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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes-Advocate, 1981-09-23, Page 4Times-Adveeete, kptemrer 20, 19111 Time Established 1873 Advocate Established 1881 Arnalgom.ited 1924 dvocate Serving South Huron, North Middlesex & North Lambton Since 1873 Published by J.W. Eedy Publications Limited IORNE EEDY Publisher JIM BECKETT Ads 'rtising Manager BIEI BATTEN Editor HARRY DEVRIES Composition Manager ROSS HAUGH Assistant Editor DICK JONGKIND Business Manager Published Each Wednesday Morning at Exeter, Ontario Second Class Mail Registration Number 0386. Phone 235-1331 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Canada $17.00 Per Year: USA $35.00 C.W.N.A., O.C.N.A. CLASS 'A' and 'ABC' Be on your guard Discrimination in its many ugly facets, remains one of the problem areas of our society. However, similar to other attempts at legislating moral codes, the Ontario government has created a nightmare in its proposed human rights bill that may end up being worse than the original problem. Even members of the government have voiced concern about the proposed legislation , using such descriptions as terrifying, tyrannical, socialistic, dic- tatorial, etc. Just this week, MPP James Taylor, a former cabinet minister, said the bill will make even sensible citizens think of Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Exeter businessman Jim Ross has joined the fight against the bill and in a recent letter to town council said it seems strange that to protect our freedom in time of war, thousands of young men have to die, but in peace time we let bureaucrats take away our Mas freedoms and we never lift a finger to stop them. He wonders why. Another opponent has suggested that the proposed bill would restrict freedom of speech, freedom of belief, freedom of association and freedom in the use of one's property. In the light of the stinging denunciations, it would be reasonable to expect the government of Premier William Davis will take another look at the bill, but there are no such guarantees. Obviously, citizens must make themselves aware of the legislation, and if their reaction is similar to the many opponents to date, join the fight to ensure that it does not become law in its present terms or intent. It would be beneficial to legislate discrimination out of existence, but not at the risk of encroaching on other personal freedoms through unprecedented powers of enforcement and investigation. Capitalist socialists Remember the days when companies had to fend for themselves. When it was make it or break it on the strength .of an industrialist's determination and business savvy. Those were the days when capitalist scoffed at government handouts. Welfare was deplorable, they said. Even today, with Chrysler and other sucking off the public teat through a variety of development grants and just plain handouts, there are still businessmen who cry foul at the mention of any new social service scheme that will involve public funds. It's not just the giants like Chrysler and Massey - Ferguson who take these handouts. The Eastern Ontario Development Corporation regularly makes "loans" at prime interest rates using the taxpayer's money to help struggling, new or expan- ding industries. The federal government regularly comes across with numerous grants and industries in Lanark County have been on the receiving end of this - dare we say it - welfare. Of course, ' there's nothing wrong with this. It creates jobs, gives borderline industries a second shot and helps industrial research in new technology in- dustries. Industrial health has become the concern of government. Sick and ailing industries will receive government funds in many cases, just as sick and ail- ing people will. The days of stiff upper lip capitalism are dead and gone in this country, for better for worse, and those people who cringe at the mention of unemployment in- surance should realize this. It seems, however, that the facade of capitalism will remain intact for some time, with the in- dustrialists taking the somewhat socialist dollars without a whimper of protest. Corporate welfare it is indeed! Double or nothing good bet Politicians throughout this land con- tinue to fall over each other in their wild pursuit of the riches involved in gambl- ing. That's a vice (gambling) that is il- legal. with the exception, apparently, of when it is undertaken by any govern- ment. There are now 101 lottery choices available to Canadians as they line up to take their chances at untold wealth, and now federal sports minister Gerald Regan has come up with yet another scheme. a sports wagering pool. He is facing some opposition. Ontario and Quebec have already indicated that the scheme is in contravention of a 1979 agreement whereby the federal govern- ment agreed to leave the lottery field to the provinces. Regan contends that it is not a lottery. He's right of course. It should be more accurately defined as nothing more and nothing less than gambling. Las Vegas and other gambling centres have been operating sports wagering for years. Because gambling is legal in those centres. they give sports wagering the appropriate title of gambling. In Canada, where gambling is not legal, it is called a lottery. or whatever other word Regan chooses to use in his thinly veiled attempt to pass it off as something other than gambling. Ironically, we learn that the only reason Quebec has not embarked on a sports wagering pool is that they con- sidered it illegal under the Criminal