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Olympic Dreaming

By Ben Meisner

The 2010 Olympics road show has hit town and it will make you smile just to see how you are about to be pitched to chip in and reap those huge benefits that will come from the event. 

Quite apart from the fact that the Olympics are just in their infancy and are already over budget, the pitch keeps flowing that we in the central and northern part of the province will see major benefits from the affair. 

You will also notice that this region is lumped in with the Cariboo, hoping of course that someone will use those trails and facilities in the south which will enable the spinners to say that  this region is riding the gravy train.

Play a few exhibition hockey games and presto,  you can say PG was part of the benefit. 

Well we are contributing; 

the Sea to Sky Highway comes at the expense of BC Rail. Instead of pumping about 1 billion into the economy of BC (a good part of that in the north) we sold out for about $50 million in this area, about the one third of the amount the provincial government will spend on a new venue for the games. 

The pitch was nice and pretty and was complete with something for the kids, skiing and sharp calls for you to invest in the hope. 

Smoke and mirrors would have been a better description, and I do hope we didn’t fall for the pitch.  

I guess it was just a coincidence that the Ringling Brothers- Barnum and Baily Circus was here at the same time.  What did P.T. Barnum say about suckers?

The clock is ticking.

I’m Meisner and that is one man’s opinion .


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