Setting priorities
I’ve written about politics influenced by a captured and compliant press. This is from a helpful Canadian Press article published by Macleans Magazine weeks before the last BC election: …A…
Norman Farrell
Agenda journalism
Black Press political reporter Tom Fletcher, whose wife is a Public Affairs Officer for the BC Liberal Government, occasionally recalls the nineties: The dark decade, the dismal decade, the decade…
British satire continues
I enjoy Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe, a BBC Two satirical program now in a third series. BBC TV is not readily available in North America without use of a proxy…
Frugality, thy name is not TransLink
Opinion researchers Insights West concluded in 2013 that an increase in sales tax was the least favoured funding option for TransLink. Nevertheless, that’s the option preferred by most municipal politicians…
Norm Farrell with Ian Jessop, CFAX1070, Feb 19
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Oh, what a tangled web we weave…
I will comment about BC Budget 2014 after more study but I’ve read a few reports from media stenographers. Studying detail takes more time than rewording notes issued by the…
Executive sweet
Thousands of BC government employees lost jobs to privatization and service cuts. Even more lost income through reductions in employment and pension benefits and, with efforts to reduce public services…
Sales tax not only way to pay for public services
CCPA Budget Submissions Natural Resource Royalties Reform, Iglika Ivanova, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, October 2014 BC used to collect well over $1 billion per year from natural gas royalties,…
Horgan with Jessop, CFAX Feb 12
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Pray, don’t pay
During famine of the 19th century, Irish people dying of starvation were told to pray for God’s help while traders loaded ships to carry food to England. Referring the poor…
Readers speak
I had planned today to relate a story from a few years back, about what might have been rockets passing just beneath the helicopter I rode on a harrowing flight…
Politics of opportunism
In a Times Colonist Op-Ed, Bercove, Madden and Coste wrote, We have the choice between trying to build an industry of uncertain benefit based on a finite resource that is…
Easy road to nowhere
February 4, The Tyee published an article by Torrance Coste: Raw Log Exports: A Made-in-BC Problem that’s Only Getting Worse. Work here that relied on reports from BC Stats helped…
A camel is a horse…
Voters in Metro Vancouver are asked to approve a regional increase in provincial sales tax to generate an estimated $250 million a year for TransLink. The vote is an advisory…
Public service: a rewarding career
This is a small piece of information learned in my recent examination of business in Norway. In the article Two Oil Economies, I mentioned Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, the…
Eventually, the piper must be paid
L.F. Copeland (1888): Mathematics is an exact fact; figures don’t lie, but liars sometimes figure. Financial statements of governments and crown corporations should be simple and understandable. They should be;…
Performance short of promise
During the 2013 BC election, Liberals talked frequently of “Debt-Free B.C.” The party platform included this: No conscious person will be surprised when I state the performance has fallen short…
Two oil economies: Norway and Alberta
NORGES BANK Using the Bank of Canada’s average rate of exchange for 2014, a Norwegian krone has been worth $0.1757 CAN. That results in a fund value of $1,165,769,500,000 Canadian,…