tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5251250297030815041.post3039921755436254442..comments2023-08-07T22:39:49.127-07:00Comments on Blog Borg Collective: BC Hydro should know to Never, NEVER, mix electricity with water AND Children (or the children in us)North Van's Grumpshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571810726275726952noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5251250297030815041.post-69640067138828494282014-09-20T14:35:28.123-07:002014-09-20T14:35:28.123-07:00I remember---fondly---when Gordon Campbell, then i...I remember---fondly---when Gordon Campbell, then in Opposition, used to rant and rave about the government taking its annual tithe from the mighty, publicly-owned BC Hydro. Interference with a monopoly that should be privatized! he raged. And we all used to think: this guy's obviously a far right screwball with a hatefully mad obsession---which seemed about right as he gnashed his teeth to the tune of labour union peans while Glen Clark pulled past the post first. Those were the days when BC Hydro hauled in several hundred million dollars a year and generously shared the precious amber of communitarian enterprise; it almost seems a distant dream. <br /><br />People warn that if we don't do something quick we'll lose the jewel of public enterprise that pumped billions of dollars into public coffers, decent wages and procurements that powered so much of BC's economy, public and private---not to mention the magic electrical goo essential to public service and private interests alike, and this at rates a fraction of the North American average. If you wanted to change that happy state of affairs, you couldn't have done it more thoroughly than Gordo did. It would have been his royal flush had it not been for the concurrent thrashing Mike Harris' government took for trying to fob that province's public power producer off to private interests, forcing Gordo in BC to cool his heels and switch from a similar whole-hog heist to a custom made piecemeal approach, a decade of which has changed BC Hydro into something almost unrecognizable from what it used to be. Scratch BC Hydro anywhere and you'll reveal a mortally afflicted outfit untroubled as a zombie, discomfited only by having to rearrange the deck chairs to accommodate the bulging sacks of parasitized wealth sucked out of society by way of IPPs, recklessly increased rates, crazy infrastructure plans, executive remuneration obscenities and Smartmeter stupidity. <br /><br />If we're ever to get BC Hydro back, at least we won't have the expense of printing up new letterheads because it's still nominally public---better than nothing, but it's still a long row to hoe, back to the public-owned creator of wealth for all from what it is now: one of the biggest single contributors to public debt ever (ongoing), poison to fish, destroyer of the public weal, the neo-rightists' wrecking bar, the cancerous killer of its host.<br /><br />The BC Liberals' BC Hydro is probably the biggest breach of public trust in Canadian history. scotty on denmannoreply@blogger.com