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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes-Advocate, 1978-06-15, Page 4Page 4 — M- o.. Times-Advocate, June 15, 1978 * Watch the revolt For residents of the frozen north, California has always been viewed with some envy, but the state is attracting attention for more reasons than its moderate climate these days. Californians have given their ap­ proval to Proposition 13, a vote design­ ed to cut the property tax load by a whopping $7 billion. There’s little doubt that the vote may be totally unrealistic in view of the threat of massive dislocation in jobs and services. It is nevertheless, a situation which taxpayers throughout North America will cheer because it is basically telling politicians that they’ve gone too far in their costly bureaucratic jungles. What caused Proposition 13 to get on the ballot was a feeling of frustra­ tion by huge numbers of California tax­ payers that their pleas for restraint in public spending were not being heeded by the politicians and their civil ser­ vants. Howard Jarvis, a 75-year-old millionaire, went out and collected the 1.5 million signatures needed to get his proposition on the ballot and then near­ ly four million Californians supported it at the polls. While such action can not legally be taken by taxpayers in this province or in any of its municipalities, politicians would be well advised to realize that the anger and frustration over mounting taxes is not confined to California. People everywhere are becoming increasingly concerned about their ability to pay ever- increasing taxes, especially property taxes. There are suggestions that Califor­ nia’s Proposition 13 could touch off a wide scale tax revolt in the U.S. unless politicians clearly understand the mood as evidenced in that state and take measures that will appease their own taxpayers. That includes governments in the frozen north as well! & Think small The Elephant’s Trunk Unemployment degree The Glengarry News comes up with this little gem. It could only come from an academic! “We’re going to have to train peo­ ple to be unemployed,” came the startling assertion from Dr. James Colvin, the president of Fanshawe College at London. In the decades, ahead, Colvin said, there will be few jobs to go around, so the demand for labor, just won’t be there. We will have to change our values and accept that many people just won’t be economically productive. Community colleges, such as Fanshawe, will therefore have to help society accept the fact that while some people may not be “economically productive” they can be “socially productive”. Colvin isn’t the first person to es­ pouse this curious philosophy of life. It’s doubtful, however, that many Canadians will want to adopt a system whereby half the nation is working to keep the other half. It is not surprising that such questionable lifestyles almost always find the bulk of their promoters among those already being supported from the public purse. BATT’N AROUND .... ■ " i » Perpendicular interment Good news Something seems to be happening to north American society that may be far more significant than past revolutions such as the “greening”’ of America, or the hippies, or the protest marches. For the first time in many years, we’re in a mood for good news again. Star Wars becomes the biggest money making movie of all time. Sur­ prise! — the good guys win. And they do it, not by some clever trick that catches their opponents off guard, but by trusting something bigger than themselves, by something that used to be called faith. Close Encounters of the Third Kind presents alien creatures, not as a malevolent enemy to be beaten off, but as a sign of hope. Almost all the big national magazines in Canada have now carried feature articles on marriages that last, instead of just those that break up. And on the Merv Griffin Show, Ross Hunter, the director of Airport, says that people are getting tired of sex, violence, and pornography. According to Hunter, they’re ready for love stories again. Faith . . . hope . . . and love . . .■ Maybe it’s true, as newscaster Lloyd Robertson writes in the Presbyterian Record, quoting a U.S. university president, that “the Christian ex­ perience has become acceptable again.” If our obsession with bad news is indeed waning, that in itself is good news. Year of the Child coming This is an election year for municipal officials and one of the nightmares fac­ ed by the returning officers (usually municipal clerks) is the matter of ties among.candidates. The returning of­ ficers are required to break those stalemates and it is obviously a most unpleasant chore. Fortunately, ties seldom occur in most elections, but when they do, a range of methods are used by some of the officials whose task it is to declare one of the candidates a winner. These include a flip of a coin, drawing a name from a hat, or in some cases, giving the nod to a sitting member. Those of us who grew up on a diet of Saturday afternoon western movies at the local flick-house will be happy to know that some of the old traditions live on. The town of Moriarty, New Mexico, held an election for a vacant council seat, and after the ballots were counted, two candidates, Bill Berry and James Schwebach, were found to* have 99 votes each. Being true western gentlemen, they decided to settle the matter by playing one hand of five-card stud. Neither hand was a block-buster. Berry became the new councillor on the strength of two nines, against