaires should be allowed to keep their enormous wealth, by only for a few hours.
Fareed Khan describes himself as a “human rights and anti-hate activist, fighting for justice for the oppressed and persecuted.” He has written and commented extensively about these issues. Khan’s Substack account expresses his barely contained outrage about human rights topics. Some examples:
How long before editorial cartoonists are banned in the USA?
British comedian Frankie Boyle says the main purpose of conservative parties today is “to convince voters struggling through austerity that they have the same interests as billionaires and corporations.”
Cole Bennett correctly wrote that Kirk’s murder will not advance any of the causes he opposed. Violence against leaders is most often a consequence of damaged trust in political and social systems. It is perpetrated by isolated and disenfranchised people who live outside the rules of society. Kirk’s organization had plenty of those, so the immediate future is a dangerous time for moderate American political figures.
Alberta Conservatives recently declared that publications their supporters consider inappropriate should be removed from schools. A government order specified that students should not be exposed to sexual content. Among other things, there was to be no written mention of masturbation. Danielle Smith’s government fears that teenagers might discover and engage in the practice if it is mentioned in reading material…
Well of course! CBC's very own internal censor, Bari Weiss, was right and proper to cancel release of the video…