From The Edmonton Journal :
EDMONTON – On Oct. 7, a freelance reporter from Seattle wrote about a scandal at the centre of the Edmonton municipal election.
It turns out the Seattle journalist, Darren Holmes, was as fake as the scandal he claimed to have uncovered: that Mayor Stephen Mandel was fighting to shut down the City Centre Airport so his friends in the development industry would profit from a massive redevelopment.
His blog, Darrensbigscoop, was posted on Oct. 7. A now-shuttered Twitter account, also in the name of Darrensbigscoop, linked to the blog on a page devoted to the Edmonton municipal election.
Soon the blog posting, "Developers on Final Approach for Downtown Airport Land," went viral. People all over the city were sharing the blog, curiously illustrated with a winter scene from the Aspen Parkland, and some no doubt believed the journalist’s claims.
Darren Holmes is actually Nathan Black, manager of the Envision Edmonton petition drive this summer to force a plebiscite on the airport issue, and currently a volunteer with the David Dorward mayoral campaign.
"I was just doing it for my personal knowledge," Black said in an interview Friday. "I did it because what I was hearing about Yes (for) Edmonton just didn’t seem correct or believable. I’m passionate about the airport."
Black admitted he registered a Seattle phone number on Sept. 15, with MagicJack, a product that allows users to choose from a number of U.S. area codes.
The two people he interviewed, councillor Amarjeet Sohi and Yes for Edmonton organizer Sid Hanson, claimed Black identified himself as a Seattle Times reporter. Black said he called himself a Seattle Hill Times reporter.
"It was a prank. It got out of control."
There’s more, but that gets the gist of it. The retard claims that he didn’t actually WRITE the fake blog…which seems weird, because how does he then explain how interview content he did showed up there if someone else wrote it? Also…’Darren’s Big Scoop’…you couldn’t be more obviously compensating for something if you bought a Ferrari and hung some of those fake nuts from the back of it, you fucking eunuch. And the Envision Edmonton folks are distancing themselves from this train wreck, saying he’d essentially gone rogue.
Bullshit.
These fucking idiots have been sensationalizing everything they possibly could to keep the airport alive for their mystery band of backers (thought it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who they are) from the moment they appeared on the scene.
First it would kill thousands a year to shut down the muni, because no medevac service would exist. No, I’m sure that wouldn’t be transferred at all…everyone would just say “Fuck em!” and leave critical care patients to fend for themselves in Backwoods Rubescape, Alberta.
Then it was intimated that the northern communities would be so angry at having to spend an extra ten minutes in the air to reach the International airport that they would respond by spending an extra hour plus to fly to Calgary. Yeah, that makes sense. And by the way jackasses, last I checked Calgary’s airport WAS ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE FUCKING CITY. They don’t have a downtown airport, yet they’ve SOMEHOW managed to flourish. Why not take this northern anger example to the next level and start intimating that they’re gearing up for a coup? At least that would be both stupid AND hilarious, rather than just the former.
Next up was the thousands of lost jobs and hidden tens of millions in clean up costs to make the land liveable. Will some people lose jobs? Yes, and that sucks. But if you believe thousands are employed at the Muni, I’d like to offer you a generous portion of Bhutan’s national treasury. All you need to pay is a small transfer fee! As for the clean up costs, guess what…those clean up requirements don’t magically go away if it remains an airport. You STILL will eventually have to clean up the spilt fuel and the like regardless of what the land use is…they’re called environmental statutes, and yes they do exist here in Alberta.
And I LOVE how it’s controversial for one group to be pro-airport closure, yet there is NOTHING WRONG with Envision Edmonton trying to get donations FROM OUTSIDE EDMONTON to fund their fucking propaganda campaign during the Edmonton mayoral campaign. Nice work of hypocrisy there.
And don’t give me these insane comparisons to Toronto and how they have 2 airports working in concert. They ALSO have three to four times the fucking population of Edmonton, and several suburb type communities in triple digits for population numbers. That makes a bit of a fucking difference.
Why is this becoming such a massive issue right now? Simple…the writing is on the wall. The majority of people who give two shits about a working municipal airport are a small collection of old white dudes. That’s it. Every younger generation appears to be massively in favour of shutting it down and converting it in to usable housing. So the clock’s ticking, and there’s only so much time for these increasingly aging codgers to get it written in law that their ‘precious jewel’ stays open before they start dying off and the youth say “Fuck it, we want houses.”
The Muni is unnecessary. At least give the thing a bit of a respectful end instead of dragging this out for years while it withers.
