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Isentropy posted:Because all subsidies are bad save for the specific ones that affect my riding/region. I'm emphatically against any and all of these programs, and would be even if I were a beneficiary, which I'm not and never have been. So long as there's still a single ER in the country with an average wait time greater than 15 minutes, subsidizing wages like this is an outrageous waste of tax revenue. I'm surprised this viewpoint isn't more widespread.
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Apr 5, 2015 00:18
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cowofwar posted:In general, 30% of people are completely out to lunch on any one polled topic. I work with a guy who falls in to this category, and it is fascinating listening to him talk sometimes and marveling at the endless stream of nonsense that comes out of him.
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Apr 5, 2015 00:25
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Is it the same 30% that always holds the insane opinion or does it vary? I'm curious how much over-lap there is, need a venn-diagram from the survey. Like is it one dude sitting there saying climate change is a hoax and bigfoot is real and UFO's killed princed Diana or a bunch of seperate people who only hold 1 insane opinion and think everyone else is an idiot? "Ha these idiot climate change denialists and conspiracy theorists don't understand bigfoot is at the root of it all!"
Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 01:33
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I used to work in the pharmaceutical industry, and the number of people I knew who thought that industry had a cure for cancer, but wouldn't release it because it would put them out of business was astounding. I usually asked a few questions like a) how many people get cancer each year, and b) how much money do you think you could get from someone if you told them you could cure their cancer? Then I'd ask them if they multiplied (a) by (b) how much money that was, and whether that sounded like going out of business earnings to them. The truth was that the sales and marketing drones I worked with/for wouldn't be smart enough to pull off something like that anyway. More generic BAs in liberal arts pretending that they understood science well enough to convince doctors to prescribe drugs - scientists were few and far between on that side of the industry.
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Apr 5, 2015 01:57
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Femtosecond posted:My only question is that increased development is often a solution to these sort of issues, but isn't there sort of a ceiling on development on the islands in that there is a limited amount of water available? The islands don't really need more development, there's a glut of houses and business spaces. It's the local bylaws that are strangling things. Mostly the inability to rent houses out for short-stays. Like if you want to go visit one of the islands you have to either pay to stay at an actual hotel or B&B, renting someone's cabin is generally illegal if the land isn't zoned for hotel. They want those houses empty unless it's the owner occupying it. If you could rent your cabin out to other people while you don't use it that would help a lot of the people who are selling because they just can't afford to own their stupid cabin. The islands them selves should also densify around their ferry terminal. I mean it's too late for that, but those islands would be so much better if instead of the entire island being developed like lovely exurbs you'd just have a couple dense little walkable villages near the terminals and then tons of actual nature or farms and poo poo. Make it so tourists don't NEED to take a vehicle to actually see the island. A spread out sprawling mess of a few thousand people is really expensive to maintain and not really a destination, but take those same people and condense them into an actual village and you'd have an actual community that could support a lot more services. But that's the problem, the islands were planned out for cabins, for each building to be as isolated as possible. There was never any intent to create any sort of community or local economy, just private plots for people to build cabins on. Hell there was never any intent for tourism, they are places for local hermits and off-island cabin owners. I'd probably visit the islands more often if I could leave my car at home, rent some little apartment in the local village, and get around to the various sites on some little community bus. Or maybe actually walk or ride a bike if the roads were safe. (locals love to drive 60+ on roads that are marked 20-30 for legitimate reasons)
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Apr 5, 2015 02:09
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Baronjutter posted:A spread out sprawling mess of a few thousand people is really expensive to maintain and not really a destination, but take those same people and condense them into an actual village and you'd have an actual community that could support a lot more services. This is essentially most of North America's problems condensed into a single sentence.
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Apr 5, 2015 02:15
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MikeSevigny posted:One of the downtown breakfast places closed last week, and you know the gouging is bad if a breakfast restaurant in Victoria can't afford the rent. Unfortunately I am already gone, however I did go to this great little place called Shaharazad by the public market which had stunningly delicious shish touak. However, I am going to move here next summer I think. poo poo economy be damned, the rents downtown are stupidly affordable and this town has much more appeal to me than the soulless husk that Vancouver has become. 
