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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1979-03-21, Page 2INUISE LS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 1979 ONTARIO Serving Brussels and the surrounding community. Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario ,. By McLean Bros. Publishers Limited Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Pat Langlois - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and. Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association • C A Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $10.00 a Year. Others $20.00 a Year. Single Copies 25 cents each. 4 *CNA •• ‘4.0 I I People who'll fight In these days of apathy, it's nice to see that there are people still concerned enough about some issues to get involved. One such issue is the Wingham hospital. When the people were asked to sign petitions regardingtheclosing of hospital beds there, they did. When people were asked to write letters to Health Minister Dennis Timbrell about the same situation they did. It's obvious that this is one decision the people are not going to let the government take out of their hands without a fight. In a lot of cases, people stand by in silent protest and then there is a public outcry after the damage has been done. Not so this time. This time people are making their feelings known well ahead of, time. It's good to see people standing up for something they believe in. And there are some valid points to make as an argument for their hospital. The Wingham hospital covers a 25 mile radius and in snowstorms it's harder to get to hospitals further away. And,as has been mentioned in letters ,13.8 per cent of the Wingham area' population are senior citizens and they might not be able to stand the strain of a longer journey if they were seriously ill. Something very important to the people of Wingham and area is at issue he're and local people have taken the time to make their concern known. It's good to know that there are still people who stand by their convictions. T A /.°1°1 Behind the scenes Brussels Post by Keith Roulston Not me! Everybody wants to stop inflation but nobody wants to be the first sucker. We're into another round of "I've got to catch up" in the income sweepstakes. Right now its the doctors who are causing the fuss. They're pulling out of the provincial health insurance program in record numbers because they don't feel they're being allowed to earn enough. A growing number are getting out of Canada altogether because Canada's, government- controlled medical system doesn't allow the huge incomes that doctors can earn in the U.S. where doctors can charge anything they wanto To their benefit, at least the doctors aren't arguing that they're on the verge of starvation and need more income, like some others in the wage and salary battle have. Their argument instead is that they are falling behing the incomes of other pro-, fessionals. You'll remember that was the argument of the teachers a while back too (although many of them also made it sound like they were wasting away to skin and bones because they couldn't afford to eat). The teachers considering themselves professionals looked at the salaries of doctors and lawyers and engineers and felt they were as important to society as the better paid professionals. TEACHERS So with the gigantic jump in salaries teachers .pulled closer to the incomes of professionals a couple of years back, though still a long way from what doctors and lawyers were getting. But now doctors can take a look back and see teachers gaining on them and they feel they should be maintaining their former wide gap. They need more money. They also take a look and see lawyers, with whom they once shared the top income group, moving ahead because lawyers salaries are un- controlled. Lawyers can charge what they want and as the dominant group in' governments they also promote their own profession by making laws so complicated "that only lawyers can decode them. It's as if doctors could pass a law that said everyone had to go to the doctor twice a week. But somewhere, sometime, something has to give. We can't keep up with this system where part of the population sees others ahead of them and says "I deserve as much as that guy" while the guys that are out front say " I've always earned tv ice as much as that guy so if he gets $1000 more I've got to get $2000." What's the answer? Frankly I don5't know. I don't see why people should expect to always be rich just because of their profession. I don't see what lawyers do for the benefit of society that makes them deserving of their income. If lawyers were given unrestricted incomes then doctors, who are of far more benefit should get as much or more. But then if we're going to pay according to the benefit to society, the farmer should be the guy on top because all the medical skills in the world wouldn't allow doctors to save the lives of people starving to death, and lawyers wouldn't make much money off people who had to steal bread just to stay alive. And where would that leave people like me? Some people would say that writers and artists make a very valuable con• tribution to society while others claim we're just bums who are too lazy to go out and get a real job digging ditches or something. Who's to make the judgement of what value each person's contribuion to society? THE SQUEEZE So we come back to the present system where the guy that gets the most money is the guy who can put the squeeze on society, the hardest. Lawyers control the number of people allowed to enter law school so that there are always just enough, or perhaps too few lawyers to go around. Thus they can agree on law fees and keep them high enough and keep enough customers coming in the door to keep incomes up. In any other business this would be called restraint of trade, but not among lawyers. And because our society is so complicated, we need a lawyer for