Jimmy Pattison has a Spot for Ethel Whitty

Sunday night is the busiest night of the week in the Carnegie Computer Room, as people prepare for the new week. So what did City staff do?

Believe it or not, they turned out the lights and locked the door.

After the door had been locked for a couple of hours, a volunteer opened it as a favor to people in a jam with no internet access. But he is not a regular volunteer in the computer room.

That's the problem at Carnegie with its multi-million dollar budget: the poor have to beg and cajole somebody into providing computer services that the Center is richly funded to provide.

Staff always have an excuse for not opening the doors. The current flavor of the week is that staff person Colleen Gorrie is off sick. They're like children; they must be watched constantly. The only excuse they haven't yet used is that the dog ate their homework.

Did I mention that the Sunday evening before last, the poor were locked out of the computer room as well?

The Great Taxpayer Rip-off at Carnegie continues. It is not only CUPE members who are responsible but the City's manager at Carnegie, Ethel Whitty, and her City Hall boss Jacquie Forbes-Roberts.

If you are even suspected of tattletaling to the taxpayer about locked doors by discussing the issue on the internet, Forbes-Roberts will succumb to pressure from Carnegie staff to bar you from the building. Don't believe me? Ask William Simpson who was barred "indefinitely" in a letter signed by Forbes-Roberts and hand delivered to him by Ethel Whitty and CUPE member Dan Tetrault.

Billionaire Jimmy Pattison, who has an office about ten blocks west of Carnegie, should now have spots for the likes of CUPE, Whitty, and Forbes-Roberts. He just bought "Ripley's Believe It Or Not".

Squamish Nation Feast Disappears

Today there was a sign in the lobby of the Carnegie Community Center announcing that the Squamish Nation would be hosting a traditional native feast of salmon, bannock, and two types of soup at Oppenheimer Park at 2 p.m. on March 16.

Several people left Carnegie and walked over to the park, arriving at 2:20 p.m., but didn't find any sign of a traditional native feast.

I figured there had been a mistake. But a middle aged aboriginal man saw it differently: "Somebody must have pulled a prank," he said calmly. "to make the Squamish Nation look bad."

Christians were there though, giving out soup from there slightly corny white van (see top photo) with words painted in black across the side: "Jesus Loves You". When I see that van around the neighborhood, it reminds me of a woman from Nova Scotia interviewed on Coast to Coast radio about a near death experience in which a figure of light told her, "Don't ever think you're not loved."

Bus Kills Pedestrian at Main & Hastings

A "Top Class Limousine" tour bus was at the bottom of it's class tonight when it had a pedestrian under it's wheel. The 68 year old pedestrian was struck by the bus shortly before 9 p.m. as it turned north off Hastings onto Main St., by the Pathways Job Search Center. A witness who passed by shortly after the accident, said, "They had to take him out from under the wheel." (The pedestrian can be seen lying under a white sheet at the left of the photo above.)

The bus appeared empty of passengers.

At least one security guard came to help from the Carnegie Community Center across the street. The pedestrian still had a pulse but as a police officer entering the Carnegie Center said, "It doesn't look good." He died shortly afterwards at the scene. He did not die enroute to hospital as CTV television reported. He was put into a wine colored body bag at the scene and loaded into the coroner's van.

A bearded VPD Constable wearing a turban (on right of photo above) stood behind the yellow tape across the street from the accident to make sure nobody violated that boundry. But his skills as a community-friendly cop were less than stellar; he was defensive and snooty when a local resident politely asked him if he could walk on the Main Street sidewalk to get home. That same Constable was standing by the yellow tape at the Cambie Hotel on February 15th, the night Steve Seymour was shot to death.

Carnegie Locks Poor Out of Computer Room this Afternoon

This afternoon, the computer room at Carnegie Center was closed. Low income people arriving to use computers found the door locked and the place in darkness.

Carnegie's Director, Ethel Whitty, has an office just meters away. But she seems to do little to ensure that this taxpayer funded service remains open at all times.