his op­ ponent’s king-high disaster. ★ * it Speaking of municipal elections, they’ll be held earlier this year, and while it may be too early yet to suggest that ratepayers start thinking about the people who will run their affairs through T979-80, Exeter voters will have a fairly sizeable challenge on their hands. Two vacancies have already been an­ nounced (Mayor Bruce Shaw and Coun­ cillor Steve Pfaff) and there have been hints that at least two other members of the present council will not seek re­ election. That will open the door for four new candidates, one of the major face-lifts in recent years if all four are “new blood”. There were four changes after the last election, of course, but three'of the four were former members of council. At any rate, those who have been up­ set with council’s decisions in the past couple of years will apparently have plenty of opportunity to seek a seat and try their hand at running the affairs of the community for the next two years. * * * If you happened to be living in New York and needed to rent an apartment, your chances would be better if you were a bit stupid and looked the part. A young black woman, a lawyer, applied to rent a suite in that city and was turned down because the owner said that she was too smart, and was the kind of person who would make things difficult for him if he should fail in any way to fulfill his legal duties as landlord. The incredible part of the story is VthaVthe lawyer took the case to the York Supreme Court, which ruled in' favor of the landlord, the Court stating that “the landlord was within his rights in keeping out of his building intelligent people who might make trouble for him in the future”. Now, who says the law isn’t an ass? •z Dear Editor: As you are most probably aware, 1979 has been designated the International Year of the Child. It will be a year when worldwide attention will be focussed on the needs of children everywhere. The main ob­ jective is to raise the level of services which benefit all children on a permanent basis. For the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), every year is the “Year of the Child” because an es­ timated 315 million children are still living beyond the reach of even the most basic necessities: maternal and child health, clean water supplies, nutrition, educa­ tion and social services. One of the practical ways in which Canadians can show their support for the International Year of the Child and UNICEF, is to buy and use UNICEF greeting cards and year-round gift items, because UNICEF is the only United Nations agency which relies on voluntary financial support from both governments and individuals. Unfortunately, we do not have an outlet for UNICEF cards in your area and we are writing to ask you if you could bring this to your readers’ attention. Natural­ ly, we would be pleased to assist any individual, group or business who would be in­ terested in selling cards as a community project. All they have to do to obtain further information is to write to: Greeting Card Department, UNICEF Canada, 443 Mount Pleasant Road, Toronto, On­ tario M4S 2L8. Yours sincerely, Colin J. Rainsbury, Direc­ tor, Greeting Card Program. Advocate Established 1 881 vocatel Times Established 1873 SERVING CANADA'S BEST FARMLAND C.W.N.A., O.W.N.A. CLASS 'A' and ABC Published by J. W. Eedy Publications Limited LORNE EEDY, PUBLISHER imes Editor — Bill Batten Assistant Editor — Ross Haugh Advertising Manager — Jim Beckett Composition Manager ~ Harry DeVries Business Manager — Dick Jongkind _ Phone 235-1331 (5§na SUBSC Amalgamated 1924 Published Each Thursday Morning at Exeter, Ontario Second Class Mail Registration Number 0386 Paid in Advance Circulation September 30,-1975 5,409 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Canada $11.00 Per Year; USA $22.00 Quick now. What is exactly like a Quebec politician: always wanting a bit more than there is in the kitty; quick to assumed anger; deliberately misunderstanding feelers of amiabili­ ty; vaguely threatening separation; charming one minute, abrasive the next? Give up? I thought everyone would get 100 percent on that. Answer: a wife. Sometimes, although not often, I wish I had been married three or four times. Not because I am a sex fiend, or because I want a change of cooks every few years, or because I don’t like the way my socks disappear in the dryer. No. Just to find out if other men’s wives are as crazy as mine. Back in the good old days before women’s lib, men just heaved a univer­ sal, brotherly sigh, and groaned: “Women ...” Everybody who counted (all adult males and small boys), knew exactly what was meant by the big shrug that accompanied this am­ biguous two-syllable lament. Even the women knew what it meant, and smirked slyly, tacitly ad­ mitting they had us by the 'short and curly, and there wasn’t a dang thing we could do about it except endure. Nowadays, if you get some guy in a dark corner in a bar, and try to tell him your wife is crazy, he’s probably so house-trained that he’ll look at you in horror, glance nervously over his shoulder, and blurt: “Oh, no! Perhaps a little volatile, a trifle mercurial, but that’s all.” Then, casting a swift glom o ★ * it Safe driving week will soon be upon us, and while there is every indication such a week is needed, drivers in this country have not yet reached the levels of those in Turkey, a country which claims (with some pride, by the way) to have the worst car drivers in the world. In a given year, authorities