Happy Valentines Day everyone. Lets all try to be nice to each other today

Happy Valentines Day everyone.

Do you love your freedom? Do you love our democracy? Does Steven Harper present a threat to both?

Take the time to read this article for a little background on the Harper Government abuses of our democratic freedoms

http://www.ipolitics.ca/2012/04/27/lawrence-martin-is-this-still-a-democracy-you-be-the-judge/

Then read this litany of the latest threats hurled at our democracy by the Harper government

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2014/02/10/Big-Oil-Democracy-Hijacked/

Happy valentines day!

Have a wonderful, safe weekend everyone.

West Jet has cancelled the evening flights from Vancouver to Prince George. It looks like the last flight from Vancouver to PG is at 5:30. Very little fanfare over this. I guess Calgary was more important. Looks like Air Canada may have increased business.

Anyone else hear the rumors the Winnipeg Jets are trying to buy the Cougers & move them to Winnipeg? Hope it’s not true.

Herbster if you dig into these so called charities, they are in fact the big business that they supposedly oppose. Round round we go!

Posted by: red2b on February 14 2014 7:29 AM
West Jet has cancelled the evening flights from Vancouver to Prince George. It looks like the last flight from Vancouver to PG is at 5:30. Very little fanfare over this. I guess Calgary was more important. Looks like Air Canada may have increased business.

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Westjet lost my business a little while back. After my third 3 hour delay due to faulty planes I said enough is enough and switched to Air Canada. Sure the staff at Air Canada is not nearly as friendly as those at Westjet but I’m not looking for friends when I fly; I’m looking to get to my destination as smoothly as possible. That just wasn’t happening with Westjet.

I fly quite a bit, and there’s really no difference between Westjet and Air Canada. There used to be, but the airline buesiness is very competitive and adjustments are always being made.

In terms of the PG-Vancouver run, they fly the same planes and are pretty close on pricing. I will fly whichever fits my schedule.

The thing about taking the position that ‘I refuse to fly airline X’ is that you’re just restricting yourself.

Westjet has gone way down hill in the last couple of years.

I agree that Westjet has gone way downhill. I still prefer them to Air Canada, but the disparity between the two now is nearly immeasurable as JB suggests.

Many of us could see Westjet’s service downfall coming as they got away from their business model that made them a true class act. Instead of being a regional provider with a single air plane type and a focus on high-profit routes…the ego of the airline executive that seems to permeate every airline board finally got the best of them. Now they serve almost every route under the sun in the western hemisphere, many at a loss, meaning they have to charge even more on their high-traffic routes to compensate…and on top of that have added another airplane type to their fleet meaning more expensive pilot and mechanic training, etc.

Other than the “Westjet employees are owners” perspective, which still gives WJ a slight edge in friendliness and customer service…they are no longer leaps and bounds ahead of any competition in terms of price, luggage problems, flight delays, etc. It’s a shame.

You don’t think about our local Hospital until you have to use it. When you walk in there is this BIG extravagant foyer with all sorts of people hanging out, some just getting out of the Cold weather. One has to wonder about the concept when there has been and still is a BIG shortage of BEDS and working staff. When you ask why doesn’t someone working in the Hospital speak out?? The answer is , FEAR of job loss. I think Northern Health as turned into a BIG business and one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing. I am so thankful we have a Cancer Clinic ,but they need BEDS.

Agree completely ExPat-PGRes, that about sums it up!

The same trend holds true for so many businesses when their primary goal is maximum growth and maximum profit. I’m not saying that maximizing profit is a bad thing, but that goal is often completely incompatible with having a business that is efficient, quick to respond to customer needs and which focuses on a unique product, service or experience. The larger they get, the more they have to behave like the competition. They have to do this in order to appeal to the larger markets that will drive that growth.

Lululemon, Dell Computer and even Tim Horton’s are probably good examples of businesses that focused so much on growth that they lost a bit of their original attraction to customers. Are they better now? It would probably depend on how you measure it. Based on the bottom line, yes they probably are. Based on customer experience, no, they probably aren’t.

Posted by: kendoo on February 14 2014 7:43 AM
“Anyone else hear the rumors the Winnipeg Jets are trying to buy the Cougers & move them to Winnipeg? Hope it’s not true.”

I was watching the news last night and when they got to the sports recap of the cougars game it was sad to see the ‘sea of green’ in the stands.
And before you say it; I once went as a season ticket holder to most of the games and would do so again, all I want is an exciting game and to be watching a contender once in a while. I know we can’t be in contention every year but like Kamloops and Kelowna we need management that can bring that about every few years or so to keep the fans ‘fans’.

It is sad that I am happy to watch the recaps on TV instead of being there at the game, but such is reality. I don’t see how a move would help them in this regard but as has been said many times – new blood in the management team could bring the fans back.

