The Vancouver Scrum

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

Thursday, November 20, 2003

 

NDP Leadership Stuff

Though I haven't written anything on this site about the 2003 BC NDP leadership convention, I will be kicking around the place this weekend as part of my media gadfly-ing. It's been a low profile deal compared to conventions past, with the reward being the opportunity to rebuild a party that was pulverized 30 months ago. Not much fun, and no power to the winner for the foreseeable future.

Talk is that the two frontrunners are former Nanaimo-Parksville MLA Len Krog, and onetime Victoria School Board muckymuck Carole James, who lost her bid for a Victoria seat be a few dozen votes in 2001. James seems to have a lot of the institutional and union support, while Krog's got the backing of ex-premier Dave Barrett. Newcomer Nils Jensen, who wants to steer the party towards the political centre, is said to be in third. Jensen -- who once sought an Ontario Liberal nomination -- has picked up endorsements from former premier Dan Miller and onetime Minister of Everything Paul Ramsey, who was one of the most competent ministers in the NDP governments of the 1990s. The other candidates, former MLA Steve Orcherton, restaurant worker Mehdi Najari, and Vancouver consultant Pete Dimitrov, are out on the fringes.

Vancouver Sun forestry reporter Gordon Hamilton has put together a comprehensive feature in today's Sun. Not much I can add to his work, except to agree with the concerns that James lacks the toughness to go head-to-head with premier Gordon Campbell. On the other hand, there's no doubt about Krog's scrappiness -- whether he can keep it under control is another question. The Kroginator's got a temper, that's for sure.

Wanna read more from the inside? Check out onetime MLA David Schreck's StrategicThoughts site, with ideas and comments on the race stretching back for months. You can also hop over to the various candidates' websites from there.

For my money, the best site is Krog's. When it was launched, it was a thin, bare bones affair. The new site is well designed, not overly flashy, and updated any time the Krog name appears in print, on line, or on air. Compare that to Carole James's site, which hasn't changed much since early October, and you get the idea.
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