know that one in twenty vehicles in Turkey will be involved in an accident. One of their humor magazines remarked, “there is a certain comfort in the knowledge that sooner or later we shall all die in traffic accidents”. The main reasons for this state of af­ fairs are over-crowded, narrow and badly maintained roads, and a cavalier attitude on the part of drivers, who blithely ignore signs and warnings. Bribery in the issuing of licences also plays a part, as one newspaper found /Oh- when one of its reporters succeeded in obtaining a licence for a blind man. * * * Anyone who has investigated the price of lots in Exeter recently will know that the value of land here is reaching astronomical levels. With that in mind, the Society for Perpendicular Interment in Australia may get some strong support for their world-wide campaign to have people buried upright in cardboard con­ tainers. An official of the Society explains that land has become too expensive, and that horizontal burial takes up too much room. it it it The degree to which the Trudeau government is carrying its program of promoting the use of the French langauge is not always fully ap­ preciated by the general public. Here’s an example from a recent Hansard. The words are those of A. D. Alken- brack, MP for Frontenac, Lennox and Addington: “It is now public knowledge that the management of the West Block cafeteria has received orders from the Trudeau administration to cease hiring English-speaking persons for serving food to persons dining there, and to hire English-speaking people only for dishwashing and other kitchen duties in the rear.” Mr. Alkenbrack tried to draw more information from the Prime Minister in this regard, but the Speaker refused to allow the question. * * And finally, a tale of a born loser comes from Parrametta, South Africa. ■ A man committed rape,and was trying to escape in a stolen truck. Unfor­ tunately, he lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a ravine where 100 off-duty policemen -were holding barbecue. ★ - a Quebec politician around, he might whisper: “No crazier than the sea, which is also affected by the moon.” There’s no comfort in people like that. He’s the type who probably scrubs the kitchen floor every Saturday morning, delivers his kids to their music lesson, and mows the lawn himself, even though he knows these are a wife’s prerogatives and privileges: I don’t for one minute suggest that my wife is crazier than other wives. I couldn’t in all honesty, and without prejudice. I’ve seen some pretty crazy wives in my day. But,I think I’d put some money on her if it came to a con­ test. And I’m a cautious bettor. Perhaps the only way I can describe her is in sports’ terms. She is like a boxer with a long left jab that keeps you off balance, and a mean right hook that can come in out of left field at any time. I trust I am being obscure. Ob- surity is what I have need of, when this appears in print. It’s not that we don’t get along. We get along and along and along. Thirty years is a long time to be married to a strange woman. Perhaps it’s the fault of The Lord. He made mart in His own image: decent, upright, honorable, straight forward, sense of humor. I can just hear Him saying: “A poor, forked, naked thing, but Mine own.” Then His sense of humor got out of hand. He took one of Adam’s ribs (note it was not a tooth or an ear or a toe) and made Woman. Notice the connec­ tion. A rib is both concave and convex, just like a dame. Imagine what women would look like if He had taken a toe. But He wasn’t satisfied with condem­ ning men to heart attacks because they were missing a rib, and things are in­ clined to cave in on a chap. I can almost hear Him giggling as He took, not one of Adam’s regular, run-of-the- mill ribs, but his CRAZY rib. This was the rib that Adam couldn’t seem to control. Sometimes it made him pant breathlessly. Sometimes it grew a sharp end, punched him in the guts and gave him an ulcer. Sometimes it seemed tofloat, and when he put out his hand to grasp it, it wasn’t there. Sometimes it sang the sweetest of songs, all by itself. At others, it gave him a pain in the arm. Well, that’s what my old lady is like. I don’t know about yours, but I suspect. We head out to a party with friends, and she tells me I have the most beautiful blue eyes in the world, after Paul Newman. I tell her she looks pret­ ty good, too. Five hours later, after I have delivered an extremely lucid lec­ ture on sex after death, polygamy among penguins, or the iniquity of high school principals, she tells me that I am a rotten father, husband, and grandfather, that she’s sick of hearing me click my “partial lower plate,” and Tragic comedies begin, at times, with unlikely concerns. The peculiar history of the Royal Commission on Corp­ orate Concentration - whose report was made public late in May - would hardly do jus­ tice to Shakespeare’s best but is amusing nonetheless. Royal Commissions often originate because the govern­ ment has no idea how to han­ dle a delicate matter. In this instance, the delicate matter was a 1975 takeover bid of the giant Argus Corporation by the even larger Power Corp­ oration. Many Canadians were concerned that this would place undue power in the new firm’s hands. So, rather than arbitrating a decision, Ottawa set up the Royal Commission. High expectations from Royal Commissions are nor­ mally unfounded. Even by those low standards, however, the investigation into corpor­ ate concentration was a tra­ vesty. Which, as