Dr. Laura Blames Spitzer's Wife for his Prostitute Spree

On her radio show today, Dr. Laura Schlessinger was laughing. On the topic of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer being caught using a high-priced hooker service, The Today Show had interviewed a call girl to ask why husbands go to prostitutes. Dr. Laura was thrilled to learn that this "whore" gave the same advice she had been giving. It was advice Dr. Laura says she has been relentlessly attacked on blogs for daring to give.

According to Dr. Laura, the call girl said that if a woman doesn't want her guy to go to a prostitute, she should "put more energy into the relationship". The theme of Dr. Laura's book, "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands", is that the modern women is neglecting her husband and may live to regret it.

Dr. Laura loves to give air time to anybody who antecdotally supports her book's thesis. Several times a week, she reads an email from a man who says he left his wife because she wasn't treating him like he had much value, and from a wife who says she regrets treating her husband like he was an afterthought, now that he has left.

Dr. Laura was giddy throughout her show today.

Dr. Laura and the call girl may have part of the truth, but only part in my opinion. I think there are a multitude of reasons why men use prostitutes, not the least of which is that men have trouble with monogomy because they're not hard-wired for it.

I was once told by a guy who himself used prostitutes that guys go to hookers because hookers will do things their wives are not into, like S&M. I thought of him when the media spoke to one of the call girls at the service Spitzer was using and she revealed that the boss had told them that "Client 9", Spitzer, could expect them to do things that were not always "safe."

Judging from the Reuters photo above of Spitzer standing with his wife Silda Wall Spitzer, the onus is now on him to put some energy into the relationship.

UPDATE: On Friday morning, Sue Davis, who has worked as an escort/prostitute in Vancouver for 22 years, was interviewed on CFUN radio by Shannon Nelson. Davis said, "Men who are happily married and are exploring sex with their wives don't come to sex workers."

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Read about the ring of Vancouver professors who sought sex behind the backs of their spouses: Simon Fraser University Asked to Disclose Sexual Harassment Ring to Donors

Another Abuse Story from Pathways

Carol Madson, Manager of Pathways Employment Center on the Downtown Eastside, recently irked Downtown Eastsiders when she told the Vancouver Sun that job searchers at Pathways have major "self-esteem" and "anger" issues. Madson knows the buzz words that keep her funding coming, but the way she runs Pathways, it is difficult to go there on a regular basis without feeling angry or that their self-esteem had been eroded.

Today a woman around 40 years old was working on a resume when a guy about 22 years old got up from his computer and, according to her, "roughly" brushed by her. A dangling strap from his pack sack slapped her on the side of the face, over her eye. She said, "Hey, you hit me!" He said he had not. She said he had.

Then he began loudly telling his friends that he had "offended" the "little old lady". He was laughing and talking loudly so that she could hear. I believed what she told me because I have seen this ritual of demeaning commentary and laughter used by young guys in Pathways when I have dropped in there to talk to Bill Simpson (who has been barred from Carnegie across the street for free speech).

This verbal abuse is provided courtesy of the federal government. During today's incident, the woman told me, Pathways staff said nothing. It wasn't as though they didn't hear what was going on, she said, the guy had moved closer to them than to her when he was making his loud comments.

Ultimately the Manager, Carol Madson, is the problem. People know what will happen if they complaint to her; they will be seen as just another client with "issues"... anger, self esteem, mental health. Previously, the DTES Enquirer reported that a woman who was verbally abused at Pathways was dismissed by Madson who told her in a supercilious tone, "Have a nice day" -- a male witness corroborated her account. Madson, was busy with her kids at the time -- she still brings her kids to work although she hides them in her office now -- and did not want to be hassled with the realities of managing Pathways, the job she is being paid to do.

The Downtown Eastside Enquirer asked residents how the situation could be improved at Pathways. One regular user of Pathways says one solution would be to have the computer room supervisor, a guy around sixty years old, sit inside the room or closer to the door so that he is in a position to actually supervise. That would prevent other problems too, such as computers meant for job searches being occupied by people playing video games. But of course if punks couldn't play video games and poker, they wouldn't sign into Pathways and the numbers needed to justify funding would go down. And Madson has figured that out.

But what she and her federal government co-workers don't seem to have figured out is that verbal abuse is not an employable skill.