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Apr 5, 2015 02:24
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Rime posted:Unfortunately I am already gone, however I did go to this great little place called Shaharazad by the public market which had stunningly delicious shish touak. I'd be happy to tell you how much living on a boat is awful in person if you ever moved here. What sort of field are you in?
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Apr 5, 2015 03:11
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Lexicon posted:I'm emphatically against any and all of these programs, and would be even if I were a beneficiary, which I'm not and never have been. So long as there's still a single ER in the country with an average wait time greater than 15 minutes, subsidizing wages like this is an outrageous waste of tax revenue. You might have a different view if you were in an industry that depended on subsidies, all your professional pride, contacts, and future depended on it continuing in the same way. I'm new to the industry, so I don't yet have that level of sunk cost in the industry, but I understand why smart people who I'd normally expect to see these kind of subsidies as wasteful still strongly support them. When their livelihood is on the line people don't think so critically.
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Apr 5, 2015 03:41
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Ccs posted:You might have a different view if you were in an industry that depended on subsidies, all your professional pride, contacts, and future depended on it continuing in the same way. I'm new to the industry, so I don't yet have that level of sunk cost in the industry, but I understand why smart people who I'd normally expect to see these kind of subsidies as wasteful still strongly support them. When their livelihood is on the line people don't think so critically. I can appreciate that, but I'm taking a Rawlsian viewpoint here. Even if I were in the position you suggest, and dependent on it to eat, I would still consider it a deeply offensive usage of tax revenue given the enormous opportunity cost.
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Apr 5, 2015 04:34
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Baronjutter posted:The islands don't really need more development, there's a glut of houses and business spaces. It's the local bylaws that are strangling things. Mostly the inability to rent houses out for short-stays. Like if you want to go visit one of the islands you have to either pay to stay at an actual hotel or B&B, renting someone's cabin is generally illegal if the land isn't zoned for hotel. They want those houses empty unless it's the owner occupying it. If you could rent your cabin out to other people while you don't use it that would help a lot of the people who are selling because they just can't afford to own their stupid cabin. Yeah I definitely agree with all that. Developing little towns would be an improvement. From my terrible memory I think Mayne has a sort of compact little village but definitely Galiano is as you describe, essentially a spread out string of randomly placed shops. Does anyone even have a plan for these places? It sounds like a tinfoil hat theory, but honestly from their actions it feels like the BC Liberals are hoping that they can strangle these islands to death so that they can justify scaling back ferry service further. It's remarkable to me that any government would stack the deck against a community as much as the BC government has these ones. I just don't understand what the BC Liberals are doing. The government should hire some folks to do a study of similar communities around the world (ie. American Gulf Islands) to find out what are some better practices they can engage in to make these communities more of a success. At the moment it seems like there's no one providing any guidance as to how they should develop and they're completely adrift.
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Apr 5, 2015 04:38
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What is there to do on the Gulf islands? What do the rich people do there that they can't do in Vancouver?
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Apr 5, 2015 04:55
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Throatwarbler posted:What is there to do on the Gulf islands? What do the rich people do there that they can't do in Vancouver? I have no idea. Paint, make pottery, raise goats etc.
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Apr 5, 2015 05:01
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Throatwarbler posted:What is there to do on the Gulf islands? What do the rich people do there that they can't do in Vancouver? Nothing, really? I mean, the Gulf Islands aren't a place for really rich people for the most part, they are a place where moderately well-off people can afford a second home and get to experience ~island life~ without breaking the bank. There are beaches, but not a whole lot else -- on places like Mayne there are very few restaurants, no golf courses and it's hard to even find things like tennis courts. If you're really rich you just buy a mansion in West Vancouver with water views or something.
