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The Citizen, 1999-02-10, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1999. PAGE 5. Is that spelled♦ ‘bureaucracy’ or ‘b u rea u-crazy ’? If you're like me, you probably thought that Frequent Flyer points were one of the best things that ever happened to air travel. Imagine! Getting free bonus travel miles every time you take a plane trip. What a swell idea! If you still think that, I know one thing about you: you've never tried to cash them in. Because to take advantage of Frequent Flying points, you have to actually call up the airline. Welcome to Call Waiting/Transfer/ English or French/Domestic or Intemational/Elite or Preferred ... Hell. I've run aground on some pretty impressive bureaucracies in my time, but nothing to compare, in incompetence and unwieldiness, with the coast-to-coast Great Barrier Reef that Air Canada and Canadian Airlines operate behind. It can take weeks of busy signals, recorded messages and unreturned phone calls to translate accumulated travel miles into actual travel. I imagine most people simply give up in despair. I know I did. I realized I could walk from Vancouver to Toronto quicker than I could make the trip using Frequent Flyer points. But why is that? Why does what should be a simple, over-the-phone transaction turn into a desperate mano a mano between the customer International Scene Television in Europe During my recent stay in Europe I didn't get too much time to watch television but, when I did turn it on, there were all sorts of surprises. You never knew if you were going to see a film that you missed when you were young or something that you missed a couple of years ago. There were also a lot of serials of various ages, and in some cases they were very old. In many instances the voices were dubbed in but a few still had the subtitles. First of all, let me give you a partial list of all the serials that I ran across in one country or another while switching channels: Chips, Star Trek (all versions), Bonanza, Baywatch, Hogan's Heroes (in Germany of all places) Colombo, JAG, Kojak, Spiderman, Chicago Hope, ER, Due South, Ann of Avonlea, Married with Children, Xena, Cobra, Allo, Allo. I'm sure there were others, but those are the ones that I remember. JAG is an interesting situation. It is one of my favourites so I watched it regularly in the Czech Republic. I found that I could get it one night on a Czech channel where the voices were dubbed in. On another night I could get it on a Polish channel, this time with voice over. For tnose not acquainted with this, the original English is considerably reduced in sound and on top of it someone gives a running commentary in Polish. Poland is the and pure, brute stupidity? I car tell you in one word: bureaucracy. And it's not just the airline companies - it's everywhere. Tried applying for a building permit lately? Or a liquor licence? Or a hospital bed? A friend in London, Eng. tells me that recently it took him six months to renew his passport. Six months? What were they doing - having it chiselled in Carer marble? Bureaucracy. If Modem Life was a single human body, bureaucracy would be the sclerotic sludge that cacaos up the veins and arteries. What this world needs is a Bureaucratic Bypass - and John Badmen just may have his hand on the scalpel. Badmen is a businessman in Seattle, Washington and he's a man with a plan. He calls it Predatory Bureaucracy. Badmen starts from the premise that bureaucracy is a pathological organism - inherently predestined to screw up whatever it's supposed to facilitate. He thinks we need to introduce a predator - an organism that feeds on bloated bureaucracy. It would work like this: A Predatory Bureaucratic Agency would be established at, say, the provincial level, with funds to carry it for two years only. After that, its budget would come solely from the money it saves taxpayers by eliminating waste in other agencies' budgets. In other words, the Predatory Bureaucracy would feed on fatter, slower bureaucracies By Raymond Canon place where I found that. One thing I noticed in Europe is that programs are not so cluttered up with commercials as they are here. In some cases you go about half an hour without seeing a single commercial. Some of the advertising is obviously a dubbed-in version of commercials shown in North America since it is easy to tell a North American housewife from a European one. I doubt whether European viewers are fooled too much. Since umbrellas are a way of life in Europe, I relied on weather reports to decide whether I should take mine or not. One thing was very obvious in the Czech weather reports. Either they were handled by very nubile young women or else they were given by someone who made Jay Campbell of CFPL-TV look like a whirling dervish. I have never seen such a staid bunch before. One I started calling "Old Stoneface". My Czech colleagues were intrigued by this title and took to using it, since they knew who it was right away. There are the usual game shows, some of which are copies of American ones. There are also documentaries, political interviews and the like. In comparison to European news broadcasts, ours fare very well; we are right up at the top when it comes to quality. The announcers are, as likely as not, to be on the stiff side and much of the time their attempts at light conversation seem somewhat forced. around it. Sounds good on first hearing. The only flaw I can see in Baden's plan is that it hinges on