I also went for 3 seasons afterwards as a season ticket holder to the Spruce Kings (back when they were planning on the plastic seats on the bleachers) but parking was the issue which made us stop doing so with the younger kids. Walking in the dark after the game lets out for 6 blocks downtown with little kids wasn’t for us, they loved going down by the glass with other kids and seeing the players crash into the boards on the other side. We do still go once in a blue moon but fixing the parking issue there would be a thought as well, and I know we would be purchasing the season tickets once again.

To our Olympians, way to go and more to come…..and to everyone else..
Happy Valentines Day, pass on a hug….

slinky: “I don’t see how a move would help them in this regard but as has been said many times – new blood in the management team could bring the fans back.”

New management alone will not bring fans back. People don’t go to a hockey game to see the managers and the owners. Results and having a winning culture will.

Simply changing the management won’t help unless they are competent and can bring results.

The Cougars have been here for 20 seasons and have had many lows and precious few highs. No banners for that long and it is not surprising that the fans have gone away. And this year is shaping up for another missed playoffs. Even if by sme miracle they make the playoffs, they will get eliminated in the first round.

What does it mean when we keep seeing SNC Lavalin’s name in the news time after time in relation to seemingly endless scandals and the like?
I believe our governments do a lot of business with this company.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/snc-lavalin-bridge-contract-linked-to-1-5m-in-suspected-kickbacks-1.2534234

Seems to me that if the Cougars go to Winnipeg, and the Spruce Kings move to the CN Centre, we have solved the parking problem, opened up more space for public skating and junior/senior hockey. Seems like a win win to me.

Success in junior hockey works on a cycle. Kelowna is a prime example. PG is the same under-achieving scratching at the last playoff spot kind of team for the last 15 years. The big issue for me is the glaring nepotism. If DT wasn’t the owner’s son-in-law (past or present), he would have been shown the door years ago based on his poor record.

So Oppal and Anton want to bestow carte blanche powers of search, seizure and surveillance to the police eh? Concerned? To paraphrase, Anton says: “Fear not! The Police are incapable of abusing their authority. They’re good eggs. They’re your BEST friend.”

Hmmm..yeah OK there.

SNCL actually uses a cost code for those kickbacks and other business practices such as bribes.

They have this cost code because it is such common practice. In fact, in some regions, one cannot compete without engaging in these practices.

So what do you propose? That they stop doing as others are?

The last thing I will ever do again is trust a cop commoner. I have personally seen their dirty work.

What do you propose Loki?

I was in the stands applauding Chris Mason and the team after their playoff run. Even standing in line at the box office for tickets got my mug in the local rag while trying and succeeding in purchasing extra tickets to watch the team with relatives that year, they weren’t the best team in the league but were a contender and the fans rewarded them with straight SRO games in most of the regular season and all of the playoffs. That is all I am saying, return to those days and I will be buying my season tickets.

In the Feb. 8 Citizen Frank Peebles had a piece call POWER FOR NORTHERN B.C. IS BLOWING IN THE WIND. It is so sad that he did not do any real research on wind power or ask hard questions. Now I ask Frank how come I cannot find the output of existing wind farms anywhere, why the secret. Well the ugly little secret is wind power is expensive and requires backup and the average output is only 20 to 30% of total capacity. Sometimes more, sometimes less, a lot less. The article acknowledges this but does not take note of required back up due to lack of wind and the added cost of that backup. Simple math, build the wind power with heavily subsidized taxpayer money + taxpayer funded backup = very expensive power. On top of this Hydro is forced to buy this wind power at a very expensive rate.

Some say build wind power instead of site C. Well here are the facts. It would take over 1700 wind generators covering over 200,000 acres to match Site C and then Site C would still be required for backup. As for cost, the equivalent wind power would more than equal the cost of Site C and then Site C would still have to be built. Getting expensive.

Nicholas Heap of the Canadian Wind Energy Association says wind power is at its best in the winter in when the cyclical power of wind is at its peak but he does not give us any numbers. What he really means is that when very expensive costing wind power is generating , billions of dollars worth of hydro electric equipment is not generating at its very low cost output. How economical is that. Not to mention the waste of impounded water which may have to be spilled. Oh another thing, when its very cold is the wind blowing, nope.

It is stated in the article wind power has a soft footprint well here again Frank did not do his homework. Heap talks about bird kills using a diversion of how many birds are killed by domestic cats and building, vehicles and utility lines. Well the oil sands got very heavy fines for the death of the fraction of birds killed by wind power. How come wind power gets a free ride?

Heaps next talks about noise, but he only mentions audible noise not the deep inaudible noise that is making people sick.