it happened, was exactly the prediction made by the Canadian Federa­ tion of Independent Business when the terms of reference were defined more than two years ago. Now, you might suspect, Royal Cominissons would naturally inquire into any facet of life which might be relevant to the matter under investiga­ tion. And that’s why you aren’t responsible for heading up or designing Royal Commissions. The corporate concentration investigation, for instance, was prohibited from checking into the effects of government spending, taxes, manpower policy, the organized labour movement and many other im­ portant social and economic issues which would naturally have a major effect on the de­ velopment of big business. The CFIB’s protests about the nar­ row terms of reference were ignored. Well, when all the possible negative influences on any subject are ruled irrelevant, the only logical finding must be positive. And that is the conclusion which the Commis­ sion turned in - that the pro­ cess of big business becoming bigger and bigger is both nat­ ural and desirable. The Commission did not discover that Canada’s heavy tax burden forces many small firms to sell out to bigger firms. The Commission did not dis­ cover that enormous govern­ ment spending goes hand-in- hand with fewer and larger firms controlling the economy. The Commission did not dis­ cover that our failure to de­ velop a meaningful apprentice­ ship program has forced many small firms, which rely on skilled labour, to sell out to bigger firms. The Commission did not discover that there are many effective ways - such as consortia, trading corpora­ tions and franchises - through which the small firm sector can achieve many of the effi­ ciencies of big business with­ out the unpleasant side effects. In fact, the Commission dis­ covered virtually nothing of significance - because the Commission was not forced to examine the important evi­ dence. The Commission was ask­ ed, in effect, to describe an elephant by examining nothing but the trunk. Not surprisingly, it failed. Unfortunately, $3 million of taxpayers’ money went down the drain because of bad project design. “Think small" is an editorial message from the Canadian Federation of Independent i Business© 55 Years Ago Sunday was Decoration Day at the Exeter Cemetery. The members of the IOOF lined up at the southern corner and paraded around the grounds. Mr. E. Howald adted as marshall. Rev. A. Trumper and Rev. Jas. Foote delivered two discourses. Rev. M. J. Wilson, B.A., closed a very successful pastorate of the James St. Methodist Church on Sunday last. They leave this week for their new charge at Amherstburg. Captain T. Hobbins of the Salvation Army, com­ mander of the local corps, has been transferred to’ Goderich. He will be suc­ ceeded in. Exeter by Ensign and Mrs. Stevens of Goderich. Messrs. A. J. Penhale and Harry Jennings were in Toronto last week attending the IOOF Grand Lodge. The elections Monday resulted in a sweeping victory for the Conservative party and the Hon. Howard Ferguson will be Ontario’s next premier. In Huron South Nelson Trewartha won with a majority of 394. 30 Years Ago Eric Carscadden, the newly appointed assessor for Exeter has commenced the assessment of the property in Exeter under the new county system. Grounds around the 50 wartime houses constructed within the past year in Exeter are now being land­ scaped by Charles Hay, Zurich. A new mural painting, done by Douglas Henry, son of the manager of the Bank now adorns the walls of the local branch of the Bank of Montreal. 20 Years Ago G. W. Montgomery, Huron County’s former agricultural representative returned to open this year’s Hensail Spring Fair. Mrs. William Huntley, president of Exeter Home and School Association presented pins to three Exeter Public School students who topped their grades this year: Jim Carscadden, Brian Baynham and Linda Walper. Chief Justice William Martin, Regina and a former premier of Saskatchewan paid a flying visit to Exeter Wednesday. He was a for­ mer resident pf this town. 15 Years Ago Four SHDHS students have won Lions Club awards for the highest standing in their respective grades. They are Mynie Verkerk, Crediton, grade 12; Jim Carscadden, grade 11; Iris Marshal, grade 10; and Marcia Sauder, Grade 9. John MacNaughton and Gary Wedlake, two SHDHS grade 12 students will represent Pakistan in the United Nations seminar being held this week at the University of Waterloo. Dennis Passmore, son of Mr. and Mrs. Aimer Passmore, RR 1, Woodham won the T-A trophy for grand champion calf in the feeder club competition at Hensail Spring Fair Wednesday. that my eyes look like those of an alligator crossed with a sleepy parrot. We used to go to church on Sunday morning, ahd have our sms washed away, or at least slightly rinsed. Nowadays, we have a Revival Meeting on Sunday mornings. From a long list, meticulously hidden in that floating rib, she produces sins of omission and commission that make me a combina­ tion of Attila the Hun and Henry the Eighth, with a little dash of Richard Nixon thrown in. .Ab solutely adamant, she says: “And not another nickel to that daughter of yours.” Two days later, she sends her a fi $200 to pay the ever-behind rent. I’ve slipped the kid only a lousy hundred. Then she rages: “And no way are those boys going to c°me and destroy the house! Just look at that — you name it, they’ve got it.” J Jjours later»on the phone: “Of course, darling, we’ll 1 Women is crazy'™ Weeks While y°U Sort °Ut y°Ur psyche'”