As every tenant knows, rent is a racket. Landlords charge occupants of their property not according to what improvements they have installed, but to what renters are willing to pay to have a roof over their heads. A famous economist put it like so: a landlord prices property proportioned not "to what he can afford to take; but to what the farmer can afford to give." That economist isn't Karl Marx -- it's Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations.

Like you, I'm gutted.

I'm devastated that this province can look forward to four more years of unfettered neoliberal policies. This election result is a disaster for labour, for students, for teachers, for the environment, for First Nations rights, for poverty and for affordable housing.

There are already rumblings of what went wrong: vote splitting, the success of negative campaigning, the lack of killer instinct by Dix and his party.

It began with mild embarrassment. The developer-friendly Waldorf hotel, which maintained its vaguely artistic credentials despite hosting a chain Lebanese restaurant and a hair salon, was sold to a condominium company in spite of itself. Even Mayor Gregor Robertson seemed bemused, even sheepish. "To lose such a historic building would be a big blow," he muttered, eyes lowered, shuffling his John Fluevogs hither and thither. "We need to do what we can to protect it."

In the last section of his Republic, in which Plato outlines his designs for the ideal society, the great philosopher famously banishes poets from the city, the polis. The problem is, you see, they're a bunch of fakers. They pretend to know everything and anything, but in reality, they're know-nothing scoundrels. They drink, they fight, they carry on -- and they'll corrupt the public with their chiasmuses and villanelles if we're not careful. So, sorry poets: you're out.

As the smoke is beginning to clear from Wednesday's made-for-television raids of several Vancouver construction sites by the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) and their camera-crew partners looking for undocumented workers, the rage of British Columbians still burns bright.

On Wednesday, at least three construction sites were raided by Canadian Border Service agents looking for undocumented workers. Some reports indicate that up to sixty agents, some armed, some in plainclothes, emerged from black SUVs and performed floor-to-floor sweeps of the sites, interrogating workers and foremen, and demanding identification. CBSA has so far refused to disclose how many sites were raided yesterday, and how many agents were involved.

The opening of Brandon Grossutti's Pidgin restaurant across from Pigeon Park in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside has marked a stark difference in the way the local anti-gentrification movement has been represented and undermined in the media and public discourse. Up to this point, while overtly poor-bashing editorials and policies occasionally surfaced, the characterization of resistance to relentless development in the city has been acknowledgment with sympathy but restrained disagreement -- perfectly exemplified by Mayor Gregor Robertson's hand-wringing concern as he pursues policies of ruthless real estate expansion and the displacement of low-income people.

In Edinburgh, there is a tourist attraction called the underground city. For around 10 quid, tourists can behold the South Bridge vaults while a low-paid costumed fop festoons you with ghost stories about plague victims and aggrieved cobblers. In reality, the vaults weren't actually underground -- they simply seemed like they were. Disappointingly, the so-called catacombs were simply the lowest levels of nine-story tenements eventually paved over to build the capital's Royal Exchange. The "underground" label comes from the fact that the sun never hit the lower reaches of the slum, which housed the city's poor and destitute.

There's been a lot of talk in British Columbia lately about #savebcfilm, a campaign rivalling the conviction and courage of #idlenomore and Chief Theresa Spence -- or maybe that's the screenplay currently undergoing heavy edits by the Hollywood North's focus groups. The pitch goes that B.C.'s film industry is facing imminent collapse if the province doesn't immediately increase the existing $285-million tax credit to an amount comparable to what's paid in Quebec, Ontario and Louisiana -- the industry standard in keeping key grips well-greased.

Scrabble, the 85-year-old crossword game loved by wordsmiths everywhere, has been in the news recently. Apparently its rules are out-of-step with modern life. Time to upgrade, Scrabble. You're doing it wrong.