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The Citizen, 2005-02-17, Page 5Other Views THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2005. PAGE 5. Dropping out of the rut race Picture this: you’re hustling through the downtown core on your way to the office and already running behind. You wheel around a comer, cell phone in one hand. Starbucks in the other and behold.....an army of rodents coming at you. Except they’re huge, these rodents. And walking on their hind legs. You can see they’re humans wearing rat masks and carrying attache cases, and they’ve each got a long rat tail poking out of the nether reaches of their business suits. As they scuttle along they engage in various rattish activities - zigzagging through mazes ... chasing after cheese wedges ... jumping through hoops. It's a theatrical enactment of the Rat Race too many of us mistake for a viable way of life. This particular bit of street theatre coursed through the streets of downtown Vancouver last fall. It may soon be coming to an urban rat maze near you. The ‘rat race’ is a brainwave from a brand new Canadian political...well, ‘force’ might be a little strong - a political ‘faction’ calling itself The Work Less Party. The party’s mission: to get Canadians off the insane work- til-you-drop-spend-til-you're-broke treadmill that’s driving us all mental. Is this a serious political movement? Could be. The Work Less Party claims to have 300 signed-up members and it’s already officially registered with Elections B.C. for next year’s west coast provincial show of hands. Mind you, it’s hardly a conventional movement. The Work Less Party is deliberately leaderless and marches (okay, Politics and broken promises Visions of Premier Dalton McGuinty and politicians anywhere for the first time being hauled into court and held responsible for broken promises have been dashed - but it could not have been any other way. A taxpayers’ group took the novel step of asking a court to rule McGuinty breached a contract when he failed to keep a promise not to increase taxes, but it held the promise was not legally binding. The claim arose because the Liberal leader in the 2003 election signed supporting the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s call not to increase taxes, but raised them quickly after becoming premier. The Ontario Superior Court offered the meager consolation McGuinty is not the first to break a promise and voters can hope politicians will keep theirs, but not count on it. The ruling has caused many to lament politicians can break promises with impunity. But courts would have huge difficulties judging whether politicians broke promises and what they should do about it. When McGuinty promised not to increase taxes, the preceding Progressive Conservative government was insisting its finances were strong and it would balance its budget, although there were unofficial signs it faced a huge deficit. A judge would have to decide whether the Liberals had the right to rely on an earlier government or should have listened to others’ warnings. Courts would have to define what constitutes a broken promise. Would it be a breach if a government was given inaccurate information by a previous government or anyone else? Would it be a breach if it kept part of a promise, for example if it pledged $500 million more for hospitals, but provided only $400 million? Arthur Black strolls) to a less than galvanizing slogan: WORKERS OF THE WORLD RELAX. Call me perverse, but I like it. . And so, I would imagine, would Matt Watkins. Mister Watkins is - or was - a 25-year old professional jewelry maker earning a decent living in Halifax last year when he suddenly looked around at the orders piled up on one side of his desk and the bills piled up on the other and came to the epiphanic conclusion: This is stupid. He flipped off his jeweler’s loupe, locked the office door, closed his bank account, gave away all his money, his computer, all his home furnishings and most of everything else he owned. Then he embarked on what he called A Year of Buying Nothing. How’s he doing? Well, he’s six months into his mission and he hasn’t starved or gone to jail yet. Right now he’s house-sitting a rural home near Halifax for a friend who’s gone south for the winter. He’s also eating for free and very well - partly through the generosity of friends, but mostly on victuals salvaged from dumpsters outside grocery Eric Dowd From Queen’s Park Would a promise have to be in a party’s formal election platform or could it have been made any time, including years before by a leader or lesser candidate? The Tories won an election under Mike Harris in 1995 in which their candidates in Toronto circulated leaflets promising they and their parties would never introduce feared legislation to assess and tax properties at market value. Once in government, the Tories passed legislation to assess and tax properties on the same criteria as market value, their value if sold by a willing seller to a willing buyer, but re-named it current value assessment, hoping to muffle criticism. A court would have to decide whether they avoided breaking a promise by changing the name and- whether the, breach was by individual MPPs or their leader, who should have known. Other concerns include what powers a court would have to provide redress if it found a promise broken. Could it order it kept and could it consider, whether public needs and priorities had changed, and keeping it no longer would be a benefit. These are tall orders for a court to rule on. All premiers have broken promises. Harris often is cited as different because he kept some big ones, but he