Cheers & Jeers
Jeers: to bad ideas. The MUSE has reported yet another Liberal poster contretemps: this time, the president of MUN’s Young Liberals, Courtney Jones, was spotted tearing down posters critical of the provincial government before the arrival of Liberal cabinet ministers at a MUN Young Liberals event. The posters provided contact information for concerned students to raise issues about mercury contamination in food as a result of the Muskrat Falls project — irony of ironies, it has been MUN researchers who have been in part of the group researching the mercury contamination. But hey — wouldn’t want any embarrassing posters around for the mucky-mucks, right? Jones later apologized for her actions, and said that she was not acting on behalf of the Young Liberals. You would think that someone keen enough on politics to be politically active at university age might have a keener understanding of the legitimacy of political debate in this fair land.
Cheers: to at least trying to fix a problem. Anyone who was moved to the new super mailboxes last fall — love them or hate them — probably experienced a few days last winter when there was no way to open the frozen locks. Apparently, people were pretty vocal about it: Canada Post ended up with more than 65,000 calls about frozen-up box locks. Problem is, locks do freeze, especially when there’s a steady run of freeze-and-thaw weather. Now, let’s step back a bit: how much did installing the new mail boxes cost? And how much will replacing all the locks cost? And how much does snow clearing the boxes cost? And just when will the “savings” promised by the installations start to accrue to the Crown corporation? Sigh.
Cheers: to math problems. We don’t mean to be penny-pinchers here, but last week, the new Sir Ambrose Shea lift bridge opened in Placentia. The bridge cost considerably more than was expected, coming in at just shy of $50 million, instead of the still-considerable $42 million it was expected to cost. Presumably, a fair amount of that cost involves the expense and technology of having the bridge rise and lower to allow marine traffic — primarily fishing vessels — to travel in and out of the narrows, something the bridge does about 2,400 times a year, or 6.6 times a day. Given that boats go both in and out of the harbour, you could calculate the two-way traffic as 3.3 return trips a day. Now, calculate the number of years the new bridge would have to operate in order for it to recover its extra lifting and lowering costs from the amount paid in taxes by the fishing operations using it roughly 3.3 times a day … then ask, might there have been a better way? There are fixed highway bridges over the Mississippi River that allow far more vessel and barge traffic beneath them, are almost half a mile long, and still cost considerably less that the new Sir Ambrose Shea. But heck, they had a great party for the opening on Friday.