Code. • Whether it is legal or not may not be the most important question the politicians should be asking themselves. More importantly, they should be asking whether Canadians really need another lottery (or gambling) scheme in view of the proliferation of such get -rich -quick schemes in recent years. There is already irrefutable evidence that the only people getting rich quick are the governments, plus a handful of • Canadians who happen to beat the millions -to -one odds and come out as winner . - But the sad part about lotteries is that it has been shown they constitute a regressive type of taxation in that they take more money from the poor than the rich in terms of disposable income. The vast majority of players are in the lower BATT'N AROUND with the editor income brackets. Many of them, unfor- tunately, spend more than they can af- ford in the impossible dream. True, buying lottery tickets is a per- sonal thing, and governments argue they have no control over who buys tickets or how much they spend. But their adver- tising programs call that into question. After all, the dream of riches isn't as at- tractive to people who already have most things they want in life in comparison to those who have trouble making ends meet and visualize a lottery win as their ticket out of poverty. • The sports wagering pool envisioned by Regan and his provincial counterparts is even more dangerous in the fact it gets into the area of the outcome of sporting contests and presents the situation where teams and players can also suc- cumb to the get -rich -quick dream and the temptation of helping their personal cause by their actions on the playing field. Professional sports have been tainted throughout history by periodic gambling Perth Courier on taxes involving players and obviously it is a situation that should be avoided. Can you imagine the accuracy of a hockey player on a breakaway who knows he has picked the current score of the game in the weekly lottery predic- tion? The play would be even more in- teresting if the opposing goalie knew he had a winner if he allowed the goal to be scored. The way the nation is going in the proliferation of lotteries leads to the suggestion that no stone will remain un- turned in the attempt to fill the public coffers through new gambling schemes. Local councils, for instance, may be tempted to consider a "pay -what -you - pull" ticket for ratepayers when they arrive to pay their property taxes. There would be winners and losers, of course, but the municipality would be the big winner through an averaging scheme whereby the tickets pulled would be weighted in their favor. There may even be a temptation to have the local tax collector authorized to flip a coin with taxpayers on a "double - or -nothing" scheme. If you win the flip, you get your teams written off, while the losers of a flip have to pay twice their normal tax rate. We could even provide dealer eye- shades for people such as Liz Bell, Harry Strang and Betty Oke and allow them to play taxpayers a game of seven -card stud for their annual dog tax. Chief Ted Day and the boys could set up a dice table. You get parking tickets written off if you roll under seven and you pay dou- ble for over seven. Those who are unfor- tunate enough to roll a seven pay triple, giving the house the money -making edge. There are all sorts of elaborate and in- teresting gambling schemes that could be devised, and the way we're going, don't be too surprised if you see some of them tried in the head -long rush by politicians into the gambling business. ilo•-{* 15.ti "Bad news, Stuke — I'm afraid we've got the best crop ever!" For better or worse garbage Garage sales are quite -the fad these days. Many people make them part of their lives. They troop around town watching for hand- made signs and check the ads in the classified section. Drive around any small town and you'll see a cluster of cars, in front of a house. "Must be a wedding or a funeral," you muse. Then you see a pile of junk with a horde of human magpies darting around it, snatching up bits, beating each other to another heap of rubble, like seagulls diving and screeching for a slice of french -fried spud. It's no wedding. There are no vows exchanged, except that you takes what you gets, "for better or for worse." It's no funeral, except for those who pay six bucks for something that cost three 10 years ago. It's a garage sale. The phenomenon resembles a mini -auction - sale minus the auctioneer. The garage sale allows the proprietor (often abetted by some of his neighbors) to get rid of all the useless items overflowing the garage, the tool -shed, the basement and the attic. It sometimes brings in two or three hundred dollars to the vendors, and the garage - sale groupies go home all ex- cited because they have bought a three-legged chair,i, a horse-drawn sleigh, an um- brella with only one spoke missing or six paperback novels for a dollar. One of my contem- poraries, an habituee of these bizarre events, was more than a bit thunderstruck when he found at one sale that he could buy text -books from our school, duly stamped as such, dirt cheap. He remonstrated with the owners. pointing out that the books belonged to the school and had been stolen by their children, but they'd have none of it. They wanted cash. So much for human nature. These were tax- payers who had helped buy the books their kids had stolen, and now wanted to sell them back to the system so that other kids could steal Sugar and Spice Dispensed By Smiley the books they were