Lindsay Brown Profile picture
Lidsville was a surreal 70s kids' show about preposterous cartoon autocrats. So is BC. @lidsville elsewhere too. "Centrism" got us into this mess.
Sep 13 6 tweets 2 min read
Chasing the far-right by making cowardly concessions and U-turns is generally a losing strategy. Nice race to the far-right corner of the bottom of the barrel, Dave.

If you were in any doubt as to who Dave Eby really is, I hope today made things clear #bcpoli #carbontax BC Greens should be explicitly campaigning up the left side of the NDP now and yanking this ever-rightward-shifting Overton window back. To do that they're going to have to abandon this kind of talk immediately.
May 25 22 tweets 5 min read
Quite a bizarre performance by BC Conservatives leader John Rustad on CBC Radio today. For a populist demagogue he's very wooden - he just kept repeating “we have to get rid of the BC NDP with their radical agenda/policies” over & over, like a broken droid. 1/x #bcpoli Frustratingly CBC's @BellePuri never asked Rustad which BC NDP policies he thinks are "radical." The BC NDP are so captured by the corporations at the trough - arguably more than the BC Liberals before them - that I'd be astonished to find anything really "radical" there...
Mar 28 9 tweets 3 min read
Important WSJ article on Canada's rivers drying up while we keep building dams anyway, including #SiteC. It's paywalled so I'll include the whole article in this 🧵

Diversify into renewables now! BC can't until it ditches the deceptively named Clean Energy Act.#bcpoli #cdnpoli 1.  The Canadian province of Quebec had big plans of becoming the "battery  of the U.S. northeast" by feeding power generated from its dams and  other hydro plants to millions of people in Vermont, Massachusetts and  New York state. Now, dry conditions that have affected energy output  worldwide are forcing one of the world's largest hydropower producers to  cut exports.  "There wasn't enough snow or rain in the regions where we needed it,"  said Michael Sabia, chief executive of Hydro‑Québec, the provincial  utility. "We can't make it rain, as much as we'd like to.&qu...
Jun 19, 2023 4 tweets 3 min read
Had Bing Thom not died prematurely, he would have gone after @AIBCconnected for its gentleman's agreement rule that architects can't criticize other projects. Reportedly a certain major arch'l firm in Vancouver reported Bing to AIBC for his letter opposing #105Keefer. #vanpoli @AIBCconnected Bing Thom intended to go after AIBC's muzzling rule & publicly ask them:

"What is the point of architecture if there's no discourse? What is the role of the architect in society? Do we have a public responsibility or are we just hired guns?"

AIBC's rule is destructive.
#bcpoli
Jun 19, 2023 6 tweets 3 min read
My elderly family member, whom I kept free of Covid for 3+ years but who finally caught in in an unmasked BC hospital last week, is very sick on Day 9. Rapid test still shows a bright red line. For health issues she can't take Paxlovid. She's in a rage at you, @adriandix. #bcpoli @adriandix "I'm furious at the hospital and at all the unmasked healthcare workers, but I'm more outraged by @adriandix and Bonnie Henry. The govt is ultimately to blame."
Jun 9, 2023 11 tweets 7 min read
I’m a rural BC hospital taking an elderly relative to ER. No masks on staff & visitors but aggressive efforts to make everyone sanitize their hands, despite the fact that the diseases helping to crash the health system are airborne. We are truly living in an age of disinformation *I’m IN a rural BC hospital. I am not a hospital. But you got that
Apr 20, 2023 9 tweets 8 min read
Former BC premier John Horgan jumps to the board of Teck Resources, which had the largest environmental fine in Canadian history

Video: @BCGreens leader @SoniaFurstenau asks the NDP in QP about Horgan's role in Teck's pollution case.
🧵
#bcpoli #cdnpoli
@BCGreens @SoniaFurstenau Here's the timeline of John Horgan's involvement with Teck Resources before he left office. Judge for yourself:

In Dec 2021 the feds indicated they were considering referring Teck's selenium pollution in the Elk Valley to the internat'l joint commission (IJC)
#bcpoli
Apr 19, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
The BC govt can fudge the death stats from Covid all it wants ("that death wasn't FROM Covid, it was WITH Covid" etc).

The real truth is the "excess deaths" number - that is, how many of us are dying now vs. before pandemic, minus other factors like poisoned drugs & heat dome. This is why data modellers like @MoriartyLab focus on excess deaths as the real statistical truth of Covid impacts over time. The problem tho is that over time, elevated deaths from Covid will start to be the "normal" death rate, against which we're comparing new Covid deaths...
Dec 27, 2022 26 tweets 8 min read
@KeithBaldrey has been issuing inflammatory tweets again, abusing citizens who advocate for better Covid measures. In the process, he falsely deems a "conspiracy theory" the proven yet media-ignored fact that oil &c money has been funding opposition to any mitigation of Covid. 🧵 Keith Baldrey calls me a "grand conspiracy theorist&quo Baldrey is free to call facts "conspiracy theories" because due to media's dereliction of duty, the public knows ~nothing of the influential, oil-funded attack on Covid measures known as the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) whose views Keith resembles. desmog.com/2020/10/26/ame…
Dec 26, 2022 12 tweets 3 min read
A new year is coming & I think we are long overdue for a society-wide discussion about what's "positive" & what's "negative."

