HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1986-11-26, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1986.
Editorials
A hard fight ahead
Canada Post President Donald Lander’s plan to make the
post office pay will make you pay more to get less service.
While Mr. Lander proposes to raise first-class postage rates
to 40 cents by 1991, he proposes service cuts that will directly
effect people in rural areas. Sideroad customers in rural areas
will increasingly find themselves driving to main roads to pick
up their mail at community boxes, his plan says. (What’s a
sideroad in post office terms and what’s a main road?)
Post offices within five miles of each other will be
amalgamated. It may be the death of some of the smaller post
offices in our communities.
It may be that we get the postal service we deserve. While city
people have been screaming because they may no longer have
door-to-door postal delivery and may have to walk a whole 600
feet to a community box, we in rural areas who didn’t have as
good service as the diminished service in big cities, have
accepted the continuing deterioration of service, such as the
loss of Saturday mail delivery without much more than a
whimper.
If we don’t want to see our postal service deteriorate even
more, it’s time for people in rural areas like ours to rise up and
fight. Individuals, businesses and organizations have got to do
something or accept the responsibility themselves for the poor
thing that will be left of a once-proud rural mail system.
How news
gets left out
Nearly every week the editorial staff-of The Citizen can
expect at least one phone call on a Wednesday wondering why
some bit of contributed news didn’t get in the paper.
We have to explain to people that it isn’t a purposeful slight
against an organization that the item wasn’t in; it was the
immutable fact that you can only squeeze so much news into a
given space. People don’t understand, for instance, the amount
of space we have is tied to the amount of advertising we have.
Advertising buys the space for news. Every four pages we add
to the paper (and we can only increase or decrease by four
pages) adds considerably to the weekly printing bill.
Because The Citizen is a community-owned newspaper,
service is emphasized above maximization of profit but the bills
must still be paid. Money from subscriptions pays less than 20
per cent of the costs of putting out the paper each week.
So the credit for having a paper as large as we have goes to
those merchants out there who are smart enough to want to
reach the 2,000 homes The Citizen serves with their
advertising.
The blame for not having more space to work with goes to
those local business who don’t advertise in The Citizen.
How can you help build a better Citizen? You can shop at the
merchants who do advertise and let the others know that you’d
like to see their ads in the paper. This is a community
newspaper and only by everybody getting involved can it reach
its potential. In the meantime, if we miss your meeting report or
your hockey game, our apologies. We’re doing our best.
The search for
perfect justice
Last week, for the second time in weeks in Canada, a
shop-owner pulled out a gun and shot someone trying to rob his
store, bringing renewed controversy about the right of
individuals to protect their property through violent means.
A leader of the group Victims of Violence, says the shootings
by store owners, one in Calgary and one in Montreal, show the
disenchantment Canadians have with the justice system. He
says Canadians are holding the justice system accountable for
its failures.
For victims of a crime no punishment will seem just. Putting
to death someone who murdered a husband, father, or friend
never seems enough, never can replace that person.
Sentencing a violent criminal who raped or stole, doesn’t erase
the damage done by the act no matter how long the person is put
away.
For the victim of crime the only real justice is revenge. For
those shop-owners, the punishment they meted out was
certainly final and unquestionable.
But long ago people decided that revenge was only just to the
person taking that revenge. Violence begets violence. If our
shop owners start arming themselves to violently protect their
property they may cause even more violence by nervous
robbers. That in turn can cause more shop-owners to take the
law into their own hands and a vicious circle begins which may
lead us into the kind of civil war being fought in the United
States where each year 20,000 people die in violent crime.
Canadians, living in one of the most peaceful places in the
world, still are frustrated that they can’t have a kind of perfect
justice system that solves all problems. The horrible fact is that
no matter how good the justice system, no matter how good our
education system, no matter how prevalent the churches, there
will still be warped individuals who will break societies’ laws.
People resorting to vigilante justice only make the problem
worse, not better.
v ITMOTEXACW MHTF ir<
world view
from Mabel’s Grill
v J
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 justeveryone
can partake of these deliberations
we will report the activities from
time to time.
