B

have just found out what the

trouble is with the B.C. Col-
lectric; found it in that delectable
little gift to Vanccuver car-riders
every Friday morning—The Buz-
zerd. ;

In the latest issue, one of the
wizards of the electrical power
industry in
Britain, Wade
Hayes, . : is
quoted lengthi-
ly in an attack
on the British
government’s
nationalization
© plans.

Hayes, of
sourse, does not
like the nation-
ilization of the
electrical indus-
try. He wouldn’t be quoted in the
Buzzerd if he did. “Among the
chairmen of areas,” he says, “...
are men with no practical elec-
trical background”, whichy makes
it a failure in his eyes.

That just exactly fits the case
of “Dal” Grauer; lifted out o& the
Pampered life of an academic at-
mosphere, “with no. practical
eleetrical background,” stuck at
the head of the biggest electrical
monopoly in this province, it is
to be expected that he! would
make a mess of it, that is, if the
electrical expert Hayes js to be
believed.

But maybe this Hayes guy is
not quite such an expert as he

Hel Griffin

[Ts high time some one spoke
out for the motorists of this
Frovince before that long-suffer-
ing fraternity is forced from
what the Coalition government
. fondly describes as highways by
excessive taxation and the exor-
bitant cost of motoring.
_ They drive over some of the
worst roads in the country and
‘pay for the pri-
 vilege in higher
- maintenance
costs for their
ears. They pay
higher :

gallon—on their :
gasoline. The provincial govern-
ment has now devised a new
method of robbing them through
its sales tax and the municipalit-
~ ies have discovered the financial
gain of renting out curb space
by the minute or the hour. And
always, wherever they go,, there
is the ubiquitous traffic cop with
his chalk-tipped stick to relieve
them of another two dollars every
' time they overstay their parking
limit. ;
_ There seems to be an impres-
_ sion among Vancouver aldermen,
influenced perhaps by their busi-
ness connections and more afflu-
ent cifeumstances, that all motor-

thinks he is. The people he ob-
jects to in Britain are men whose
organizing abilities have been de-
veloped in the trade union move-
ment and that is probably a black-
er mark against them than their
lack of “electrical background’!
Their organizing work in the elec-
trical industry, too, has as its
aim the social one of “service”,
not profit. That, of course, loses
more marks for them with the
free enterprisers.

With the B.C. Collectric service
is the last thing on its program
and then it is only considered if
it pays.

In the same exquisite cyclopae-
dic production, The Buzzerd, of
July 2, the policy of the BC. Col-
lectric is laid down in full in rela-
tion to old age pensioners. A

’ proposal had been made in a let-

ter to The Buzzerd that some con-
sideration should be given in the
way of passes for old people.
Here is the reply in The Buz:
zerd, undoubtedly the policy of
the management: “The hub of the
matter is that we are not the
agency through which the old age
pensioners should be succored .. .
We are merely a transportation
company and there is no reason

in the world why we should bur-

den the rest of our riders with
the cost of social assisthnce to
the aged.”

No beating about the bush in
that. But that does not prevent

The Buzzerd, in another part of

% >
ists, by virtue of their possessing
a car, also have unlimited income
—an illusory view they share
with members of the Coalition
government, Nor does the fact
that 167 owners of cars impound-
ed under the new insurance laws
kave been unable to redeem their
vehicles seem to have impressed
the government with another

_ fact: that the majority of car

owners are working men who
forego other pleasures to operate
cars whose ownership is too often
dependent upon the good graces
of the finance company.
Throughout this province and
particularly around Greater Van-
couver there are thousands of

_ workers who own, more or less,

what the used car dealers gener-
ously refer to as a “good family
ear” or more simply, “transpor-
tation”. :

If you asked most of them,
they would tell you frankly that
they can’t afford to run a car, but
neither can they
without it, what with inadequate
public transportation services and
the*need to get to work on time.

Some of them keep their cars

running by their own mechanical
ingenuity. More of them do it by

_remaining perpetually in debt to

e
"THEY have many -justified com-
plaints. Whenever they de-
mand a traffic light in the inter-
ests of their safety, the Vancou-
ver traffic commission seems to

their corner

HU Hh naan

Published Weekly at 850 Howe Street

By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.

ie
,

Subscription Rates: 1 Year, $2.50; 6 Months, $1.35.”
Printed by Union Printers Ltd.. 650 Howe Strest, Vancouver, B.C.

