On the move!
Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.
Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.
Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!
—Ian King, December 13, 2004
Monday, September 23, 2002
The Swiss city of Berne's bid for the 2010 Winter Olympics has been dealt a serious blow; residents have rejected the idea of pumping US$15 million of city money into the bid. This rejection will likely mean that the Berne bid will be withdrawn, leaving only Vancouver, Salzburg, and Pyeongchang, South Korea in the running for the 2010 Games.
Will BC dare a referendum on the Vancouver/Whistler bid?
COPE mayoral candidate Larry Campbell has said that he would ask council to hold a referendum in Vancouver after the bid book is released in January. The referendum would take place sometime between the release of the bid book and the actual IOC vote.
Larry Campbell has also said that he would like to have this referendum be a province-wide affair if the provincial government would co-operate. If not, he might ask surrounding communities to hold a referendum at the same time that Vancouver would hold its one.
Of course, all this is contingent on the next Vancouver city council being in favour of holding a referendum on the Olympic question; needless to say, this is nowhere near certain. Also, it's unclear how such a referendum would be able to legally compel the bid committee to withdraw its bid. News of a "No" or "Yes" vote would certainly make its way to the IOC and would, of course, affect the delegates' votes.
There are a lot of questions about how a referendum would be phrased, and just what it would be that Vancouverites would be voting for or against. Nonetheless, it's an interesting challenge that Larry Campbell has given his political rivals in Vancouver, and to one Gordon Campbell who is himself acquainted with the idea of a referendum.
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