MONDAY: Tim O’Grady was
saying how it was ironic to see
Ronald Reagan in trouble for the
first time with the general public in
the United States for exactly the
same thing that helped kick out
Jimmie Carter and get Ronnie
elected: Iran.
Billie Bean said if they wanted to
send Iran weapons without appear-
ingtotakesidesinthe Iran-Iraq
war, maybe we should have
peddled that new ground defence
system the Canadian armed forces
have: the one that works well in
good weather but hasn’t been so
successful. Then, Billie says, they
could make the Iranians feel good
by selling them weapons but really
be helping out Iraq, as long as they
only attacked in bad weather.
Julia Flint said that now Canada
doesn’t worry so much about
having fair weather friends as long
as it has fair weather enemies.
TUESDAY: Hank Stokes was
egging Ward Black on about the
government getting involved to
pay Sinclair Stevens’ legal bills
while he battles the conflict of
interest allegations before that
government inquiry.
“Heck,” says Tim, “Maybe
they’ll help with Sine’s legal bills
with his divorce too. It stands to
reason that anybody who talks to
his wife as little as Sine does seems
bound to end up in the divorce court
pretty soon.”
WEDNESDAY: Tim was onto
Ward about the missing tax files
this morning but Ward shut him up
when he said he’d love to pull a few
political strings and find out how
much Tim paid (or didn’t pay) in
taxes a year.
Billie Bean said he didn’t care if
somebody had his tax file as long as
they’d agreed to pay his taxes too.
THURSDAY: Billie Bean, always
thinking up ways to build up the
local economy, suggested to Ward
this morning that town council
should go after the government
office that’s going to enforce equal
pay for work of equal value.
“Now that,” says Billie,
“should be a real growth industry.
Bythetimetheyhireallthe civil
servants needed to decide if a
computer operator is worth the
same as a construction crane
operator because they both have
the same education and have to
have technical knowledge and so
on and so forth, I figure we should
triple the size of the town. It should
also mean building about three
printing plants to handle all the
paperwork that will be needed.”
FRIDAY: Hank Stokes says after
listening to people complain about
these “super mail boxes” they’re
going to build in the city subdivi
sions he thinks he wants one for his
THE EDITOR:
As with many non-profit com
munity service organizations fund
raising is a continual and ongoing
requirement.
Our organization, Town and
Country Homemakers, provides
an extremely valuable and vital
service to many individuals in
Huron County. We are committed
to helping the elderly, disabled and
the chronically ill live normal lives
in the community with support
services provided by our trained
homemakers. I think most would
agree people are happiest if they
can stay in their own home,
providing they can have commun
ity support if and when needed. In
order to continue to provide the
same level of service in the future
as we have in the past we need the
help of the citizens of Huron
lane. Those poor city people, he
says, will have to walk up to 600 feet
to a super mail box instead of
getting their mail delivered to their
door. Since he already has to walk
all the way down his 700-foot
laneway, Hank says, he figures a
“super mailbox would be the first
real advance the post office has
given him in years.”
Ah yes, says Julia, but the post
office is also talking about not
delivering to farmers on “side
roads” any more and making them
go to community mail boxes on
main roads. “I wonder if you have
to walk 6,000 feet to a mail box if it
will be called a “super-duper mail
box” or a “super-colossal mail
box”, Julia said.
Letter to the editor
County.
In our fall 1986 Fund Raising
Campaign we hope to raise $36,000
to be spent as follows: Client
Subsidization $10,000. Mortgage
$8,000, Computer system $4,000.
and Training needs $15,000. We
would sincerely appreciate receiv
ing a donation from anyone who
feels they can assist us in meeting
our objective. A receipt for income
tax purposes will be given.
The Board of Directors would
welcome any further questions on
our organization or the service we
provide.
We sincerely hope you will see fit
To Help Us Keep A Good Home
Going".
SINCERELY
BETTY McGREGOR
Chairman Fund Raising
Committee
Board of Directors.
[640523 Ontario Inc. ]
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