HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1986-08-27, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1986.
Never enough thanks
Within 18 hours Friday night and Saturday, the volunteers of
the Blyth and Area Fire Department were called to two
accidents to help extricate injured people from the remains of
cars.
Rescue work is a relatively new undertaking for the volunteer
fire departments of Huron County. It can also often be a pretty
grim undertaking. When fighting fires, the primary job of the
firemen, there is seldom any loss of life or serious injury, but
when called to help out at an accident, firemen often find sights
that will really test their dedication to the job.
Others, such as police officers and ambulance attendants are
in on this vital work too and also deserve great credit but they
get paid well to do their jobs. No volunteer fireman gets paid
anything near what he is worth to the community. Often taking
into account lost time from work and ruined clothing, firemen
are actually out money at the end of the year for their efforts.
We can never give enough thanks to these men from any of
the volunteer fire departments for the work they have done. The
least we can do is stay out of their way and let them do their jobs.
They hardly need the kind of crowd scene that happened to the
Blyth department at an accident near Auburn Saturday where
firemen had to chase sightseers out of the way. They’ve got a
hard enough job without the public making it harder.
Is it ever time to talk?
One of the arguments used by United States President
Ronald Reagan and his supporters in explaining the need for a
huge U.S. arms build up is that it is always better to negotiate
from strength. If so, it would seem to be a good time for the U. S.
to negotiate.
As Joseph C. Harsch, Washington columnist for the
Christian Science Monitor says, there is good reason that
Mikhail Gorbachev wants to talk arms control right now.
Whether the U.S. already has military superiority over the
Soviets may be questioned at least by militant U.S. Pentagon
supporters but on the horizon are such new U.S. developments
as: the powerful MX land-based intercontinental ballistic
missile; stealth bombers which are virtually impossible to pick
up on radar; cruise missiles, already in place, that are nearly
impossible to protect against; and the D-5 submarine-based
intercontinental ballistic missile which makes submarine
based missiles virtually as accurate as land-based missiles.
As Mr. Harsch points out, the Soviets may have a few
projects of their own on the drawing boards but they’ve been
battling to keep up even to the present level of technology of the
U.S. so it’s unlikely they’re anywhere close to the newest U.S.
undertakings. The readiness of Mr. Gorbachev to talk seems to
indicate they aren’t.
And so, if Mr. Reagan is to be believed, now should be a time
when the U.S. is willing to talk to deal with the Soviets. If the
U.S. gets much stronger, it can only frighten the Soviets into a
more belligerent position. But are Mr. Reagan and his advisors
really interested in a deal or are they more interested in playing
with war “toys”. Only time will tell.
Beyond control
The horrific killing of 14 innocent people by a gunman in
Oklahoma last week, along with incidents like the murder of
young Alison Parrot in Toronto a few weeks ago fuel again the
anger that leads people to look to easy solutions like the death
penalty.
Twentieth century humans believe we should be able to
control our lives. We are the generation that has specialized in
climate controlled shopping malls, indeed whole sections of
cities underground in places like Toronto to try to escape the
vagaries of the weather.
We have created huge bureaucracies as part of a welfare
society to try to take the uncertainties out of our lives from the
cradle to the grave. We have pension plans and dental plans
and insurance of all kinds to protect us from unpleasant
surprises.
And yet still we keep having unpleasant surprises. Despite
our best efforts to control nature, we still have tornadoes and
hurricanes and earthquakes to remind us of our vulnerability.
And despite living in a society that is probably the most free of
violent crime ofany in history we still have these horrible
examples of what can happen when on individual goes off the
deep end.
In a panic, people look for a final solution to the problem and
the answer for many is reimposition of the death penalty. It is an
emotional, not a rational decision. There is no evidence to show
that murder is more prevalent since the death penalty was
abolished. In fact the statistics show an opposite result.
But rational argument isn’t going to have much play in this
discussion. Capital punishment, like abortion, is one of those
subjects people generally have their mind made up on and
persuasion doesn’t work.
Many people feel insecure, feel rightly or wrongly that our
society is deteriorating. They seek an easy solution and the
simpleargumentthat capital punishment will act as a deterrent
is much easier to accept than arguments of social workers who
say we must solve the underlying problems. It’s a whole lot
easier than facing the .'act that no matter what the law says, no
matter how good our social services, there are still going to be
insane people who commit heinous crimes.
h’s hard to accept but when a suicidal individual wants to
take otlM®fwithhim, there is no legislation that will stop him.
All we can do isTry to keep weapons of mass destruction like
n a„hine guns out of their hands.
Coolin' it
he world view
from Mabel’s Grill
There are people who will tell
you that the important decisions in
town are made down at the town
hall. People in the know, however
know that the real debates, the real
wisdom reside down at Mabel’s
Grill where the greatest minds in
the town (if not in the country)
gather for morning coffee break,
otherwise known as the Round
Table Debating and Filibustering
Society. Since not just everyone
can partake of these deliberations
we will report the activities from
time to time.
MONDAY: Ward Black was telling
this morning about this article he
read on the latest gimic in
technology. “You know how they
now have those cars that talk to you
when you haven’t put on your seat
belt or you’ve left the keys in the
ignition when you ’ve shut it off,
well now they’ve got a TV you can
talk to.’’
“So what’s the difference,’’
says Billie Bean. “I’ve been
talking to my TV for years: yelling
at the Leafs when they goof up
again; telling Brian Mulroney he’s
full of it when he’s giving some
more of his malarkey.”
“But the difference,’’ says
Ward, patiently ignoring the shot
at his hero Brian, “is that when you
talk to this TV it will do something,
like go up or down or change
channels.’’
“What I want,” says Billie, “is
to have Mulroney do something
when I talk to him.”
TUESDAY: Julia Flint was saying
this morning that somebody seems
finally to be getting it right now
that the United Church has decided
to take all the sexist references out
of the Bible. God won’t be “He”
anymore.
Tim O’Grady says there’s noth
ing particularly new in this because
the church has been trying to
ignore sex for years and now they
just have a good excuse being fair
to women.
Billie wondered if we ’ d now have
“hymns” and “hers” in church.
“Go ahead and laugh,” says
Julia. “But just think how you’ll
feel when you find God is really
female and hates sexist jokes, and
has no sense of humour.”
WEDNESDAY: Tim asked Ward
this morning whathethought of
the provincial government’s deci
sion to throw a few more hundred
million dollars into the black hole of
the Darlington Nuclear station.
This kind of put Ward on the spot of
course because he’d like to have
complained about the waste of the
Liberal government but then he’d
have to admit that the Tories had
been wasteful before now so he
started talking about the weather.
Billie Bean said he wasn’t so
sure he liked the idea but he had to
go along with the politicians who
said so much had already been
spent that they had to keep it going.
“Geeze,” says Hank Stokes, “I
guess that means I should have
gone further in debt so they’d
figure I was already so far in debt
they couldn’t let my farm go
Continued on page 21
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