Schaudenfreude ins Meer

Gordon Campbell and his B.C. Liberals fall further behind the BCNDP in an Angus Reid poll released last week. They also watched in dismay last Saturday as their municipal right-wing spear carriers were crushed in civic elections throughout the Province. Meanwhile, the Liberals' corporate cash cow may be drying up as financial markets drive down donations from the usual gang of neanderthal free enterprisers. Wow - can things get any worse for everyone's favourite trickle-down drunk driving privateer psychopath?

To paraphrase the immortal Palin, you betcha! Reports are emerging that the new Super-C Class Ferries contracted by the Liberals from a German shipbuilding firm (and which now B.C. shipbuilders were prohibited from bidding on) may have considerable technical difficulties, particularly that the allegedly 30% more efficient engines actually take 20% more fuel to cross the Georgia Strait. How much of that do they think than can recoup of that with carbon tax? Personally, this page doesn't find much fuel efficiency in running them from Duke Point to Tsawwassen with the passenger compliment of a Translink Seabus either, as I noticed on a trip a few weeks ago.

This page encourages its readers not too let David Hahn, Kevin Falcon and Gordon Campbell off the hook and put the blame on the Germans. It was the Liberals who screamed up and down about the Fast Ferries project under Glen Clark's administration, and turned them into the propaganda centrepiece of the 2001 election. The Liberals then turned around and sold those ships for a pittance of what the ships were actually worth to the Washington Marine Group. By no means are the FastCats perfect, but at least they were made in British Columbia, and would have gone a long way to provide limited vehicle or passenger-only service in the run-up to the 2010 Olympics. For those of you still deluded and myopic enough to believe the lies of the Public-Private Partnership-Wrecked, whatever happened to Harbourlynx?

Now the 'New Era', 'Best Place on Earth', 'Free Markets fix Everything' crowd has their own nautical disaster, one they went all the way to Europe to set in motion. Hopefully, this turn of events will mean that the Liberals' overblown horror stories about the Fast Ferries will be shoved back down their throats, just like the Basi-Virk trial shut them up about Glen Clark's patio. Is getting them to stop lying about the 'deficit' they inherited in 2001 too much to ask? This page can't help but remember an election day conversation from three years ago with NDP MLA Jenny Kwan, who told me that for whatever abuse she put up with the Liberals, it was worth it because she remained confident that "what goes around, comes around". Here's hoping in the case of Gordon Campbell and the Liberals, it just sinks to the bottom and stays there.