We have media provocateurs in BC calling any citizens who push back at them "negative." Negative" is weaponized to stigmatize dissent & critical thought. Image As a friend just said "The 'negative' slur is thought-stopping, gatekeeping nonsense. Bad enough when we have media who don’t understand their obligations re govt, but worse when they engage in rhetoric that tries to stop the public from being informed & questioning state power"
Dec 4, 2022 12 tweets 4 min read
To all who think the NDP can be reformed, whether BC or AB or even fed:

My former gas pipeline engineer is sending out warnings about new AB pipelines crossing BC: "Now Notley is starting up again about pipelines to tidewater. NDP still owned by O&G corps like before... #bcpoli .."Of the three pipelines authorized for the North, Pacific Trail and Westcoast Connector are owned by Enbridge and the third, Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline, is owned by TC Energy Corp., the company currently building #CoastalGasLink..."
Dec 4, 2022 6 tweets 1 min read
Car alarm: around. midnight, then 12:30, 1:30, then 2:03, then 2:19. Going to be a long night 2:43. This is fun
Dec 3, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
A longtime #bcpoli watcher messages me just now:

"I don't remember the BC Libs ever trying to pull off what the NDP did today when they quietly released that report and announced that presser. BC Libs were brutal but even they would fear getting slaughtered by the media... ."...NDP announcing a presser with only an hour's notice, no time for media to read the report in question, which was announced immediately before, and no livestream just a teleconference, so no chance to get it on tonight's news. Amazing audacity..." #bcpoli
Dec 2, 2022 5 tweets 3 min read
Enjoyable article by
@FailedArch's Kevin Rogan in @thebafflermag which deftly dismantles a neoliberal YIMBY piece by a Vancouver writer that @jacobin should never printed. (Why does Jacobin keep getting Canada wrong? Make different connections here, pls.) thebaffler.com/latest/dream-h… @jacobin "That this piece appears in Jacobin, an ostensibly “socialist” publication, goes a long way towards burying its call for capital accumulation under the thinnest veneer of left politics at its most bleeding-heart chauvinist."
Dec 1, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
I'm still in a state of horror that the @VancouverPD would evict so many people from their tents right before a stretch of extremely cold weather, & that they'd embark on this the very day of a major snowstorm. Also, where is media? #bcstorm. #vanpoli #bcpoli #Vancouver I hope everyone who voted for these ABC ghouls - despite warnings that they were backed by Chip Wilson & were Dickensian - feels some remorse now. They've been in power a month & we have cops back in schools, corruption with one of their School Trustees, & now this.
Oct 18, 2022 8 tweets 2 min read
Just heard that at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, Covid cases just doubled overnight - and that's before all the test results are in. They expect it to go higher.

We now also have immune-escaping variants rising exponentially in N. America. Where is the mask mandate? #bcpoli The govt has misplaced the mask mandate somewhere in a closet, right next to a rational policy response to climate change
Oct 17, 2022 14 tweets 4 min read
I know civic elections are only just over but: if you're an Anjali follower, what is your next step when she's disqualified this week?

Elizabeth Cull presents her findings on the NDP membership investigation on Wednesday. The party brass know the contents of the report.. #bcpoli We all know this disqualification is coming. Dave Eby isn't even bothering to campaign for leadership, and his website has the look of a placeholder he paid about $199 for.
Sep 10, 2022 8 tweets 2 min read
If you think you're on the left and you're not wearing a mask in public indoor spaces, you're not.

I don't know why this is hard to understand. For one thing, the union move't got its very start on occupational health and safety issues.

Also, interesting read:

"Sewer Socialists of the 1900s knew how to make healthy cities (we can learn a lot from them)" by @KarinaZeidler
straight.com/news/dr-karina…
Sep 10, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Hey parents across BC - look out for these anti-mask, anti-vaxx, anti-protection, anti-everything candidates for your local school boards. Avoid avoid avoid #bcpoli Teacher friend saying: "Trustees are in charge of the budget - which affects EVERYTHING. All programming, whether enough EAs or teachers are hired, what projects get prioritized...And they hire & fire board people. Advancement of either good or bad leaders comes down to them."
Aug 23, 2022 10 tweets 3 min read
People really can be made to do anything against their own interests

Govt doesn't care about your mounting health damage from Covid infections & reinfections; it won't be paying for your declining health. You will, via Telus

When you don't wear a mask indoors, it's dark sci-fi. As someone who works in communication and strategy, I'm actually in awe of the success of BC's communication campaigns on Covid, which involved taking a garden variety PHO and beatifying her into a saint to pull off a larger policy of few measures & public openness to infection.
Jul 21, 2022 7 tweets 6 min read
This morning, the civil/mechanical engineer has some further worries about #SiteC re: its design. I'll screenshot what he wrote (you can also read it in the Alt text).

His remarks arose from seeing this recent #SiteC construction photo from @BCHydro. Site diagram for reference. Photo of the Site C dam under construction, showing the &quoArtist's drawing of completed Site C dam, showing an L-shape @bchydro We invite anyone from @bchydro to respond to this civil engineer's concerns. Too many engineering/ construction experts have raised red flags about #SiteC's safety. The dam has already failed during construction so their fears are built on facts more solid than the dam. #bcpoli Photo of the Site C dam under construction, showing the &quoThis photo is a rear view of the buttresses showing the exca