2008 Draws to a Close

As we near the end of another year I thought I'd list a few things that I deem are wrong in this society.

First and foremost is the looong loooong delay we are facing in the BC Rail/ Legislature Raids case.( we just passed 5 years from the unprecedented raid on our Legislature on December 28th 2003. I so dislike adding gate to the end of anything. It only reminds me of Watergate which if some of you don't know is the name of a hotel in DC where some political shenanigans brought down a sitting US President. The issue was American not Canadian. And in that case two reporters kept digging and digging with the help of a former FBI agent to get to the bottom of things.
Sadly in this day and age in this province we have no Mainstream Media reporters, editors, or companies digging into and /or publishing what is quite possibly the biggest scandal this province or country forthat matter has ever seen.
Fortunately what we do have is a pitbull of a blogger BC Mary, a political commentator Bill Tieleman who has been the lead in this case from the start, a retired professor Robin Mathews who gives us much valuable information and a few other blogsites on the net such as myself, House of Infamy, The Gazetteer, and the unbelievable Sean Holman of Public Eye, who care enough to keep this case alive and as much in the forefront as we can.
Now, I said above that there are reporters included in the non reporting of this case but that is not quite correct. They aren't reporting through their papers, for whatever reasons, but there are other ways to report. For them we can be thankful.

The second thing on my list is the present political party in power in Victoria.
This is government that in the past two elections have promised the moon and given us a net result of nothing. And here I can't see why some of their MLA's have not crossed the floor to sit as independents or for another party.
Just a few of their broken promises are #1 I will not sell the railway. Technically they are correct here. I maintain they didn't sell it , they gave it away. And as of next year we aren't going to own any of it. Squat. Nada. Just watch.
Thirdly they promised 5000 long term health care beds for seniors in BC. This has not happened.
Then they were going to erase homelessness and they made a big deal of buying up slum hotels only to put this on the back burner. I maintain that they are going to sweep the homeless from Vancouver out to the interior and develop the hotels for profit during the 2010 Olympics. That to me is the only thing that makes sense of how this is being handled. The new Mayor of Vancouver is the only one to actually jump started the erasing of the homeless problem.
They were going to have open cabinet meetings and that fizzled when they figured it may cause them grief.
The biggest joke was that they were going to have a sustainable forestry program. What a farce. Try telling the unemployed loggers and millworkers in BC that it's working.
And they were going to eliminate government funded advertising. I've written before on the blatant advertisement showcasing their money giveaways. And now I've seen a new one. They just had to start the new add with the Fast ferry problem. Funny I don't see any mention there of the 500 million dollar cost overrun for the convention center that I believe is closer to a billion dollars. Or the present problems with the new ferries.
Finally for this post I want to mention the minimum wage. People in this province are making $6.50 an hour. I was making that wage back when gas cost twenty-five cents a gallon. My auto insurance was 24 dollars a year.
These people are on what is called a training wage. So for six months they get this amount. And there is nothing in the labour code to stop companies from letting them go at the end of that time. The code has been gutted. As has much of the other legislation that protected workers.
It wouldn't be so bad if Gordon Campbell hadn't refused that increase then with a straight face voted himself the golden egg. Along with his cronies.
I will never be able to comprehend how out of touch this man is with his fellow human beings. He lacks any compassion whatsoever.

The list is so vast it boggles the mind. Everything seems to be on hold till after the next election.
And his spin doctors have seized on another spin. They say (and of course he agrees) that he is the most qualified to handle the economy. Handle it for who? The corporate welfare bums? I think not. What he is actually doing is telling us to vote for him so he can further hide the mess he has created for this province. You see if someone else forms a government I believe that this man will go to jail. (unless of course he takes a lesson from Bush and votes himself a pardon.)

I want ot take this opportunity to wish my friends and even those who are not so friendly a happy and prosperous 2009. And I think the only way you are going to prosper is to vote for anyone other than the BC liberals. Gary E