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The Citizen, 1999-08-25, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1999. PAGE 5. ^Arthur Black A good walk ruined Very few blacks will take up the sport of golf until the requirement for plaid pants is dropped. Anon. Golf. What a peculiar way to spend one's leisure time. Hunting and fishing, I can understand. Birdwatching is reasonable. Stamp collecting, wildlife photography - even train-spotting kind of makes sense. But golf?? A pastime that encourages participants to dress like Moscow pimps, wear goofy shoes with thumb tacks on the bottom, and ride around in a motorized dustbin all afternoon in the heat of the midday sun whacking a little white ball until it disappears down a hole? ■Golf. The very name sounds like a throat obstruction. The funniest thing I know about golf is how seriously some golfers take it. Your typical golf fanatic thinks nothing of rising at dawn and creeping from the house like a commando Budgets are show-biz As an economist, I find the budgets presented by finance ministers or their equivalent in other countries to have a certain academic fascination. However, they have become something resembling a public relation exercise with the applause of the presenting party just another form of canned laughter. It has, in fact, got so distracting that I prefer to read the budget in its entirety the next day in a reputable newspaper and make my own assessment at that time. Voters in every country are aware, I would hope, that budgets are an art-form of bribing us with our own money. This may sound rather cynical but politicians have only themselves to blame for this feeling, having all too often dressed up dubious economic policy in the form of great gifts to the voters, gifts for which we should be eternally thankful (especially at the next election). Taxes are an integral part of all this and I cannot help but think of the famous dictum uttered by Colbert, the finance minister of France’s Louis XIV, that the art of taxation is being able to pluck the goose in such a way as to obtain the largest number of feathers with the least amount of hissing. I often wonder if this observation is not hung up in the offices of all finance ministers of the western world. I suppose that western countries have been plucked so much more heavily over the past quarter of a century due to our demand that governments produce more and better services, especially in the fields of health care and social welfare transfer payments. For some countries such as Sweden, the to make his/her way to the clubhouse, there to prepare the clubs and woods as carefully and reverently as Achilles selecting spears and arrows for the siege of Troy. Committed golfers approach the first green like Montgomery surveying Alamein. They monitor the wind, the relative humidity. The amount of dew on the grass. The length of the grass. The nap of the grass. Folks - we are talking about knocking a ball into a hole using sticks, here. It ain’t Quantum Physics. But Hell hath no fury and humanity hath no stubbornness like a dedicated golfer. Last month (true story, folks) a golfer on the second hole of the Metrairie Country Club course was shot in a drive-by shooting. No big deal. The second hole isn’t far from a highway. Some redneck in a truck decided to take some target practice and drilled the guy as he was preparing to tee off. Shot him in the right hip. The news story contains a kicker: “The shooting did not stop other golfers en route to the second hole, who slowed to watch the scene, but then moved on.” That’s how it is with truly dedicated golfers. Reminds me of the story of the golfer shipwrecked on a desert island for 10 years, when suddenly one day - a gorgeous woman geese have been (and are still being) plucked for about 55 to 60 per cent of their gross income. The percentage runs all the way down to about half that, a situation enjoyed by the United States. Canadians can only look in envy at the tax rates of our American neighbours who enjoy such things as tax deductible interest rate payments on their mortgages. The pertinent question, I think, revolves around the quality of the services we get from all the plucking. Nobody seems to think that health services are adequate but the shortages which are showing up both here and in other countries are unavoidable considering that health care costs have been rising much more rapidly than the amount of money being injected into the system. Politicians of all hues have left it pretty late in the day before coming to grips with the problem. When I read of the complaints in Ontario, they sound remarkably similar to what I hear in Europe. What are we to expect when politicians have treated the health care dilemma in such a nonchalant manner up until it became a full blown crisis? I don’t think there is a single country which, to date, has been able to resolve the problem. The extra money being thrown into the system today will be swallowed as were previous libations and will result in few if any more efficiencies than before. In short, finance ministers have to rethink the financing of the whole health care system much more resolutely than they have so far and they have to share this thinking with the electorate. I can’t blame taxpayers on either side of the ocean for being confused. They have so many figures thrown at them that it’s impossible to absorb them. It would also help if finance ministers would use bookkeeping practices that voters could washes ashore. She