Don’t forget about Megaphone’s Victory Square Block Party on Sunday, 5 September.

+10 The province joins the 21st century and will recognise three-parent familes

+10 Taser use by Vancouver police has declined The police say its a recognition by the public that tasers are available for use. Credit Check says its a recognition by the police that people now carry around little video cameras.

+10 The Courier looks at a history of Vancouver mayor fuck youse.

+10 A few years after demanding that the Granville Mall be opened to traffic, Downtown says pedestrian-only is awesome

+10 Let UBC have a city council says lady who already has two municipal jobs

Today: +50 This Year: +805

+10 A nice story about BC’s growing taste for real ales

+10 A nice story about why indie bookstores matter

+10 A story explaining how the police may pose as provocateurs. Nice.

+10 A story about pedestrians demanding access to bike lanes on Burrard Bridge.

Today: +40 This Year: +755

-1 BC Ferries will keep all your money on a pre-paid ard if it expires before you spend it

-10 MLA Bill Bennett calls environmentalists eco-facists. Well, the Liberal party would know about half of that, wouldn’t they?

+10 What used to be Southam, then Hollinger, then CanWest is now called the Postmedia Network. Owning most of Canada’s dailies, including the Sun and Province plus the National Post and Vancouver Courier, the new owners maybe, just maybe, care about newspapers.

+10 Credit Check is all in favour of a referendum on whales in the aquarium if only it didn’t know that Vancouverites would vote to keep torturing them

Today: +9 This Year: +715

-1 Feds ‘get tough on crime’ ankle-bracelet programme has been a costly failure

+10 Empire Field says 45 minute beer line-ups are a thing of the past. Also: the stand vendors had to get the beer from the same taps as the public. Remember: these guys are the professionals.

+10 Frances Bula listens to the entire Robertson fuck you tape

+10 Remember, way back, before dogs had the vote

Today: +29 This Year: +706

+10 Canadian Forces reluctantly gives up training material that includes sexist cartoons

-1 Campbell releases worst-ever fudge-it budget and nobody cares

+10 Psst, NDP, the Liberal leadership race is underway. But don’t let that motivate you or anything.

-1 In wealthy West Vancouver, they buy the waterfront for the use of the public. In community-oriented rural Fort Langley they sell the waterfront to developers.

Today: +18 This Year: +677

-1 Capitalism abhors a vacuum. Speed renting, for those really desperate to move in with someone.

+1 CTV anchor Lloyd Robertson to retire after 500 years

+10 BC tries to convince California that damming and diverting rivers for electricity is actually an environmentally positive thing. California says no.

+1 Vision may stay in office until 2015, but will Robertson?

Today: +11 This Year: +659

+1 UBC Graduate Student Society complains that UBC is treating their pub unfairly merely because a drunk student fell off a roof. (The Only legal dept. says to note that it wasn’t the GSS’s roof.)

+10 Hmm. Is something up? Because a high powered constitutional scholar is next in line for Governor General.

0 Municipal politicians get new rules. They also get to stay in office an additional year, and although they have new campaign limits, they can get that limit from just one person or organisation.

+10 Megaphone gets security camera footage of Vancouver police kneeing a homeless man during an arrest (+10 for the entreprising journalism, not the kneeing.)

-10 Sadly, BC Place is about to be saddled with some generic corporate name

Today: +11 This Year: +648

+1 A Victoria police office has been charged with assaulting a prisoner. How could this happen? Actually charging a cop? It seems that the officer is the brother of Healthy Living and Sport Minister Ida Chong, so an independent prosecutor had to be appointed, and, surprise surprise, when an independent prosecutor is appointed, charges get laid against police instead of swept under the rug.

+1 GM Place renamed Rogers Arena. Credit Check has heard the jokes ‘Should have been called ‘Third Place’ and Roger Arena is a good name because of the ref’s dropped calls,’ but thinks it is more interesting to observe the sunset of the car industry and the rise of tech as our corporate masters.

+5 Toronto Police Services Board appointed independent review of G20 policing.

+10 The 15 Mounties who were sent home from the Olympics apparently thought that the Mountie boat was a frat house [Updated link]

Today: +17 This Year: +637

-1 Competition in BC just got a little less freewheeling as Black Press buys 11 newspapers

+1 Companies, who want to change the culture of Salt Spring Island, complain that the law designed to protect the culture of Salt Spring Island is hindering them

+5 Courier uses friend of Only, Mike Klassen, to illustrate how the media uses ‘man in the street’ to shape a narrative

+10 Council looking at making the Burrard Bridge cycle lane permanent

Today: +15 This Year: +620