This Place Is So Not Ready For The Olympics.
First I want to make it perfectly clear that I did not vote to bring the Olympic Games to Vancouver. Chris did, so blame her.
We've lived with years of pre-Olympic construction, cost-overruns, controversy, protests and inconveniences large and small. Now, during the final countdown, Whistler is dealing with "Olympic Aversion", the taxpayers of Vancouver are looking at hundreds of street closures, the bright bulbs of VANOC are asking tourists and visitors to the Games to pay for the carbon offsets it had vowed to purchase but now can't afford. I can see it happening....not. Why in the name of God would people visiting the most expensive city in the country for a totally overpriced sporting event, voluntarily shell out more money for such a dubious reason?
Translink is intent on fleecing visitors to this (un)fair city as well. The regular fee of $3.50 for a skytrain ticket from YVR to one of the downtown stations is being jacked up to $8.50. There are ways around this thievery, but unless some kind locals lets the tourists in on the secret, they'll get hosed. Parking prices are being conveniently raised in city-owned lots and parking meters, as are the hours paid parking is in effect.
A cynic might think that the citizens of the Lower Mainland are being screwed by the City of Vancouver.
Hundreds of millions (billions? trillions?) of dollars have been spent by a city on the brink of disaster, a province running a deficit and a country in a recession to host an event where only the most elite athletes in the world are invited. Nobody is naive enough to believe the Olympic Games are about excellence in amateur sport anymore....only professional athletes are welcome in hockey, and other sports boast athletes with huge amounts of money backing them.
Meanwhile, the City of Vancouver is laying off hundreds of employees, cutting services and laying waste to social programs. The province is closing schools, can't see it's way clear to raise the minimum wage to more than $8.00 an hour (the lowest in the entire country, in the province with some of the highest costs of living), is closing hospital wards, the list goes on.
Hey, but it's all good, because Roberto Luongo might actually live up to his hype and not choke during an important hockey game. That's gotta be worth a billion dollars.
We've lived with years of pre-Olympic construction, cost-overruns, controversy, protests and inconveniences large and small. Now, during the final countdown, Whistler is dealing with "Olympic Aversion", the taxpayers of Vancouver are looking at hundreds of street closures, the bright bulbs of VANOC are asking tourists and visitors to the Games to pay for the carbon offsets it had vowed to purchase but now can't afford. I can see it happening....not. Why in the name of God would people visiting the most expensive city in the country for a totally overpriced sporting event, voluntarily shell out more money for such a dubious reason?
Translink is intent on fleecing visitors to this (un)fair city as well. The regular fee of $3.50 for a skytrain ticket from YVR to one of the downtown stations is being jacked up to $8.50. There are ways around this thievery, but unless some kind locals lets the tourists in on the secret, they'll get hosed. Parking prices are being conveniently raised in city-owned lots and parking meters, as are the hours paid parking is in effect.
A cynic might think that the citizens of the Lower Mainland are being screwed by the City of Vancouver.
Hundreds of millions (billions? trillions?) of dollars have been spent by a city on the brink of disaster, a province running a deficit and a country in a recession to host an event where only the most elite athletes in the world are invited. Nobody is naive enough to believe the Olympic Games are about excellence in amateur sport anymore....only professional athletes are welcome in hockey, and other sports boast athletes with huge amounts of money backing them.
Meanwhile, the City of Vancouver is laying off hundreds of employees, cutting services and laying waste to social programs. The province is closing schools, can't see it's way clear to raise the minimum wage to more than $8.00 an hour (the lowest in the entire country, in the province with some of the highest costs of living), is closing hospital wards, the list goes on.
Hey, but it's all good, because Roberto Luongo might actually live up to his hype and not choke during an important hockey game. That's gotta be worth a billion dollars.
posted by Alphamutt at 11:07 PM
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