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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes-Advocate, 1981-12-09, Page 4Page 4 Times -Advocate, December 9, 1981 Times Established 1873 Advocate Established 1881 Amalgamated 1924 1 l 1474 dvocate Serving South Huron, North Middlesex & North Lambton Since 1873 Published by I.W. Eedy Publications Limited 1ORNt tfD1 Publisher JIM B1('Is1 1 f ,Ad t ('rtisint; \tan.o.;er B11 L BATTEN ROSS HALIGH Editor Assistant Editor HARRY DEVRIES Composition Manager DICK JONGKIND Business Manager Published Each Wednesday Morning at Exeter, Ontario Second Class Mall Registration Number 0386. Phone 235-1331 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Canada $17.00 Per Year: USA $35.00 C.W.N.A., OEC.N.A. CLASS 'A' and 'ABC' Opportunity available One of the recommendations in the Ontario Federation of Agriculture Task Force report called on the colleges of agriculture to offer courses on the futures market. Ironically, Fanshawe College this week announced just such a course for their continuing education program for adults. It commences in January. The plan is to teach the course from a stronger agricultural viewpoint, obviously the main point being stressed by the Task Force. Last year the course ran successfully in six different locations. Centralia College will also offer courses on the same subject this winter. Area farmers should take advantage of the course, and in view of the criticism aimed at bankers by the Task Force, a few area bank managers would be well advised to join them so they can keep abreast of infor- mation needed by their farm clients. The price of progress Progress seldom comes without a price tag. Often, those who have to pay part of the price are not those who gain the most from the progress. Such is the case with Ontario Hydro's need to ex- pand transmission lines from the Bruce Nuclear Power Development station to expand service to Southwestern Ontario. Farmers in Bruce, Huron and Middlesex will pay part of the price tag for that progress through the use of their lands for towers. Their benefits will be no greater than those who will not pay any such price tag. The situation is the same for those who see trees in their front yards removed for street widening pro- jects, watch bulldozers rip up valuable farm land for gas lines, see their neighbourhood endangered by in- dustrial waste sites or watch their property devalued through nearby livestock expansion projects. Huron County council acted properly in endorsing the proposed transmission line last week, but in so do- ing they have placed themselves in the position where they must become actively involved in the final selec- tion to ensure that the price tag paid by farmers in the county is as low as possible. Their endorsement brings with it a great deal of in- volvement and responsibility. Struggling with words "It's a struggle at times to get the right words and thoughts across," Stefanie Ketley, a specialist in com- munications psychology, tells us. How true. She has touched a nerve. Most of us have experienced the frustration of be- ing misunderstood or misinterpreted, usually by someone too thick-headed to appreciate what we were trying to say. But Ketley suggests that the fault is in ourselves, because we don't communicate as well as we think we do. Clarity of expression and thought is not easily arrived at. The right word is an elusive prize which - or should it be that? - some of the world's finest writers have labored mightily to grasp since the dawn of civilization. French novelistGustave Flaubert spent a lifetime looking for it. The trouble with words is that they can mean so many different things. As Montaigne said, "The word is half his that speaks and half his that hears it." That explains why the thoughts we express are often only half clear. Inability to find the right word drives us into the embrace of jargon and cliches, where we hope to dis- guise our failure. This device works most effectively with readers or listeners who are too timid to confess that they don't understand. "A good catch -word," Wendell Wilkie, that forgotten American politician, once said, "can obscure analysis for fifty years." Back to Flaubert, and his struggle for precision: "Sometimes when I am empty, when words don't come, when I find I haven't written a single sentence after scribbling whole pages, I collapse on my couch and lie there dazed, bogged in a swamp of despair, hating myself for this demented pride that makes me pant after a chimera... What a develish style I have adopted! A curse on simple subjects! If you knew how I was torturing myself you'd be sorry for me." No one could describe the editorial writer's tor- ment more eloquently. Flaubert found the right words after all. Closing Ioopholes isn't new 'Tis the season to be jolly' Bah, hum- bug' ose are two of the more familiar phrases associated with the festive season and they span the complete range of attitudes and feelings that will be felt through the next few days. Unfortunately. it appears there is a frowing number who can't get into the rame of mind expressed in the first quotation. and while their spirits may not quite dip to the level of those in the second. they are corning dangerously close. ironically. perhaps. the attitude is not far removed from that which must have prevailed at that first Christmas so many years ago. That trip to Bethlehem was not a vacation to which the main figures of the story had looked forward so eagerly to escape the winter