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Apr 5, 2015 05:01
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Independent groups have studied WA ferry system vs BC and it's insane the cost differences. BC ferries and the government wave their hands and talk about how we just need all these crew for safety and comfort and this and that. Apparently the insane crew levels are transport canada level so nothing the liberals can do about that, but holy poo poo is bc ferries top heavy when you compare the size and pay of the management-class with its WA counterpart, even when you adjust it for fleet size, or people moved by the system or distance or anything. I don't think the liberals or anyone is really out to get the islands, they're unsustainable from a bunch of standpoints. It's not that they are being sabotaged, they're just being given fewer and fewer handouts (because all money needs to flow into Vancouver). Cheaper ferry rates would help, but does the province really need to subsidize a bunch of xenophobic hippies and rich cabin owners to have their own islands? The gulf islands are following many small towns in BC and north america. They don't have a point, they don't have a use, so they are dying. The only use the gulf islands have is to be the salish sea's version of ontario's "Cabin country" but that's a bit of an extreme luxury. If they could figure out how to honestly make the islands economically sustainable by both condensing the populations into actual villages and figuring out how to serve them with bare-bones no-frills ferries (ie WA's system) that would be awesome, but I don't want the province to massively subsidize BC ferries just so some retired Victoria civil servant can enjoy his Pender cottage cheaper. Pender at the time was actually the largest subdivision in all of Canada. Like half the island was chunked up and semi-private roads built in the 70's along with all the amazing 1970's urban planning that went with it. But yeah, the whole issue brings up political and economic questions as to when does the government subsidize and help struggling communities and when does it cut its losses and basically tell people to move if they want a better quality of life. it's a lot easier for the government to do that though when it's a bunch of semi-isolated islands rather than just some poor suburb of a larger city. Already there's tons of US cities, towns, and villages that are in the same situation as the gulf islands. They can't pay for their roads and pipes. It all comes back to the problems with sprawl and super low density land use expecting to have the exact same levels of service and quality of life/infrastructure as a city. That pattern can only sustain its self with a lot of rich cabin owners paying for it, once the vacation property market dies the local tax base can't support its most basic infrastructure. The whole point of those areas is to "get away from it all" so no one wants to densify so they just spiral into bankruptcy. And yeah it's the upper middle class that's been driven out, but the super rich still totally have their mansions there, with their own tennis courts and private docks. They have their own boats so they don't even need the ferries. 
Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 05:03
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Baronjutter posted:I don't think the liberals or anyone is really out to get the islands, they're unsustainable from a bunch of standpoints. It's not that they are being sabotaged, they're just being given fewer and fewer handouts (because all money needs to flow into Vancouver). Cheaper ferry rates would help, but does the province really need to subsidize a bunch of xenophobic hippies and rich cabin owners to have their own islands? The gulf islands are following many small towns in BC and north america. They don't have a point, they don't have a use, so they are dying. The only use the gulf islands have is to be the salish sea's version of ontario's "Cabin country" but that's a bit of an extreme luxury. If they could figure out how to honestly make the islands economically sustainable by both condensing the populations into actual villages and figuring out how to serve them with bare-bones no-frills ferries (ie WA's system) that would be awesome, but I don't want the province to massively subsidize BC ferries just so some retired Victoria civil servant can enjoy his Pender cottage cheaper. Yeah that all seems reasonable. The government basically needs to sit down with the island folk and they need to hash out what the gently caress the islands are going to be about for the next 50 years and how they can work together to get there so that it's a win/win. The answer that seems obvious to me is that the islands should all be about tourism, but what's weird is that the governments actions to date are totally tourism killing so someone needs to sort this out. As an aside I've visited the San Juans a ton and the American ferry service is effective and charming. The American islands are pretty nice and honestly as a cyclist I'd rather camp out there than on ours...