nearly any legal transaction. Doctors used to play under the same kind of rules. But then somebody came up with the idea that medical aid was too important to be given only to those with money. We came into socialized medicine and suddenly the amount of money doctors earned was controlled, unless they stepped out of the insurance program and billed their patients directly so they could charge more than the government would pay. That they are now doing at a rate that alarms many people... One of the ironies of the present situation, however, is the solutions that have been proposed by several unions. Spokesmen for several unions have demanded that the government take action to forced all doctors to remain within the government medical plan. This, in effect, is forcing the doctors to accept whatever the government wants them to make. If that kind of proposal was made to any union the screams would be so loud you'd think someone was torturing thernRe- member how hard the unions have fought to get and keep the right *to strike for government employees? Ah, but now the shoe's on the other foot. Human beings, we're a strange lot. Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley Ws the little things that drive me nuts I can muddle around with a metaphor, search for a simile, fool with a phrase, or wait for the very right word to come, by the hour, without expressing any emotion other than benignancy. But the small, inanimate things that besiege our daily life drive me into a fury that knows no bounds. It's not the big things: I've mastered them. I can stand behind a mechanic or a plumber and nod knowledgeably with the best of them. Any damfool knows that the driveshaft is connected to the main brake cylinder or the hot pipe is not connected to the coal pipe, or whatever they're trying to tell you. It's the little things, the things you are too ashamed to get an expert for, but haven't a clue how to do yourself, that make me •break things, take the name of the Lord in vain, accuse my wife and children of dreadful things, and generally act like an idiot: Who's going to call up a typewriter repairman, for example, to change the ribbon on his typewriter? Or a carpenter to come and screw a couple of tiny nuts into a doorknob that keeps falling off? My wife has just been through one of my experiences with the little things, and after ten minutes of it, she ran into another room, white and trembling, and locked the door. She bought me a typewriter ribbon at Christmas. We don't usually buy presents for each other, the last few years. The children and grandboys take us for such a ride that we've declared a Moratorium. But here love for me was too deep. She bought me a typewriter. Mainly because you could only read the type of the old ribbon with a magnifying glass. It made an impression on the paper but you couldn't see it. It was more like Braille than typing. But I was hanged if I was going to spend a weekend changing the ribbon, so I just went on. Finally, she typed out some addresses, broke the ribbon, and practically ruined the whole blasted machine, as I pointed out in a few ill-chosen words. Well, I 'had to get this column written (and it'll be late, you can depend on it.) So I tore into the bloody thing Half an hour later, the air was blue, I was black to the waist with ink, and the fool thing was typing in red. "Couldn't you just sort of switch the spools around and turn it upside down, or something?" she queried in a very small Voice. "SHUT UP, YOUR DUMMY!" or words to that effect. `'Aaarghl" Anyway, there you are. It's not one of my few admirable qualities. I admit it. But I'm stuck with it. And the people who are stuck with me are also stuck with it. I can start screwing a couple of one-eighth-inch screws into a doorknob, and wind up with somebody locked in the bathroom for a week. I can put an average, standard stapler on the blink in 45 seconds, with staples all over the room, and wire irreparably bound around the thing you punch. It'sall rather hard to understand. 1 am not particularly inept or stnpid". Nor am r particularly clumsy. I was a pretty fair athlete with bags of coordination. I drive a car reasonably well. I learned to fly aircraft with thousands of parts and thousands of horsepower. Yet I go berserk when confronted by a typewriter ribbon. On second thought, maybe I can understand it. I get it from my Had He was a gentle man, and yet I've seen him fly into a fury over nothing. First car he ever had, back in the twenties. I didn't see it, but I've heard the story. The dealer showed him how to operate it, drove around the block a couple of times, picked up his down payment and turned my Dad loose. He in turn, picked up my mother, drove het around the block a couple of tittles, headed for home, and drove right through the back of the barn that was to serve as a garage. And he blamed my mother! Another time, I saw him cut his finger, when the knife slipped as he was carving a roast. He didn't say a word. Just flung' some blood on the tablecloth, turned purple, sawed the edge of the carving knife onthe side of the plate, and ruined both. Another time, I saw him bread his toe. By design, not by accident. He had had five "blowouts" in' ten miles. That was in the days when yOur tube blew out, you had to jack up the car, take off the wheel, extract tribe from •tire, patch the tube, and go throught the whole process in reverse. After the fourth time, the air pump, hand operated, refused to function, He calmly stood back, looked the whole operation over, and tired to kick the entire apparatus, wheel rim, tire, tube and air pump, over the nearest fence.• He collapsed with a groan; and my mother, who was an excellent engineer and repairwoman,as is my wife, had to wait for the next Motorist to help out, while my Dad lay in :the back seat, muttering through his teeth words that I have since learned are palliative to such a situation: So it ain't my fault. It's the genes.