What about infrastructure impact. Think of all the added roads and power lines required to service wind power. People complain of logging roads contributing to the decline of wildlife but there is no mention of wind power service roads. Are moose and deer going to be standing under wind power comfortably grazing While blades whiz by upwards of 200 miles mph, I doubt it. How about the view. There goes our pristine landscape dotted with industrial wind power. Frank you left that out.

In so called green Germany they hoped to get 30% load factor of installed wind capacity but in fact over the last ten years they only got 16.3% load factor compared to 85 to 90% for coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric. They are mistakenly shutting down nuclear power but building 20 coal plants to replace them.

Since we have dirt cheap very dependable hydroelectric power why are we subsidizing inefficient, not dependable very expensive wind power when it has to be backed up anyhow. Follow the money.

Where have the real journalists and newspapers gone?

I also had season tickers for years. In the early years the product was worth the money. The team was competitive, the atmosphere was enjoyable and there were actually people involved with the team that could at least help ice a consistent product.

By the time we cancelled our tickets (I say we because there were 4 of us that had tickets), the product was just terrible. The team was not competitive, the people managing the team were not successful in turning the operation around and there was no indication that Brodsky was serious about changing anything of substance in order to improve it.

So, like anything else, we spoke with our wallet. Why pay for a product that stinks?

I think that a lot of fans just got tired of Hockey. With the Spruce Kings, Cougars, NHL, Junior/Senior, we have an acute case of over kill.

How could you possibly expect to get 7% of the population of Prince George to go to 36 Cougar home games on a regular basis, year in year out. It cant be done.

We do not have a sufficient fan base in Prince George to support a WHL Franchise to the extent that it should be supported.

We can make all the excuses we want, but at the end of the day we are not at the games. If I owned the club, I would have gone a long time ago.

I think that in addition to the quality of the Cougars over the past few years, the situation is compounded by cable offerings such as NHL Centre Ice. For a few hundred dollars, you can get almost unlimited hockey that you view from the comfort of your living room. Why go out?

seamutt, where have all the real journalists and newspapers gone? That’s a heck of a good question and one that I’ve been asking for years.

Having spent many years working in the oilfields of North Eastern BC and Northwestern Alberta, I have seen wildlife regularly feeding/grazing on oilfield leases and wellsits, often within metres of operating pumpjacks and other production equipment and facilities. Moose, deer and even elk were often observed. As bears have been known to also hang around these sites, many oilfield operators carry a firearm, as a precaution, and just in case they come across an aggressive bear on site.

I have also on many occasions been around the windfarms near Dawson Creek and Tumbler Ridge. In contrast to the oil and gas locations, I have yet to observe wildlife around the windfarms.

Go figure!!

Valentines Day in Syria? Inconceivable. Carry on.

“We do not have a sufficient fan base in Prince George to support a WHL Franchise to the extent that it should be supported”

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A customer base in hockey is no different than a customer base for a car dealership, a steak house or a barber shop. It isn’t a given, it has to be built and maintained. Some people can do it and some can’t.

Now that said, if you look at the cities where the WHL is now located, PG is very much a small market club. The days of continuos sellouts are probably over. I think if they could average 3,500 to 4,000 in PG’s current environment it would be considered a great success.

Agreed, NMG. There are lots of other small market teams doing just fine. Once the Cougars are gone, they won’t be back.

And I suppose that will suit people like Palopu just fine, but it’s too bad that the team has been bad for so long under such lacklustre management and ownership. I think things could have been different.

Anybody heard about the federal budget and income splitting? I heard something briefly on the radio about Flaherty wanting to look into income splitting and whether it was right for Canadians and haven’t heard anything since.

We stopped going to the Cougars games when they changed the game start times from 7:30PM to 7:00PM. Just too rushed with our work schedules…

“I have seen wildlife regularly feeding/grazing on oilfield leases and wellsits, often within metres of operating pumpjacks and other production equipment and facilities” .. I see moose out in my yard, within city limits, on a regular basis….I see moose, deer, wolves, coyotes, bear, elk, etc out on logging blocks all the time when I am out…..what’s your point? That a wind tower is somehow more harmful to animals than an oil pumping station or ? If you worked/work in the oil industry it stands to reason you are going to encounter wildlife more often around that industry than the odd time you MAY drive by a wind turbine. Don’t get me wrong though, I am not a fan of industrial scale wind power.

“Anybody heard about the federal budget and income splitting? I heard something briefly on the radio about Flaherty wanting to look into income splitting and whether it was right for Canadians and haven’t heard anything since”

==================================

Lots of info online about everything going on, just hit up the major news outlets.

Long story short, the Conservatives had made a platform commitment last year on income splitting, but Flaherty announced yesterday that he is no longer convinced it is the way to go (I’m paraphrasing).

