Thursday, November 28, 2013

This Day In Snookland...You Want Numbers? We'll Give You Numbers!

There'sNoCapacityLike
BaitAndSwitchCapacityVille


The folks from Texada island are steamed about the massive sailing cuts to come from BC Ferries.

In response, the finest of the fine folks working for Snooklandian Transportation Minister Mr. Todd Stone told the islanders that they have no choice because they have to cut costs, especially on routes such as theirs where the ship is running at below 20% capacity on some sailings.

Sounds reasonable, kinda/sorta I suppose.

But...

Well...

As you may have already surmised,  convenient/useful terms like 'capacity', and the numbers associated with them, are not always what they seem:

...(R)esidents pointed out the original vessel on the Texada route was the Tachek, which has a much lower vehicle capacity than the North Island Princess (NIP), the vessel that currently provides service on the route. No one asked or consulted with island residents when the NIP was put on the route, but now it is being used in calculations designed to show low usage. If the Tachek had been used instead, utilization rates would be much higher...

So.

The finer then possibly finest of the fine folks can ever be institute a massive increase in useless capacity and now the regular folks who actually use the over-capacitized system have to pay for it.

Sounds like the perfect Snooklandian solution to me.


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And where is the good Mr. David Hahn these days anyway?...Perhaps the very good Mr. Baldrey could do a follow-up fawning to help us avert our eyes (and attention) from the dismantling of (what used to be) our ferry system.
Oh, and case you missed it, the Tachek was built for the Ministry of Transportation which would make it part of 'what', exactly?


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8 comments:

Dave said...

And THAT my friend is the crux of the entire matter.

BC Ferries acquired the Ministry of Transportation and Highways (MOTH) fleet and merged them into a larger and much more expensive operation.

They were two different and wholly independent operations with completely different ranges of focus.

Thanks to The Campbell, who was intent on making living on an island a "lifestyle choice" for which each islander would pay, the marine highway system collapsed and promises made were immediately broken.

It would be worth pulling the old MOTH guarantees and throwing them back in the face of the hockey player and his sycophants.

RossK said...

Point the way Dave and will go throwin'.

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e.a.f. said...

Yes, lets cut services to the people who use the ferries. It makes so much more sense than making B.C. Ferries a Crown corporation again.

The B.C. Ferries has a huge debt load. That is because el gordo had ferries built in Germany, which are way too upscale. The province did not pay cash. They got a loan from the German banks. While they were borrowing the money, the got an extra $750M to toss into general revenue and charged it to B.C. Ferries. Because el gordo had changed B.C. Ferries from a Crown Corp, to a "private" corp. -- no peeking allowed then, the interest rate the German banks charge is 10%. To reduce the deficient all the lieberals have to do it change B.C. Ferries back to a Crown corporation and the interest rate drops to 3%.

Now even those of us who are mathematically challenged know that we are PAYING AN EXTRA 7% ON A FEW BILLION DOLLARS.

There isn't a deficiet, there is simply too much interest being paid to German banks, like 7% too much.

Norm Farrell said...

I had a private email yesterday pointing to a piece written by Mr. Baldrey and published at Global. In part, it said,
"He’s supposed to be a reporter but it sounds like it could have been written by government."

Now, the interesting thing is that the person who emailed the comment is a person who works in the corporate media.

Norm Farrell said...

I'm wondering about an appropriate response to my emailer. Should it be:

1) The Global article probably was actually written by someone in government,

2) Keith's just ensuring the greens fees keep getting paid,

3) His friend David Hahn called late one night with ideas for a column,

4) Keith's just playing to his base, the one that prefers to pay newspeople instead of the tax department.

e.a.f. said...

Norm,
if this is a contest to choose one, I want to change the rules.

I vote all of the above.

RossK said...

Is it safe to assume that the E-mailer was not one of the Baldrey 12000?

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Norm Farrell said...

Apparently Mr. B believes regular readers at this site and others (Northern Insight, for example) are "moronic," unlike his followers.

However, thousands of KB's Twitter followers may be fake or inactive.

http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/2871233763001/should-you-buy-twitter-followers/

Twitteraudit.com reports that followers of the Edge of the Ledge trio test at almost one-third fake. That would be more than 8,500 people not reading their tweets.