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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2004-09-16, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2004. PAGE 5. Other Views Thoughts on the phone-y war /n the beginning, long distance conversations pretty much depended on how loud you could shout. Leather-lunged chatterers could comfortably make themselves heard from cave mouth to cave mouth. Then we developed smoke signals. Conversations — necessarily brutish and short — could be carried out from mountaintop to mountaintop, providing you had enough fuel, a sturdy blanket, no wind and a reliable flint.- Then on March .10. 1876 Alex Bell, bless his Edinburgian/Cape Bretonian/Bostonian heart, strung some electrified wire between two rooms and shouted "Mister Watson, come here, I need you" into one end of the wire. And Mister Watson, hearing Bell's voice through the wire, came on the run. That's the official story, anyway. My guess is. Bell yelled loud enough to be heard right through the wall, but no matter, the principle was sound. History says the world's first telephone call had been placed, and answered. It's been downhill ever since. The Bell contraption begat the cumbersome wall telephone which begat the clunky handheld dial telephone, which began the hernia-inducing walkie-talkie, the CB radio and eventually, the light-as-a-feather, cute-as- a-bug's-ear plastic gizmo that you see in just about every second person's hand these days — usually jammed up against their earhole as they drive or walk or shop or sit on a park bench or eat their lunch — the cell phone. And cellphone use is multiplying like a galloping rogue virus. Between 2000 and 2004, cellphone ownership in Canada grew by 55 per cent. Nearly 14 million Canadians are Ontario's Liberals have tumbled in popularity and deserve it. but it is difficult to see how they can be rated worse than the ProgreSsive Conservatives. Three recent polls have found Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberals several per cent behind the Tories, a staggering finding considering the latter were kicked out of government in disgrace less than a year ago. The public's anger at the Liberals mostly stems from a single but huge fault in that in the 2003 election they turned a blind eye to signs the outgoing Tories would not balance their books as they claimed and continued making costly promises they would not have the money to fulfill. In government this has forced them to postpone some promises and increase taxes to pay for others, breaking another promise, and they quickly have a reputation for not keeping their word. This has not been the end of their transgressions, because they made other rash promises they had no power to keep to roll back tolls on the privatized Highway 407 and block housing already approved in an environmentally sensitive area north- of Toronto. McGuinty also has looked. wishy-washy, for example, on photo radar, saying he will .bring it hack if municipalities ask, when in opposition he wanted to reintroduced swiftly because lives were at stake. The Liberals have moved to rehabilitate themselves by acts including providing more money to hire nurses and reduce class sizes in primary schools and making politics fairer by curbing government spending on partisan ads. But they still have long way to go. Yet even compared to this litany of woe the Tories do not have a record to boast about. currently wireless subscribers. Experts say by this time next year, fully 50 per cent of us will be 'wired for yakking'. Is that a bad thing? Not for the travelling salesman, the shut-in, the housewife whose car has broken down on the side of the Trans Canada, or the hiker who's fractured a femur on the Juan de Fuca hiking trail. But for, oh, say, 85 per cent of the schnooks who buy. lug and natter into their cellphones every day ....what's the point? I had a cellphone once. I used it primarily to tell my partner each workday, evening that I was off the train and in my car and headed home for dinner. She knew that 'already. It was my regular pattern, with or without the call. Most of the calls I (am forced to) overhear each day are equally fatuous and a stone waste of everybody's time. Which would rate as one of modern life's minor annoyances — along with traffic jams, email spam and the vocal stylings of Celine Dion — if that were the extent of the cellphone's depredations. It's not. The fact is, the popularity of the cell phone represents the death knell for a true communications breakthrough. The phone booth. Under premier Mike Harris they mostly kept their word and they cut taxes, but weakened public services to the extent it contributed to inadequate testing of drinking water that caused seven deaths. Ernie Eves, who succeeded Harris, did only what he thought would get him re-elected. A typical example was allowing electricity prices to be set by the open market, but when they rose, freezing them and leaving his successors with the unpleasant duty of increasing. them to realistic rates. It also was Eves's Tories who controlled the books in the election and maintained there would be no deficit, which turned out to be untrue, although McGuinty's Liberals are to blame for accepting it. But the real trademark of the Tories kicked out of government was lavishing taxpayers' money. on themselves and their political friends while posing as the only party interested in protecting the public purse and keeping the minimum wage at a paltry $6.85 an hour. The tip of many examples includes Chris Stockwell, an environment minister, taking his family, at taxpayers' expense, on an extravagant European tour of little value to government. The Tories developed a habit of steering money to friends through the province's The public phone booth has been around for more than a century. It has provided shelter from the storm, surcease from traffic noise, a cone of silence for personal conversations and a handy place for cross-dressing Clark Kent to assume his superhero alter ego. All that's changing now, Canada lost nearly 20,000 pay phones in the four years between 1999 and 2003. In Chicago, where the first one was installed in 1898, the public phone booth no longer exists at all. And in Britain, home of world-famous fire- engine red telephone booth, the news is even grimmer. Authorities are cold-bloodedly plotting the extinction of the British icon. There are still 15,000 of them scattered across the flanks of Albion. BT Payphones plans to eliminate. 