¢

afford to be

ee As We See |

TATRA

1

AAT

Jabs

the same issue, from unburdening
itself of the following: “Most im-
portant of all is the necessity for
the authorities to see that mass
transpcrtation is a community
problem and not one for the
transportation company alone.”

There you have the policy of
the B.C. Collectric. The octopus
has no respnsibilities to the pub-
lic, but the public, the commun-
ity, has responsibilities to the
transpcrtation company in the
way of helping it to make profits
easily. :

“Dal” Grauer may not have had
any “practical electrical back-
ground,” but it does seem as if
there is no need for such a back-
ground. What is needed is to be
able to pull wires that will help
in the production: of profits for the
shareholders. The only service in-
wolved is lip-service.

As long as Grauer can get the
PUC to see his way he doesn't
need to know the difference he-
tween’ amps. and volts. And
every decision of that alleged pub-
lic body involving the B.C. Collec-
tric has given it just what it
wants. Two weeks ago Boundary
Road was given to the B.C. Col-
legtric, actually as part of its

property and last week, the set-_

up desired for rate-fixing pur-
peses.

If I was a member of the PUC,
I’d hate to hear the comments
that are being made in Vancouver
about that body and its relations
to the B.C. Collectric. |

.

Wi

haggle over the cost. They don’t

Object to having their cars put
through the city vehicle testing
‘station every six months, but they
ask you, what’s the point in hay-
ing your wheel alignment tested
when city streets—and BCElec-
tric car tracks—are so full of pot
holes that within a short time
the wheels will be knocked out of
alignment again. But their biggest
grievance of all
parking meter system instituted
a few months ago,

If ever a city council engaged in
a legalized racket, it is our inept,
unprogressive and _ intellectually
ossified Non-Partisan administra-
tion in its operation of parking
meters.

Indifferent, as usual, to the in--
terests of the people directly af-

fected, the motorists who want a
place to park their cars on down-
town streets, and concerned only
with the opportunity to mulct a
sizable cross-section of the citi-
zens of thousands of dollars ey-
ery week, the city council voted
to put in parking meters. But it
did so without making any at-
tempt to solve the parking prob-
lem. All it accomplished was to
impose an hourly rental of five
cents on the space that motorists
had formerly occupied without
charge. Its action did not provide
even one more car-length of space
on already overcrowded streets.

The solution to the parking
meter problem lies in the con-
struction of block-square civic

parking lots, operated for the ,

maximum advantage of motorists
at a minimum fee, with the in-
itial construction costs levied
against downtown business prop-
erties as a local improvement,
Sure, downtown business will
protest against having to bear the
cost, but the real protest should
‘come from the motorists who
have to pay daily at the parking
meters for the city council that
the business vote placed in office.

concerns the ©

|

Tito’s: tactics

T is natural that the motley crew of reactionaries who

infest many countries—from Winston Churchill to Col.
McCormick: of the Chicago Tribune— should have tried to
make political capital out of the violent opposition of the
Tito leadership in Yugoslavia to the criticism of the Com-
munist Information Bureau.

Their very joy is proof of the fact that the Tito leader-
ship has led the Yugoslav people off the path of socialism
and on to the path of nationalism.

This was shown in the reply of the Yugoslav leadership
to a resolution of the Bureau (so far suppréssed by Tito)
wherein, instead of welcoming an opportunity for clarifica-
tion of political strategy, a veritable phillipic of abuse and
misrepresentation was hurled at the Communist parties of
the European countries.

Tito’s grandeeism arid denial of party democracy and of
the party itself, were admitted by him in the following
phrase: “With us, the party, the country, the Central Com-
mittee, the People’s Front and Tito are all one.”

Such egomania is a denial of all that the Communist
Party stands ‘for—of inner party* democracy and of the
party itself as distinct from all other mass organizations
of the working class, and embodying and protecting their
highest immediate and future interests.

By refusing Tito’s “invitation” to attend his congress
in Belgrade, the Communist Parties have emphasised the
fact that, by his actions, Tito has read himself out of the
family of Communists. '

All Communists, and all honest progressives, will look
for and welcome in Yugoslavia the inevitable opposition to
these essentially nationalist policies, and the restoration

of the true socialist principles of organization and policy.

‘Let the reactionaries chortle—they will do so in vain.
The working class. will solve its own problems regardless
of the wishful thinking of warmongers.

He suggests’ \you go

“It’s the shop chairman.
fly a kite.” :

bee Looking backward —

¥ . f {
(From the files of the People’s Advocate, July 22, 19388)