was tattered and dishevelled, but she was clutching a watertight suitcase. Turned out she was the sole survivor of a cruise ship that had foundered on a coral reef. As grateful as she was to have survived, the woman was amazed at the golfer's story. “You’ve been marooned here for 10 years?” she marvelled. “It’s true,” admitted the castaway. “Did you used to smoke?” she asked. “You bet,” says the man. “Why?” “Well I'm pleased to offer you your first cigarette in 10 years.” With a smile, the woman pulled a package of Player’s Filter from her bag. “Wow! Thanks a lot!” says the man. “And were you a drinking man?” asked the woman. “I’ve been known to enjoy a glass or two,” said the man. “Here you go,” says the woman, hauling a flask of Five-Star brandy out of her suitcase. The guy takes a swig of brandy. “Say,” says the woman, “It must be 10 years since you, uh....you know. The golfer’s jaw drops. His eyes bug out. “Don’t tell me ...” he gasps. “You mean you’ve got a set of golf clubs in that bag?” understand. If one textbook on their shelves is “How to Lie with Statistics” (such a book does exist), another must be “Smoke and Mirrors in presenting the Budget.” Some of the presentations leave me totally baffled. I suspect there is a direct relationship between the level of my bafflement and the amount of applause by the supporting party. Have they been let in on the secret? In one way, budget nights in Canada are rather staid affairs. Critical comments from opposition benches in Great Britain are much more cutting than here while legislators in such places as Taiwan and Korea have been known to resort to fisticuffs to get their point across. The French are the most acerbic in their comments while budget time in Rome takes on an Italian version of Gilbert and Sullivan. But in one thing Canadians have to be considered as masterful. Nobody can hide an impending surplus more brazenly than Paul Martin who predicted blithely that the next three budgets would be balanced - not a penny more, not a penny less. Air Canada planes coming to this country must be packed with finance ministers anxious to discover the secret of predicting precisely balanced budgets three years running. I can hear the Latin Americans now saying, “Senior Martin, just how do you hide such big surpluses?” Canadians might well ask the same question. i—— — . - - . ■ -----] A Final Thought I always try to tum every disasterinto an opportunity. - John D. Rockefeller The Bugging me The trials of workday behind you, you drift out onto the patio. With book and cool cocktail in hand, you languish, lapping up summertime like a power vac. Cotton ball clouds decorate the baby blue sky, while warm gentle winds massage away all worry. All is right with the world and the world is yours. And then they arrive. Descending into your placid domain they begin their provoking dance. Beer bugs drop into your drink and onto your head. Flies flit in and out, teasing, tickling, their sole purpose in life seemingly to annoy. Winged mischief makers they appear to delight in reminding you are now on their turf. I received a rather stinging notice of that the other day while pulling weeds. Having unsettled a wasp, I became the target of a dive­ bombing attack which after losing left me humbly, and painfully, reconsidering human superiority. It is, after all, a jungle out there, albeit a small urban one. Particularly in summer, the season of life, a time to enjoy outdoors at its best, we find ourselves confronted with more living, breathing examples of nature than at other times. While that may typically be, as,I said before, on their turf, it occasionally brings them onto ours. For example, a friend and her husband have been engaged in a battle of wits with a chipmunk, currently enjoying free room and board at their place. Not a pleasant situation, but at the risk of sounding like a one-upper, preferable to the interlopers at the Gropp residence of late. Surrounded by trees, our big old brick home with its no-man's-land attic and dank basement seems to have extended an open invitation to some nocturnal guests. A rodent with a bad rep, it may be, but let me assure you, when you have a bat in your house its environmental goodness seems inconsequential. Over the years we have experienced this phenomenon on few occasions. Unenjoyable, perhaps, but livable. This year, however, there has been an influx. The first was discovered just over a week ago, in what is basically a storage room. Understanding that in their habitat they offer a worthwhile service, my warrior (no more so than at times like this) opened doors and turned on lights to try and get the critter out. Recognizing the good life we humans enjoy, our foolish friend wouldn't leave however, so out came the tennis racket. Two days later, descending to the basement with a load of laundry I was distracted by a fan-like thumping which must have created quite a breeze as I found myself propelled upstairs. Mark informed me later there were actually two this time. Then just days later, I was listening in the pre-dawn hours to the swishing of the blinds at the open window of our bedroom. Mark, however, heard things differently and reality sent me scurrying under the covers, while he again went in search of the tennis racket. There has been some respite in recent days, but I am on the alert. We don't know what brought them or allowed them in. What I do know is if this keeps up, in addition to my warrior being ready for Wimbledon, I may soon move out with the bugs.