the creation of - shudder - yet one more coven of bureaucrats. In the meantime, tiny baby steps are being taken here and there to fight the smothering shroud of bureaucracy. This past year, the Defence Minister of India decided to take action against three bureaucrats in his finance department. These bureaucrats were supposed to be responsible for supplying and maintaining government service in a remote wilderness area of India known as the Siachen Glacier - a hostile region of sub-zero temperatures and 60-mile­ an-hour winds. Government workers stationed on the glacier had made an official request for half a dozen snowmobiles to make their jobs easier. The bureaucrats received the request, then frittered away nearly four years processing the necessary paperwork. Defence Minister George Fernandes came up with a Solomonic reprimand for the dolts. He ordered the bureaucrats fly up and spend one week living in the huts on the glacier-just like the government workers they'd inconvenienced. The minister explained that his bureaucrats "needed to understand why they should have worked faster". Riddle of the week: what do you call three bureaucrats stranded on the wastes of a wilderness glacier in the middle of winter? A good start. Perhaps they have been watching too much of the BBC. I watched a fair amount of hockey games on TV especially in the Czech Republic where hockey interest is about on a par with that in Canada. The camera work is generally good, as is the commentary but the lighting at times is on the poor side with the result that it is frequently difficult to follow the puck. There is so much advertising on Czech hockey sweaters that they look like skating billboards. It would be nice to see their names from time to time without straining my eyesight. I also discussed that Nokia, of Finland, produces some very good TV sets. It was not, however, the make that I had in my room in Frydek-Mistek so I had to be invited out to see some really good sets. At least this past year I did not have to watch weekly programs of gypsies wanting to go to or coming back from Canada. Four months of that was enough! Don't forget that it was a privately owned Czech station that started all the exodus with a blatantly biased program on Canada as a potential home for Czech gypsies. A Final Thought What the fool does in the end, the wise man does in the beginning. - Proverb It’s about family Last week a Seaforth student wrote a heartfelt letter to The Citizen, to which, as a parent of children at F.E. Madill in Wingham. I felt compelled to respond. Not in debate, but more as a cobblestone on the path to understanding. One thing that touched me about this young girl's letter was her feeling that when Seaforth school was being threatened with closure, no one else cared. I think I speak for the majority when I say closing any school should be a very last resort. For that matter, until every other option has been exhausted, it should not even be considered. Would we have helped in the Seaforth fight to keep the school open? I'd like to think so, but the community's passion guaranteed our voice wasn't needed. There is a difference between the Seaforth and Madill situations, however. In my first year of secondary school at Listowel, our attendance jumped with the arrival of Milverton students. Their school had been closed and they had been given the choice of attending Stratford or Listowel. Friends could go with friends, choices in curriculum could be considered. Such would have been the case with Seaforth's closure. Brussels students, on the other hand, are the only ones affected in this unwanted foster child scenario. Brussels students have never had a choice of secondary schools. They attend Madill. Conversely, Blyth is given the choice of CHSS in Clinton or Madill, while Grey students, have no less than three options, Listowel, Seaforth and Madill. Was consideration given, I wonder, to limiting Grey to two, Blyth to CHSS with exceptions only for curriculum choice, and offer Brussels a choice between Seaforth and Madill. Another concern the Seaforth girl has is founded I believe on misinterpretation. There were comments she felt implied her school did not "offer the course selection we need for continuing our education". Obviously that is not generally the case, but there would be instances when moving would be detrimental to a student’s future. Anyone pursuing a post­ secondary education in music for example does not have the opportunity at Seaforth they do at Madill. The latter offers music up to OAC and has both instrumental and vocal instruction. Seaforth has electronic keyboard, compulsory in Grade 9. Studnts work at their own pace and classes are determined by numbers. For example, there could be one class which includes Grades 10, 11 and 12. However, Seaforth offers OAC phys ed; Madill does not. Each school has its strengths and given options students can make choices to benefit their future at either. They should not, however, in the best interests of education (and I can only assume, the intelligent people making these decisions realize this), be asked to leave a school, particularly in their final three years. If it must be done, one hopes it begins with Grade 9, many of whom probably would prefer to attend a small school such as SDHS given an option. To our young letter writer, please believe that for the others, it's not about not liking Seaforth. It about liking their family at Madill, the sense of continuity, loyalty and tradition.