“More than 70,000 people applied for the 25,000 positions that VANOC announced in February, 2008.”

Why, then, are we paying public servants to “volunteer” at the games and giving VANOC employees $30m in bonuses?

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a fellow volunteer at a nonprofit. I was told how hard it was to get a volunteer position, with specific mention of two other nonprofits that were full up. Don’t overlook what this economy does to opportunities for employment – paid or unpaid.

Here at the hall, we call it being “voluntold”.

GMGW! Yes!!

My terminal grouchiness predisposes a level of angst and anger leaving me inarticulate; incapable of discussing ‘the event that cannot be named’ rationally (as if any such event is rational) with any but my own inner demons. So your comments are much appreciated.

I only wish the volunteers in Surrey could get the full effect of several thousand ‘rent a cops,’ a zillion assorted armed individuals, and enough helicopter over-flights (and I suspect those will be 24/7 during most of February) to deafen any dog.

But I begin to digress.

Good comment.

Another way to look at it is this; even with the conscripted volunteers, the math works out to about 1.9% of the population.

VPL ‘Vancouver population’ circa 611,869
http://www.vpl.vancouver.bc.ca/research_guides/item/6726/C779

Approx. 11,660 volunteers (including conscripts)

11,660/611,869 = 1.9% of the population is volunteering. And out of my entire circle of friends and acquaintances not one is volunteering, paying for a ticket, or willing to admit that they actually voted for this armed debacle.

And should you have doubts about the armed personnel, Bud Mercer “told councillors that a force of 7,000 police, 5,000 private security personnel, and 4,500 members of the Canadian Forces will be deployed in the mega event.” (1) That’s 11,500 armed and dangerous people running around convinced that they know what’s best. The other 5,000 private security don’t, as far as I know, qualify for guns.

And would I trust people who can’t even plan an ‘exercise’ properly (2) to actually run around the streets, armed, and if history is any guide, far too full of themselves?

Then again, given the inability of anyone, ever, connected with the organizing, production, and marketing of the ‘event that cannot be named’ (now copyrighted) to get the price right, I would not expect that any of this farce will work out the way anyone expected. Those that promote it, can’t, or won’t, come clean about the price.

The athletes, and I’d like to thank them all for staying home, would be a far greater benefit to society if they took all the time, energy, and money they spend on this charade with kids wherever they live. I mean, really, can you just imagine how many kids would love a ride on a luge? If they could afford the money for luge. If they could afford the free track time.

And I’d like to thank them all, each and every one, for their contribution to making Vancouver an armed camp for the better part of two months. Perhaps we could just move the whole deal to Baghdad’s Green Zone – I’m sure the Iraqi’s wouldn’t notice the increase in armed personnel, the guys (and girls, I’m sure) with guns could really feel ‘part of the team.

Grumpy?

No. I just don’t believe in the commercial creed that we call ‘amateur,’ the event is no more amateur, and no more believable, than ‘amateur’ porn. I don’t see any need to have over 10,000 armed (insert favorite term here) running loose in Vancouver and adjacent areas. Given the track record of the RCMP over a century I’m not all that sure I have faith in the timeliness, or legality, of their actions. Ditto the VPD.

I mean, given the absolute, undeniable, and physically obvious fact that the same Spanish-speaking drug dealers have been in business in the DES for a decade do you really expect anyone to believe in the efficacy of policing? And these are people standing on the sidewalk, all day, and in relatively regular ‘shifts.’

And they’re going to protect me during the ringed farce?

(1) http://www.straight.com/article-262837/observers-train-olympics

(2) http://www.canada.com/sports/2010wintergames/Test+Vancouver+2010+Olympics+anti+terror+tactics+ends+farce/2128466/story.html

@gmgw. your opening paragraph had me in stitches. Well done lad! I think you have captured the view amoung many of the folks that i encounter. You have the genesis of a great article. I encourage you to develop it further.

The cops will be rolling in overtime cash. The local cop in the Victoria area said every cop in the district will be “Protecting” “The Torch” My God, you would think it was a Brinks Truck full of money, not one of about 17,000 other ones.

Frothingham:
Thanks. It’s tempting to extrapolate on my comments, but as I live uncomfortably close to the Olympic Village I’m concerned that, were I to wax overly negative about the- er– Games in a public forum, I might be woken in the middle of the night by a heavy pounding on the door only to find Itchy, Squishy and Crotchy (or whatever the hell their names are) waiting outside to drag me off to Olympics Re-Education Camp. As Groucho Marx once said: “If the government could read our minds, we’d all be in jail”. For the powerless, thought-crime is the last great act of defiance.
gmgw

I have often read that happy people live longer than unhappy people. I thought about this as I read some of the postings above.

I second that emotion, Michael Geller.

One day, I hope we can start a thread over exactly what makes Lower Mainlanders so dyspeptic. Is it something in the water?

And please, don’t start listing a litany of woes (homelessness, DTES, H1Ni, etc) that I am pretty sure about 95% of the posters here will do absolutely nothing about—other than bitch. Volunteering to make your city a better place? Charititable giving of money or time? How absolutely middle class, I can hear the sneerers sniff. Personally, I think it’s time the usual suspects give up the sanctimonious huffing and puffing—if only for a short time— and put some of that energy towards improving this place.