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Apr 5, 2015 05:20
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You guys should look up the story of why Dioniso marine park is a marine park, despite having a paved road all the way to the campground (because it is too long to phone type for me, but hilarious!). BaronJ: I've been doing extremely unique data entry and digital IP protection for like six years, it's not a transferable skill set so I'm starting over from scratch at 27 when I quit. Probably head to Uvic and sling liqour or something at night to string my savings out.
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Apr 5, 2015 05:33
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Rime posted:You guys should look up the story of why Dioniso marine park is a marine park, despite having a paved road all the way to the campground (because it is too long to phone type for me, but hilarious!). I tried to look this up but I'm not finding anything.
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Apr 5, 2015 05:51
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ductonius posted:The opening ten minutes of Tron: Legacy is a mixture of Jerhico/West Point, Oak Steet bridge/onramp, George Massy tunnel, Cambie Street bridge, Granville Street and areal shots of Vancouver, disguised only by blanking any prominent signs. You can even see the Vancouver Fairmont at one point. The Equalizer was filmed and set in Boston, but I thought it was Vancouver because they shot some scenes in our buses. Also, most the film looked wet and boring. Lexicon posted:I don't understand why there's not widespread outrage over this subsidy nonsense. People (Myself included) have only heard of "Hollywood North" offhand and just assume it's a token investment.
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Apr 5, 2015 05:57
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PS here is the current BC ferry price to get two people and an undersized vehicle from victoria to vancouver. Thank god for that $1 rebate.
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Apr 5, 2015 06:38
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Baronjutter posted:I tried to look this up but I'm not finding anything. Ok, I'm home so I can write this up: Dionisio is at the tip of Galiano. Back in the 90's the guy who owns all the land up to the park boundary put a paved road because he wanted to build a bunch of subdivisions out at that end and cash out on his families asset essentially, and he extended it all the way to the park as a goodwill gesture. Then the Island Trust comes along and says "gently caress you, you can't put houses in here, we're not rezoning it" and gets the province to interfere as well. Queue massively pissed off dude, he puts a gate across the road about 5km from the park entrance, and the family has been blockading it on long weekends for the past twenty+ years to prevent people from using their road to access the park by land. Parks pays them to let the caretaker drive in, but that's it. Thus is Dionisio now classified as a Marine Park. This used to be a two lane road, for most of it it's even narrower than this now:  There was also an ancient chevelle chillin' in the bushes:  On the plus side, if you bicycle in on a normal weekend you basically get an entire full-service provincial campground to yourself with maybe 1 or 2 other groups there! It's frickin' awesome! Baronjutter posted:PS here is the current BC ferry price to get two people and an undersized vehicle from victoria to vancouver. Thank god for that $1 rebate. We were on the same ferry just now. 
Rime fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 06:43
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I never not take the opportunity to mention the Antonio Banderas/Lucy Liu vehicle Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever, which was not only filmed in but actually also set in Vancouver, i.e. we are supposed to believe the Vancouver Police department regularly goes around engaging in pitched battles with rockets and machine guns on the Best Streets in Earth. Not surprisingly it's literally the worst movie I have ever seen, and I've seen Uwe Bol's entire filmography which incidentally was also filmed in Vancouver or the Gulf Islands. EDIT: I think that film made me despise Vancouver even more than actually going there. Heck of a Job City of Vancouver Commissar for Progapanda. Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 06:46
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Rime posted:
Goon meet by the island farms soft serve machine.
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Apr 5, 2015 15:34
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The Equalizer was filmed and set in Boston, but I thought it was Vancouver because they shot some scenes in our buses. Also, most the film looked wet and boring. No way, if you watch that movie and John Wick in the same 4 hours-ish sitting you can probably watch a gross of Russian mobsters get killed. That alone is worth it.
