Monday, April 10, 2017

This Pre-Writ Day In Clarkland...The Yo-Yo Ferry Fare Conspiracy.

SayAnything
IndeedVille


The following was the headline from a CBC British Columbia story just over a week ago:

"Welcome to April: higher BC Hydro rates, fares for BC Ferries"



And then, today, there was this from Global British Columbia:

"B.C. Liberals promise reduced ferry fares if elected"

Hmmmmmm....

It would appear that one of these things is not like other.

Kind of like those MSP rollbacks that haven't actually started rolling yet.

What a surprise.


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Interestingly, as pointed out by Bob Mackin, Global's local news channel did not cover the release of the Chalke report live but they did did go wire to wire with live coverage of the firing of a lame duck hockey coach who wanted nothing to do with the tanking of the good ship Linden-pop.



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6 comments:

North Van's Grumps said...

All of these promises from the BC Liberal, not available for four years, 50% reduction of MSP not until next January, will they finally start to happen after the next provincial election in 2021? I might no even be here in four years with the way the Health care is underfunded, ... there's plenty of monies being spent to recover from the Health researchers firings fiasco, plurals.

davemj said...

The ship of fools!don't bother watching the garbage Globull Gallus really is a turn-off. Heard Balderdash asking Crusty Crap about her gifts our $$$$, to the unwashed, nothing but poor rehearsing from both of them a kindergarten play would have shown them up, Did,not answer the second reporter his second question.One big Shit show by Crusty and her clowns cant even get that right.

ricky said...

Global always finds a way to report on the BC Liberals media releases like they're real news.

Scotty on Denman said...

I live in a nested mess of publicly owned ferries: the Big Island whence Mainlanders must ferry to in order to reach the connection to my own island, serviced by the longest marine cable-ferry in the world, a mile long, and, on the other side, about a seven-mile drive away, the deepest-nested Hornby Island is accessed by another ferry. To go shopping in the regional hub, the Triple-C Valley (Courtenay, Comox and Cumberland), from Hornby is thus a "three-island-day." Just off the northern tip of our island-in-the-middle is the fourth and northernmost Mainland ferry connection, sailing between Little River (Comox) and Powell River on the Sunshine Coast which, because of the two-ferry connection to the Lower Mainland, is island-like in many ways. (Two private ferries service remote communities on the West Coast of the Big Island, two others connect to Washington State; One of the fifteen Gulf Islands is serviced by private ferry, the rest by public-owned ferries; one public-owned ferry sails from northern Vancouver Island to Prince Rupert on the northern Mainland coast.)

Nearly a quarter of BC resides in the ferry-dependant communities of this region, almost a million people. We know a lot about ferries, the condition of the public fleet and the increases in fares. Residents of the Big Island and Sunshine Coast, larger and more self-sustaining regions, might not travel not ferry as much as the little islanders do, but their economies are largely ferry-dependant in terms of supplying food and other consumer goods. Little Islanders, in contrast, are acutely aware of their ferry connections, commuting to work weekdays, or on regular trips for shopping and appointments. On the little islands, almost everyone knows someone who works on their respective ferries.

The deterioration of the fleet is plain to us Islanders and Sunshine Coasters; many attribute this neglect, similar to delaying the Inland Island Highway for 20 years( finally built by the last NDP government), to the fact that most of us do not vote BC Liberal, but most Mainlanders probably don't appreciate the province-wide economic consequence of such cynically partisan government. The loss of several billions of dollars of economic opportunity and investment, and the depression of property assessments and tax revenue that result are assumed to be Islanders' problem, even though it negatively affects everyone in BC. The typical BC Liberal supporter in Fort St John has been trained to blame "lifestyle choice" for the high-cost, low-service ferry system they assume to be exclusively the business of Islanders, and none of their own.

I looked up at the ferry bridge (wheelhouse) the other day crossing to Buckley Bay---there was no captain, instead a deckhand running the cable-ferry. My pal who took the package when the cable-ferry took over noted that he would have been fired if he'd worked the ferry deck with his hands in pockets. Nowadays all the deckhands walk about with their hands in their pockets. The real ferry that was supposed to have been freed up by the cable-ferry is berthed on the other side, breakdowns requiring it to sit idle as back up.

After everything the BC Liberals' BC Ferries Services Inc., the bogus "privatized" ferry company, has put us through, Christy's election campaign promise to reduce fares---which have increased four-fold on our still-100% publicly owned fleet ever since I've lived here---if and only if we vote BC Liberal---is like some kind of sick joke. Nobody but nobody is laughing around here. At least not yet.

e.a.f. said...

Scotty on Deman has oh so right and correct!

The ferry system is a mess and its been made a mess by the B.C. Lieberals. This is not what WAC Bennett had in mind when he created the B.C. Ferries. having used the ferries since I was a teenager I'm also well aware of the short comings of the system. I've lived on Vancouver Island since 2000 Just the increase in ferry fares, without an increase in service is enough to make me vomit. Now that bitch has the nerve to tell me, if I vote for her and her serial killers she might reduce my ferry fares????????? (oh the serial killer comment comes from the 8 dead kids in care, the 4 recent deaths in E.R.s and the suicide of a health researcher. in my opinion if the B.C. lieberals had been doing their jobs instead of fund raising and looking after their financial supporters needs these deaths could have been prevented.)

Keith E. said...

Times Colonist 12 April with a good explanation on how the ferry fare break works.

http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-ferry-break-insults-islanders-1.14991874