A Kinder, Gentler Enron?

BeautifulBritishColumbia
It'sStill(Barely)ThereVille

Just getting back from holidays, so am a little wobbly and even less insightful than usual......

Didn't go south this year...... Except for short trips down to Pt.Roberts, where the border guards are still human, we just can't bring ourselves to do it.

Instead, we went native in the wilds of just-off-coast, left-sided Canuckistan (a.k.a British Columbia's Southern Interior).

Much of it is privatized, and I'm not just talking about our gas company which apparently has just been sold lock, stock and two billowing barrels to Kinder-Morgan which is fronted by, yes folks, that's right, that Richard Kinder just in case you were wondering where the hearts, minds and gubernacula of the Neandercons running the Good Ship Lollipop (ie. the S.S. Gordon Campbell) truly lie.

What really got to me on this holiday is the state of B.C.'s public campgrounds. Clearly, they are being run into the ground, quite literally, by the private contractors who now control them. The exception on this trip was a little place at Otter Lake which is tucked into a high valley between the Hozameen and Okanagan Mountain Ranges. It was fantastic - not because the company running the place is any great shakes (ie. all they really want their value-added for no value $6 a night reservation surcharge that makes their no capital investment-assisted, gravy train profit margin even richer than usual) but rather because the three young kids doing the actual work of running this little outpost really love both what they do and the people that come to visit them. Heck, one of them even brought us...... get this.....frozen chocolate-covered cherries when he found out that we were having a reunion of sorts with another family we semi-regularly head out into the woods with.

So, here's the thing.

Do you seriously think that Richard Kinder and his Ranger friends are going to give a hoot in hell about any of us peons, either the indigenous campers or the folks running 'our' campsites, when they buy up that all that ranch land up the road in the Bernie Ebbers firesale and then gobble up every bit remaining range and forest land from the Coquihalla to the Kootenays for their own private hunting and fishing reserves to be protected by razor wire, laser-guided attack dogs, Mr. Coleman's minions, and roving packs of 2nd line trigger happy punks on nitro-burning ATV's who couldn't quite make it with Kellogg Brown and Root?

I think not.

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A couple of random musings after being offline and almost totally in the grips of Canwest (not)Global's print media organ grinder monkeys for 10 days or so.....the Province is no longer my derriere polisher of last resort because the National Post, even sans Conrad the Marauder, is a truly vile pile of xenophobic spew filled to bursting with gutless, posturing wonderment....Gary Mason should change his name to John Obvious; I mean, who the the hell is he writing for, people in BC who know that real estate is overpriced, that labour relations are on the rocks, and that Vancouver's upcoming civic election is going to be interesting, or is he still pitching his job to fast Eddie G. months after he got the gig?

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