Here’s the challenge: You don’t “like” the Olympics. Fine. Then, I challenge you to volunteer over the games period, and give your time towards whatever venture you choose. Further, I challenge you to gather with “un-like” minded people (e.g. not bitter) and spread the love, somewhere, helping someone.

But I expect that many will be too busy, “escaping” town or maybe, hmmm…I don’t know…watching the men’s gold medal hockey game?

I am with you on this one Urbanismo! Gellar is the best example of a 180 degrees turnaround in recent years. I would call him a political chameleon but that would do no justice to the poor lizard. Have you read this guy’s posts? Mother Teresa would be so proud to see her work continued with such fervor. He agrees with everybody, congratulates everybody, admire everybody, smiles at everybody, laughs at jokes, good or bad, no beef whatsoever, whatever keeps his persona afloat in the public domain. One might suspect group narcissism here.

gmgw,

Glad to hear it. Sounds like a lot of committee work…hope it is bearing fruit.

I like to take a hands on approach and actually meet n’greet on a pretty personal basis.

That would include:

Serve dinner with my mom at a DTES church (we don’t belong, but it just seems like a good thing to do) to people down on their luck;

Organize a canned food drive with work colleagues for the holiday season;

Honour my late father and those who served by helping out at Remembrance Day this year;

Work on politics, though am having a really hard time finding candidates to love. Hmm. Maybe I don’t have to love them—just ensure that they actually can do what they say they will do.

Oh yeah, am getting vetted for Big Sisters, which gives you a clue as to my gender. That would be “ol’ sodette” , thank you very much!

I also volunteered for several years at palliative care, partly because of my own need to face my puny mortality. Little did I realize what a life affirming—and humbling–experience it would turn out to be. Thus, I feel compelled to be that “glass half full” type before you now.

I guess I believe in the old saying, “To whom much is given, much is required”. For me that means taking action versus just grousing about things. I like to see and make things happen on both the micro and macro levels. Keeps hope alive, you know?

There. Is my halo on straight? 😉

What about everyone else? What are you doing to make life in Vancouver better? Who’s life(s) are you affecting in a positive way? Have you seen the evidence that your efforts are helping?

“Those who look at the world with their heart will be sad, Those who look at the world with their minds will laugh. ”

attribution goes to Camus I think.

“That would be “ol’ sodette” , thank you very much!”

Funny, I was thinking that was the case last night. (yeah, yeah, anyone can claim 20/20 vision in hindsight)

I may have referred to you as male in a diff. thread H.W. and apologize for the error if offence was taken.

Volunteers? When I was at the Sydney Olympics, 3/4 of the volunteers disappeared after first few days having collected their uniform and finding it wasn’t what they expected. However, the Committee trumpeted 47,000 volunteers. And even many events had ‘other athletes’ (defeated, finished or otherwise at loose ends) as the main bleachers audience you saw on TV at the minor sports events. Few people took tickets for these smaller sports.

As for the army, they quite cleverly spent the two weeks in the sub-basements of downtown department stores and such places in Sydney awaiting calls. Now this was a simpler time before the New York City plane crashes which have given the military and paramilitary implicit permission to play the heavies-with-guns on TV and in real life.

There were clever satires on that everyone watched on TV (“The Games”) that were a take-off on the SOCOG Olympic committees, so close to home and with a weekly changing script that the Committee thought there was a leak. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Games_(Australian_TV_series)
And then the nightly show that even foreign athletes wanted to appear on The Dream with the ‘other’ mascot : Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat while Roy and HG cracked Aussie jokes about the whole Olympic charade. “Roy Slaven” and “H.G. Nelson” were there stage names. They did an Australia-only series for Turin too.
Sadly Vancouver could do that thing here as there are few studios around anymore for acting. And the cuts at the CBC for anything that is not cheap reality shows mean no drama from the west coast.

But Sydney was a summer Olympics, larger, more sports, more nations to defect, etc. than the winter ones.
And really, the troops are here to protect the Olympic family (Consider that Torino (Turin) had 2500 athletes vs 10,000 at Sydney.
And those 2500 were supported by 10,000 sponsors guests, 2300 officials and 2700 NBC staff and other media. A ratio of 20 hangers-on to one athlete.

And we have several months to endure what commentator this morning called “[media] hyperventilating over the Nazis’ contribution to Olympic hoopla, the torch relay.”
I do hope that something ‘goes wrong’ so we can laugh about it.

As to the electric Swastika at the airport, the 1936 Olympics had their ‘clean-ups’ too and local symbols and faces just for the visitor. I’m just reading Philip Kerr’s “Berlin Noir” trilogy and the first book of this hard-boiled detective mystery set in Nazi Germany, “March violets” has little details of 1936 Berlin like a let-up in banning of some books, films and journals, the taking down of street bulletin boards of the more virulent nature, etc.
I imagine more street impressions could be gotten from George L. Mosse’s books and Richard Mandell’s more narrow view of the Nazi Olympics, or David Large.

I’d love for some press to get to a pub where the disgruntled RCMP security runners sit around complaining about their overtime, their sore flat feet, and the general silliness of such a long torch tour with mostly random runners.

Meanwhile, achoo!

I have a number of friends and family volunteering. Me? I’ll be selfishly enjoying some men’s quarter finals hockey, women’s gold snowboarding, and a lot of partying.

I’m really excited, btw. Like, ridiculously excited.

With unemployment so high, a great number of people have tried to get a job, if only for a few weeks. To say that the spirit of volunteerism is high is misinformed.