Amazingly enough, virtually every think tank regardless of affiliation agrees with Flaherty’s seemingly revised view in that an income splitting policy like what was proposed would only really benefit the highest of income earners and not the audience it was likely intended to target.

I think Flaherty is right on this one.

Maybe shiny pony Justin Trudeau should be our mayor. Invite him to wow us and disgorge his unquestionable reasoning. He was quoted as saying “the budget will balance itself”. Now that’s the kind of thinking this ‘burg needs. IMO. No more small town mindset for us. How can anyone disagree with that thought process he owns?

Thanks NMG!

A wind turbine on Cranbrook Hill? Where have I heard that before? Eh, seamutt? Reading this, Frank? Cranbrook Hill. Got it?

I drove in to town from the Hart this morning (7;30ish) and I was absolutely appalled by the number of drivers with their lights off. If you can’t handle this simplest of tasks perhaps you should just stay home.

Something to watch for. Canadian Tire has taken to playing with it’s gas prices. Take notice of the posted price on their sign before filling up there. Today it was $1.30, well above any other price I saw around town today. The have a campaign on right now that gives 6 cents a litre in CT money if you have one of their cupons. I suspect that this is to get people into their station to fill up without checking the price first. They have done this several times now and after a few days they seem to return to what the competition is charging. Buyer beware.

Gas has been $1.309 for a couple of days up in the Hart.

On February 2 2014 8:20 PM I posted a comment about
California facing it’s worst water crisis in history!

Watch tonight’s CBC’s the National, they will be airing an investigative report on this water shortage crisis, and it’s implications on Canada. For further reference please read the rest of my comment below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/31/california-drought-reserv_n_4706344.html

Interesting how we are using billions of gallons of fresh water mixed with gas companies special cocktail of toxic chemicals to frack at each gas well.

I cannot believe the idiots we put in charge of our province are not interested in preserving our water and exporting it, at great profit, to California.

With global warming there will be more droughts and increased demand for our water world wide!

California is either in drought or flooding nothing new there. As for water being a largely desert state having 35 million people may stress the water a bit don’t ya think. Also enormous amounts of water used turning desert into farmland.

Do you mean natural warming or mann caused warming? There has been about .7 degrees of warming since the little ice age. Not even upto what it was before the LIA.

The Met office a couple of years ago said England will be dry, kinda wet right now.

Australia government at the time said major droughts then look at Brisbane, Sidney major water. Oh about Australia its either flooding or burning nothing new there.

Hundreds and hundreds of billions spent on this warming thing for what? Lots of people getting rich off the scam, you should look into that.

As I have mentioned before even the IPCC and NASA are backing off on this mann caused warming thing since they even acknowledge no warming for almost 20 years.

Why is it that some of the companies in this town do not clear the ice and snow away from their entrances. There are things such as sand, salt and other products that will make it safer for customers. Or, the manager and employees alike park right in front of their businesses denying customer parking? Why is it they don’t realize customers can and will sue for a fall when all it takes is a little thing like clearing snow or getting rid of the ice at their entrances? Boggles me mind.
Ah, there, it’s off my mind. Time for a scotch.

The demographics of Prince George are no longer conducive to major support for Hockey Games. This also applies to bowling, golfing, curling, etc; etc;.

We have a large number of seniors that no longer participate in these sports, and in addition we have a huge number of younger people who could care less.

Only the Casino can boast a steady stream of customers, and even they have some pretty tough days.

The average attendance this year at Cougars games is about 1650. (Average of 29 games since Sept)

A number of years ago, Brodsky stated that he required an average of 3000 fans per game to have a viable franchise. So he is far short of that mark. The City has adjusted their take of revenue to make it easier on the Cougar franchise, however it is still not working.

There (in my opinion) is not a quick solution to this problem.

Please sign and share;

http://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/christy-clark-worksafe-bc-that-premier-christy-clark-call-for-an-independent-review-of-the-worksafe-bc-investigation-into-the-tragic-explosion-on-january-20-2012-at-babine-forest-products-burns-lake-bc

You guys never noticed gas going up every weekend??? Especially those on the outskirts of town like in CH or the Hart.. sneaky…

Hey,,,,what is going on with the old mr g’s at the bottom of peden hill….Is it a drive in sushi joint…. lol

There is facebook talk about a vehicle colliding with a moose last night, resulting in the death of a 13 year old passenger. Hope this is not true, if it is, condolences to the boy’s friends and family :-(

Petro at 5th and carney was 1.22 today

Hey people$1, cat got your tongue.

Because the price of oil is based on the U.S. dollar, when our dollar drops, our fuel prices go up.

Happy Valentines Day!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OSuge4np0uk/UOjuLuA8UPI/AAAAAAAAAuQ/ZUQlL9L3WOc/s1600/new+latest+happy+valentines+day+2013+(8).jpg