HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2010-05-27, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 27, 2010. PAGE 5.
Somewhere in the ocean of radio waves
that bathe our planet there is an inspired
and iconic bit of music hall nonsense
called The Bricklayer’s Report. It is a
humorous monologue first voiced by a British
entertainer named Gerald Hoffnung
back in 1958. It’s been floating in the
ether and delighting English speakers ever
since.
The piece purports to be a verbatim request
for workman’s compensation from a British
bricklayer injured on the job. His feckless
account of attempting to lower a barrel of
bricks from the roof of a six-storey building,
being yanked skyward by the too-heavy barrel,
then plunged earthwards by the suddenly
lighter barrel, then smashed senseless by the
descending…oh, it’s no use. My words can’t
do it justice. Google Gerald Hoffnung and
listen to the irresistible original.
The Brits are awfully good at depicting
hapless citizens grimly clinging to those last
tattered shreds of dignity. Think of Peter
Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau. Think of the
Monty Python gang. Think of clueless but
ever stiff-upper-lipped Basil, proprietor of
Fawlty Towers.
Turns out that British thespians don’t have to
go all that far to find raw material for such
depictions. Consider the on-the-job adventures
of Peter Aspinall, a handyman who lives in
Bolton, England and works – or used to work
– for a luxury hotel called Egerton House.
Mister Aspinall was asked to remove a large
branch from a tree on the hotel grounds.
Enthusiastically, he propped his ladder up
against the branch, scampered up the rungs
and commenced to saw.
Mister Aspinall’s mastery of arboreal
modification was less than perfect. His
understanding of the law of gravity was no hell
either. Mister Aspinall chose to make his cut
between the ladder and the tree proper. Mister
Aspinall and the severed branch hit the ground
approximately simultaneously.
Our not so handy handyman salvaged no
comedic monologue from his mishap. Instead
he limped off to a solicitor who obligingly
filed a suit on his behalf against Egerton
House. There’s no word yet on the outcome of
Aspinall’s suit, but it doesn’t look good
for the hotel. The establishment has already
been fined more than $3,000 after
government health and safety inspectors
pronounced it guilty of not carrying out a risk
assessment on the limb-cutting assignment
before turning Aspinall and his saw loose on
the tree. Hotel management, said the
investigators, should have informed
Aspinall that it could be potentially dangerous
to set one’s ladder against a branch one
proposes to cut down. The hotel also, opined
the investigators, ought to have counselled
their employee to engage and train an
apprentice to hold and properly place the
ladder.
The British minions of justice may provide a
safe haven for the thick of head and the un-
fleet of foot but they are no friend to fiendish
criminals. Rodney Knowles learned that the
hard way. There he was, driving home from a
pub in Devon, England when the flashing blue
lights of a police cruiser suddenly bloomed in
his rear view mirror. The officers accused him
of drunk driving, but a roadside breathalyser
showed he was sober. Still, the police
sensed something…sinister. On a hunch, they
opened the car’s glove compartment and –
AHA! There it was, nestled in a leather pouch,
ready to wreak mayhem and horror on an
unsuspecting populace. Mister Knowles was
arrested and charged with possession of an
offensive weapon.
To wit: one Swiss Army knife.
A Swiss Army knife – the nerdiest of
personal lifestyle accessories this side of a
vinyl pocket protector. Millions of Swiss
Army knives are sold annually in countries
around the world. They are purchased by
campers, hikers, cub scouts, do-it-yourselfers
and assorted gizmo and gadget freaks. I know
this. I carry one myself. I also know that no
airplane has ever been hijacked, no bank has
ever been robbed, no hostage standoffs have
ever been instigated or civilian massacres
perpetrated – by desperadoes wielding Swiss
Army knives.
In any case, Mister Knowles hardly fits the
standard desperado profile. The man has never
been in trouble with the law in his life; he’s 61
years old and walks with the aid of a cane. He
explained in court that his primary use for his
Swiss Army knife was slicing apples on
picnics.
That defence cut no ice with the magistrates
who found him guilty, fined him the equivalent
of $100, gave him a ‘conditional discharge’
and confiscated the ‘weapon’ (which can be
purchased at virtually any hardware or
outfitters’ store by any customer regardless of
age or gender).
“It’s a stupid law,” said Mister Knowles.
“Now I have a criminal record.”
Indeed it is, Mister Knowles. Have you
thought of contacting Gerald Hoffnung?
Perhaps he could work it up into a comic
monologue.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Hazards of the workplace
It was a prescription renewal that I needed.
It wasn’t anything fancy. And if it did get
renewed (still waiting to hear) I figure I
spent about a minute per pill of the three-
month script on the phone.
This is a tale of a certain technological and
communicative frustration that I’m sure we can
all relate to in some form or another.
I have come to expect certain shortcomings
of the healthcare system, particularly
specialists, when an early May phone call
results in a late September appointment, but
the telecommunications extravaganza I was
put through last week was a bit too much for
even me.
The ordeal began with several unanswered
calls to the Wingham and District Hospital and
when I say unanswered, I mean, unanswered.
The phone rang and rang. I waited several
minutes, assuming the switchboard operator
must be busy or that surely there would be
some sort of voicemail system, none of which
eventually greeted me on the other end of the
phone.