still paying taxes for. May I disagree for a moment? Kids do steal books. Regularly. They don't considerate it "stealing". It's just taking something from a big institution. That's not stealing, according to about 50 per cent of them. It's just like dad not declar- ing something on his income tax or mom ordering a dress from Eaton's, wearing it to a party, then taking it back to the mail order office and returning it, claiming it was "too small" or had smudge marks in the armpits (after she'd discoed in it for four hours). They wouldn't steal from a friend. They might steal from their parents. But they have no compunction about "ripping off" a department store or the government. This is fact, not fancy, as I've learned in discussions about morals. Back to the garage sales. There is no suggestion of stealing here. Both parties, buyer and seller, are perfectly aware of what's going on. The seller is trying to get rid of something he doesn't need, The buyer is buying something he doesn't need. It's a classic example of our materialistic age. We want to get rid of some of the garbage we've bought, and the buyer wants to buy some more garbage. The epitome of a garage - sale -groupie would be a per- son who goes to four garage sales. buys a lot of junk, then has a garage sale to dispose of it, perferably with a small mark-up. But they're fun. A friend of mine, who'll make a bid on an ing, even though he doesn know what it's for, has bought two old- fashioned horse-drawn sleighs. He has worked on them until they are ser- viceable. All he needs now is a couple of beasts to haul the things. He'll probably wind up with a camel and a Shetland pony (and will make a'fortune hauling peo- ple around when we run out of gas.) Well, I wish I'd had a gar- age sale this past summer. First, I'd have sold the gar- age, a venerable institution. None, of this electronic eye, or press a button and the door opens. It has a vast door, weighing about eight hundred pounds. You hoist the door and it slides on pulleys and cables, and at the right moment, on a good day, it stops rising just at the height to tear of your radio aerial. The balances filled with sand aren't quite enough from crashing down on your hood, but I've fixed that. To one, I've added an axe -head, to the other, a quart of paint. Perfect balance. A real buy. Behind the garage is a sort of tool shed. I say "sort of", because when I've sailed into the garage on a slippery mid -winter day, I've sometimes gone an extra foot and crashed into the tool shed, which now leans about 35 degrees to the north. I'll throw in the tool shed with the garage, but not its contents. Migawd, the stuff in there would bug the eyes of either an antique dealer of a garage -groupie. We have garden tools in there that haven't been used since Sir John A. MacDonald's wife told him to get his nose out of that glass and go out and stir up the garden. We have at least four perfectly good tires for a 1947 Dodage. We have enough holy tarpaulin (or is it holey? I've never known) to build a theatre under the stars. There's a perfectly good set of golf clubs, a wee bit rusty. There's a three- legged garden tool that must have come over with Samuel de Champain. There's a three -wheeled lawnmower (mechanic's special). Six hundred feet of garden hose that a little adhesive would fix. And many more, too mis- cellaneous to mention. And that's only the tool shed. In- side the house, we have eight tons of books, left by our children. The attic Is going to come right through to the kitchen, one of these days. How about a copy of Bhagavadgita, 1,000 pages at $1.00? Man, I wish I'd got this ideaff the ground about two months ago? Anyone In- terested in an iron crib, sides go up and down, filled with three hundred dollars worth of broken toys, exotic paintings, some records and a bag of marbles? Who needs to retire, with all this wealth lying around? She was a little out of bounds For a woman of eighy-four she was pretty spry. The first time 1 saw her, on a cold blustery March day, she was hiking across the school yard opposite our place at a really good clip. The fact that she was dressed in just. a thin dress and that the nur- sing home was just across on the other side of the school - yard was enough to get me thinking that she was probably a little out-of- bounds. She crossed through the backyards and over into the next street, and I followed. When I caught up to her she was standing knocking on the brick wall of a garage, somewhat bewildered "Is this where the choir is supposed to meet?" she ask- ed. "No." I replied and took "Do you want me to shinny under there?" "Not quite," I remarked, wowigra Perspectives By Syd Fletcher her arm, "but I'll take you there." When we got to the rail fence at the back of my yard she asked, with a little grin, thinking that she'd probably do it if I asked.. That was the first of many visits during the summer. Every once in a while she'd slip out the door of the nur- sing home and take off at' a strong clip down the street. The last time was at 11:30 one night when site came across in her housecoat and slippers. and knocked on the door asking for a cup of tea. Wherl the policemancame to take her home she was quite delighted to have such a line - looking gentleman escort her. I must say that although I sometimes feared for the old girl's safetyi that I had to ad- mire her physical strength at an age when many people are confined to a wheelchair ora bed. I just hope that when I'm her age I can gallop across a rough field at a good pace too.