failed to keep others, including those to resect casino gambling and not to close hospitals. New Democrat Bob Rae abandoned many, stores. “Inside each of those dumpsters is, like, a huge salad,” says Watkins. “The stores dump tons of food each week.” There’s nothing wrong with most of that food, maintains Watkins. It’s merely past its excessively cautious expiry date. Dumpster diving is not a lifestyle most of us would have the nerve to emulate, but Watkins has found other ways to stay off the consumer treadmill. He’s happy to chop wood to pay for his supper. He’ll shovel a driveway in return for a place to bunk for the night. Watkins is following a compass heading directly the opposite of the rest of society. Most of us spend our waking hours chasing a buck. Watkins is strolling determinedly in the opposite direction. “Money pervades every part of our lifestyle,” he says. “We think of our time as money. And we only value people according to how much they contribute to the economy. What I’m trying to do is have meaningful exchanges with people that are mutually beneficial and are not based simply on monetary value.” Revolutionary words for these times. ‘Though I’m sure Thoreau would nod in agreement. Not to mention a few other historical chaps answering to names as various as Buddha, Mohammed and J. Christ? Something to think about. 1 also think I’ll hold back 10 bucks from my VISA payment this month. That way, if I run into Matt Watkins I can buy him lunch. the flagship being public auto insurance on which his party campaigned for decades. Durable Tory William Davis broke many, including one to balance his budget when desperate to regain his majority. Now the courts have ruled they have no role when politicians break promises, voters will be left with trying to remember them in future elections. News media are being more helpful than usual by repeated focus on McGuinty’s party as the Fiberals. One thing they should not wait for is politicians to feel embarrassed and resign. Only one, Tory backbencher Toni Skarica, has quit the legislature in recent years for breaking a promise. His party assured him it would not merge local municipalities and he campaigned on this in the 1999 election and won. But it started merging and he said he did not feel honourable winning on a broken promise. Few politicians have that much honour. printed as space allows. Please keep your letters brief and concise. y Bonnie Gropp The short of it Memory lapses The dryer is full, the washing machine spinning, and another load is at the ready. I scurry from room to room, dust cloth and cleaning supplies in hand, putting away the odds and ends that insinuated themselves into my tidy domain the previous night. My mind is equally busy as I mentally list and sort the multitudinous number of details I need to deal with in a miniscule amount of time. There is a bill that must be paid, a phone call I promised to return. 1 have a grocery list to do, a menu to plan, important information to locate, an appointment to make. Thoughts from work also intrude in my effort to organize and prepare for the week ahead. I am mania with an agenda. I hurtle into a room, then stop dead. I’ve forgotten why I’m there. What task, what deed I had in mind had fled in a few quick steps. A deep breath, I retrace and am eventually reminded, but not before that instant of panic. Let me tell you, it didn’t help my state of mind either when a short time later I found myself in a losing game of hide and seek with the furniture polish. Such occasions have been jokingly referred to as a ‘senior’s moment’. But I’m a little touchy about that tag. I believe people are as old as others convince them they are. After all, it is only in looking through the eyes of my children that I am forced to see a middle-aged woman. Even the aches don’t make me think of getting old; I remember plenty of them as a youngster. Allergies and colds plagued me. Sore throats and earaches occurred with frustrating regularity. I suffered cra.nps and pains in my legs, which my uncle soothingly called growing pains. (For all the agony it would have been nice if they had actually worked.) As for my mind, the battle to not attach the symptoms to aging is a little tougher. I have argued that it’s our busy-ness these days that makes us so scattered. The running of a household can be a full-time job. Unfortunately, most of us already have one of those outside the home, thus find ourselves with little spare lime to recharge the batteries. Family and career can be a head full of responsibility. But, I have not been able to find an answer to my recent lack of concentration. Or to why I eventually found the furniture polish in the refrigerator that day. As a result, like many babyboomers I‘m sometimes a little nervous about the direction my brain is going. But should I be? Does the brain shut down a bit as we age? In the January/February 2002 issue of the American Association of Retired Person’s Modern Maturity magazine, Richard Restak, MD, said “Our brains have an innate capacity for change no matter how old we are,” adding that “the older brain is more resilient than we think.” Not only does the brain have the ability to re-generate, but as I heard in a recent news story, studies have shown that while older people may be slower at absorbing new information they are more capable of looking at the broader picture, of thinking methodically. Disease in some cases will rob one of cognitive ability, but generally speaking, stimulate yourself with activities for mind and body and you will stay sharp. It was all very heartening to hear. Now if I could just remember where I put the dog.