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Apr 5, 2015 16:16
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Femtosecond posted:The government basically needs to sit down with the island folk and they need to hash out what the gently caress the islands are going to be about for the next 50 years and how they can work together to get there so that it's a win/win. The answer that seems obvious to me is that the islands should all be about tourism, but what's weird is that the governments actions to date are totally tourism killing so someone needs to sort this out. Unfortunately the BCLibs only seem to be capable of working on one file at a time. Since the islands don't have any LNG or will be the location of a LNG terminal, they are on their own. Which is unfortunate due to the make up of who is running the show locally on the islands, as was mentioned earlier. Even with LNG appearing to be DOA, they are still advertising it on TV. I am not expecting a new thing until the next election, and that thing will never be the islands since we are talking about about <3000 anarchist goat farmers.
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Apr 5, 2015 17:20
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MickeyFinn posted:No way, if you watch that movie and John Wick in the same 4 hours-ish sitting you can probably watch a gross of Russian mobsters get killed. That alone is worth it. John Wick owned 
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Apr 5, 2015 18:40
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TRUMP tower in Vancouver is topped out. Everyone nay-sayed the Olympics but it put us on the map enough to get a TRUMP quality tower!
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Apr 5, 2015 22:06
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The best part about the Trump towers is that Trump isn't involved with them. It's always surprised me that people look up to a guy who has had multiple massive (admittedly, mostly corporate) bankruptcies as some sort of icon of success.
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Apr 5, 2015 22:13
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Yeah I could see if he was some billionaire egotist slapping his name on poo poo he was paying for, but people entrusted with hundreds of millions of dollars seek out and buy his name to slap on their buildings because they want to be associated with his amazing brand.
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Apr 5, 2015 22:42
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Seat Safety Switch posted:The best part about the Trump towers is that Trump isn't involved with them. Ahh... Donald Trump. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuP1e0RNF-0
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Apr 5, 2015 23:49
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Baronjutter posted:TRUMP tower in Vancouver is topped out. Everyone nay-sayed the Olympics but it put us on the map enough to get a TRUMP quality tower! Must be time to post this again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRIB1lk0N-c
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Apr 5, 2015 23:57
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Jumpingmanjim posted:Must be time to post this again  Is that real? Did people outside of bored YouTubers see that?
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Apr 6, 2015 00:06
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What a missed opportunity at that sword scene.
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Apr 6, 2015 00:51
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Hey, it's Durarara! I didn't know Donald Trump liked anime.
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Apr 6, 2015 01:07
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Hallelujah motherfuckers. I have arisen. http://www.theglobeandmail.com//rep...&click=sf_globe quote:Soaring real estate prices have been the equivalent of winning the lottery for thousands of people who own single-family detached homes in Vancouver. Seriously don't give a gently caress at this point. Bid higher you dumb fucks. When this bitch burns down it's gonna create a smouldering hole bigger than pamela anderson's rear end in a top hat.
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Apr 6, 2015 01:37
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Don't look now but unrest looks to be kicking up in Saudi Arabia. Look for oil to be climbing soon depending on how this escalates.
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Apr 6, 2015 01:44
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Amos Moses posted:Don't look now but unrest looks to be kicking up in Saudi Arabia. Look for oil to be climbing soon depending on how this escalates. But look at the size of its newest erection. quote:
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Apr 6, 2015 01:55
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On a scale of moderately stupid to Vancouver-levels of insanity, what's the housing market like in St-Catharines and surrounding areas? I'm looking to move there for work sometime soon. I live in Winnipeg right now, bought a house in 2008 and just finished paying it off a few months ago. I'm thinking of selling and moving to St-Catharines and I'm trying to get an idea of what the market is like over there. I'm guessing I should be renting when I initially move out there (duh) but prices don't seem to be that ridiculous, relatively speaking. Edit: Seems like there's lots of inventory in St-Catharines right now ColdBlooded fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Apr 6, 2015 |
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Apr 6, 2015 03:58
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Jumpingmanjim posted:But look at the size of its newest erection. best thing is it's being built by Bin Laden construction company.
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Apr 6, 2015 04:13
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etalian posted:best thing is it's being built by Bin Laden construction company. All it takes is for one of your 54 children to become a terrorist mastermind and the family name is ruined. 
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Apr 6, 2015 04:22
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