I listened to the purring phone for minutes
before hanging up and trying again, a cycle I
completed four or five times before giving up
for the time being.
Then, miraculously on one of my later
attempts, after dozens of rings, someone
answered... from Listowel Memorial Hospital.
I openly questioned why my call had been
directed to Listowel and double-checked that I
hadn’t dialed the wrong number. I hadn’t and
no one could figure out why I ended up where
I was.
So I was transferred to Wingham where the
phone rang dozens of times before I gave up. I
am, after all, employed, I thought, and can’t
afford to spend the majority of my day on the
phone becoming more audibly-hypnotized
with each ring on the other end of the phone.
I hung up once again, waited for a while and
then gave it another try.
This time someone from Wingham actually
answered. Barely able to contain my
excitement, I blurted out the office I wished to
speak with and was instantly connected... to
the switchboard in Listowel. So I asked to be
sent back to Wingham, which got me nowhere.
With my level of frustration ever-increasing,
I waited for about 15 minutes before calling
again. When I did, Listowel answered and
transferred me to Wingham.
Upon a rare safe landing at the Wingham
switchboard, I assured the receptionist that I
did not wish to be transferred to anyone. I
pleaded my case and asked for some good, old-
fashioned physical detective work. The person
I was trying to reach could be paged over the
intercom and found if she did indeed exist.
“On lunch,” she told me, so could I call back
in 20 minutes, please? I respectfully refused to
dial the hospital’s phone number ever again
and asked her to call me when she had time.
I was home by then and when she did call me
back, I almost broke an ankle trying to get to
the phone in time.
With the release of this year’s Sunshine List
several months ago, it’s easy to get angry, point
fingers and think that an organization with six
employees sitting above the crest of the
Sunshine List hill (topped out by its CEO at
nearly $200,000) could supply the smaller
wheels of the machine with adequate phone
services, but get angry? That’s not like me.
I was, after all, a Rogers representative in a
previous life, so instead maybe I’ll just try and
be helpful and offer the Alliance some sort of
brochure on a corporate or family plan with
plenty of daytime minutes.
McGuinty defends by attack
How can I help you?
Dalton McGuinty has decided the best
form of defence is attack in trying to
hold on to government in the 2011
election, but he is taking some risks.
The Liberal premier also is taking an
aggressive stance some of his predecessors
with their backs to the wall, shied away from.
McGuinty’s back is very much to the wall
and he would be expected to be on the
defensive, particularly because he failed to
safeguard taxpayers’money on costly projects,
including the compiling of an electronic health
records system and allowed senior public
officials and consultants, including some tied
to his party, to collect offensively high
expenses.
Some earlier governments, when burdened
by problems that damaged their public images,
avoided new or continuing initiatives that
might cost them further popularity before an
election, and in extreme cases, almost closed
up shop.
Progressive Conservative William Davis, the
most durable premier of recent decades,
almost stopped governing in the mid-1970s,
when residents in some large urban areas
became alarmed at his plans to merge their
smaller municipalities into regional
governments able to finance improved
services, but at substantial cost.
Davis also had another problem in that his
party accepted donations from developers rash
enough to put that they expected favors from
his government in return on paper, but he laid
low and after two election attempts eventually
won back his majority.
Conservative premier Mike Harris found
many residents growing restless over his
constant cutting of public services, although
they liked the way this reduced spending and
taxes, by the late 1990s.
Harris, who kept more promises than most
premiers, stopped talking of his long-held aim
to privatize several major provincial agencies,
some of which had deep roots and wide
respect, to help win an election and never
revived them.
McGuinty has continued to introduce major
and in some cases controversial initiatives that
he may have been safer to leave on the shelf.
These include phasing in full-day learning
for four and five year olds, aimed at giving
them a better start in life, that eventually
will cost $1.5 billion a year, at a time
when the province will be trying to pay off its
record $24.7 billion Budget deficit,
incurred largely to fight the economic
recession.
The Conservatives have said the province
cannot afford full day learning and McGuinty
will need to scurry if he is to find quickly some
beneficial results from the program that will
support him.
McGuinty has not shied away from taking
on powerful lobbies in trying to cut the profits
pharmacies and their suppliers make from
prescription drugs a year before an election,
but this is an issue on which the public will
support him.
McGuinty also has suggested he will
continue to innovate by holding strategy
sessions for his MPPs with high-profile deep
thinkers, the most recent of which hinted at
further radical changes in education,
including, surprisingly, larger rather than
smaller classes.
He will have to be cautious, because he has
a tendency to pronounce on issues before fully
thinking them out.
The most recent example was in announcing
a new program for sex education in
schools, which he dropped quickly after
failing to recognize there would be many
objections.
McGuinty, who has developed a passion for
greener buildings, abandoned when pressed a
plan to require owners selling their homes to
provide costly audits of how much energy they
use.
He also mused to a business audience he
might not stick to his timetable of regular
increases in the minimum wage and when this
caused alarm among lowly paid workers and
their supporters, said he would keep to his
schedule and apologized for “muddying the
waters”.
This is a premier who has tended to become
more adventurous after seven years in power
and there is more danger he could trip up.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Shawn
Loughlin
SShhaawwnn’’ss SSeennssee
A man should always consider how much
he has more than he wants; and secondly,
how much more unhappy he might be than
he really is.
– Joseph Addison
Final Thought