10,000 public phone booths by this time next year. The reasoning is bottom-line, as usual. Four out of five Brits now carry cell phones. Phone booth revenue is down. Ergo, axe the phone booths. Before they send the last phone booth to the knacker's yard, they might want to schedule a business lunch at the Brooklyn Cafe in Atlanta, Georgia. Or at the Main Street Bistro in Sarasota, Florida. Or at the trendy Spoke Club in Toronto. The management in all three institutions is planning to install vintage red British telephone booths in their lobbies so that restaurant patrons can carry on conversations in private...on their cellphones. Oh, right...private phone calls. Didn't we have those once? various hydro utilities they controlled. Tom Long. who ran Harris's election campaigns, was in a head-hunting company to which utilities paid $250,000 U.S. to recruit a new president and $83,000 to find a vice-president. Debbie Hutton, whom he found working in Harris's office, so he could merely have stopped by her desk. Hutton in her new job then spent $5.000 wining and dining Harris, ministers and Tory insiders in restaurants whose elegant thresholds most of us could not afford to cross. Do Tories have to eat filet mignon before they can talk to each other? Harris also, after he stepped down as premier was funneled $18,000 of public money for advice on securing a new electricity line. But whatever information he contributed he probably gleaned while being paid as premier. He also now collects big money from a law firm, right-wing think tank and company directorships and surely could have donated a few minutes, if it took that long, without dunning taxpayers again. The Tories often looked after themselves more than they looked after the public, which seems to remember' only what happened yesterday and not the day before: Final Thought If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the principal difference between a dog and a man — Mark Twain Bonnie AN. Gropp The short of it History removed You pave paradise, put up a pa,'king lot. -Joni Mitchell I t's been called a living museum, an annual event that provides people with an opportunity close up to see antique machinery, and to try .first-hand old-world skills. But of all the attractions at the Thresher Reunion in Blyth, the one that really piques my interest was more of a teaser this year. The Cowan homestead, an old log cabin moved in from East Wawanosh Twp. to the fairgrounds this summer, will eventually be restored to its rustic splendour. One of its more recent owners, Don Hill, who worked on the home for 10 years after he moved there in 1977 is pleased. "I'm thankful to the Threshers for moving it into town so it will be taken care of." Unfortunately, there aren't many people who feel the same way about old buildings. Next week Brussels hosts its 143rd Fall Fair. It's been held at the arena for many years now, hut when I first moved to the village, the historic Crystal Palace still had the honour of being the venue. The Palace even then, had seen better days, but its uniqueness, its stories were no less real. However, after the fair moved to the more modern facility, the Palace sat vacant. Of no further use, and probably beyond repair. it was torn down a few weeks ago, then the refuse burned. I for one was sad. There's always been something about older buildings that's appealed to me. My cousin grew up in the country in the home in which my mother grew up. The house, like many that dotted the rural landscape, was not particularly impressive from the outside. But it spoke to me of freedom. Visits with her were always about space to run — in the back fields, through the big kitchen, up the stairs, back down and out the door. I loved my time spent there. I was raised 'in a new home. But two of my friends in elementary school lived ,in glorious Victorians, spacious houses charatterized by dark, rich wood and high ceilings. The one, from the outside, was rather plain, boxy and understated. But crossing, over the front portal was like stepping into an English manor. The front hall was massive with shiny hardwood floors leading to a curved staircase. French doors and archways opened onto the perfect children's playground, big rooms that begged for dressing up for high tea, or cozy slumber parties. My other friend's home was adorned by a wrap-around porch. All curves and angles, it seemed less roomy inside than the other, but had the wonderful character that only comes with houses of this age. It was the place for noisy dinners around the big kitchen table, or quiet tete a totes in one of its many cramped bedrooms. Both houses are gone now. The first was torn down several decades ago to make room for a new post office. Despite my youth I was upset, actually on two levels because the former post office was a marvelous old structure with a tower and clock. It was replaced with a cheesy strip mall. The second home was demolished just this summer to increase parking for the hospital. located across the street. I know, it's only a building, right? But, I've never been of the thinking that it's just bricks and mortar. These houses weren't just beautiful, there was history between those walls. People lived there, laughed and cried there. Now, they've paved paradise. All I can say is that I miss its distinguished presence. Liberals bad, Tories worse