doldrums it was precipitated by a government decree. The people had to be counted so the rulers of the day could ensure that all were paving appropriate taxes. There were no computer programs to keep tab on the people. They didn't have social in- surance numbers or automatic payroll deductions. But the Allan MacEachen of the day wanted to make sure there were no loopholes. no one escaping the duty of providing the government with the need- ed funds to maintain its policies. Historians aren't very explicit in relating the economic conditions of the first Christmas, nor are there any too eager to go too far out on a limb to predict the exact economic conditions which will prevail this Christmas. In case you haven't noticed, the situation is basically on a day-to-day basis, although the sphere in which prognostications range from poor to bad. The choice isn't great. . • There is, of course, one main difference between the people facing this year's Christmas and those of that story so long ago. The latter had little choice in the matter. The majority were poor and expected to remain that way. They had no say in their future. Their only hope was to improve their BATT'N AROUND with the editor situation, although even then, the goals were minimal. Today, we face thesituationwherepeo- ple have high goals, and are faced with the prospect of seeing their prosperity diminish. That's why the "Bah, hum- bug" attitude is so prevalent. The fear of losing something you already have is far more damaging than the fear of not get- ting something which you don't have. One is a dream, the other is a nightmare. The person who has never sat down to a Christmas dinner featuring turkey and all the trimmings can't even imagine what he is missing. He gives it only a passing thought. The person who faces he prospect of having to do without his traditional feast knows all too well what he is missing. It fills his thoughts. Bah, humbug! The governors of that long ago Christ- mas over -taxed the poor in relation to the rich, and so the rich got richer and the poor became poorer. Today's gover- nors attempt to over -tax the rich to aid the poor, but it appears that they have succeeded only in making the rich a little poorer and leaving the poor in their same position. Governments can not create wealth. They can only take it from some and give it to others. The problem arises, of course, when 40 percent rubs off on the bureaucracy in the transit process. For every $1 taken from the rich, only 60$ is turned over to the poor. However, even that is misleading. given the fact that Canadians now face an horrendous national debt of $3,432 per head, much of that taken from the rich is used to pay the debts created by previous aid to the poor. Another sizeable chunk is therefore totally lost, still being a drain on the real producers but at the same time bringing no real assistance to those who are in need. In the head -long rush into socialism however, there has been no differential between the needy and the rich. Most programs automaticallyyay out to those in either group, from chilpd allowances to old age pensions. But the waste along the line is enor- mous due to the bureaucratic transit cost and the cost of the public debt. It would probably be frightening to find out exact- ly how much It costs to turn over $1 in benefits such as child allowances and old age pensions to those who need it. Government has become the biggest business in the land, the biggest adver- tiser, the biggest employer and by far the biggest borrower. Tragically for us all, it is also the worst managed. Bah, humbug. "Here's another one 1 should bag before they're extinct." Steady stream of garbage -mail Because I write a syn- dicated column, I've been put on the hit list of some public relations outfit in New York. As a recall, I receive a stream of gar- bage mail containing fascinating material about some product or other that is being pushed by the PR firm. Usually, I spot it right away and toss it in the round filing' cabinet without even opening it. Today came one of these missives and, dis- tracted by something else, I had opened the thing and read a paragraph or two before I realized it was just another piece of puffery. I was headed NEWS FROM: The Hamburg Group. For Release: im- mediately. All press releases say the latter. Anyway, I thought it would be a pitch for MacDonalds' or a string quartet. It wasn't. It was a series of little articles about Hamburg and Ger- many, touting that city's great variety of attrac- tions. Such junk has about as much palce in this column as an account of the origins of bee -keeping in Basutoland. And I'm supposed to print it free. What dummies these PR people are. However, I'd already read enough to hook me on the first article, en- titled: Brewery's Waste Energy To Heat Hospital. It didn't make sense at first. Why should breweries waste energy to heat a hospital, unless they're trying to make amends to all the people who wind up in hospital with cirrhosis of the liver from drinking their poison? I took another look at the heading, spotted the apostrophe, and now it made sense. A brewery will delivery heat and hot water to a hospital. As part of its brewing process, the brewery used to end up with a lot of excess heat that must be cooled before it is Sugar and Spice Dispensed By Smiley released into the air. Now, instead of being wasted, that heat will be chaneled into the hospital where it will be put to good use. Cost of the deal, equip- ment and stuff, is about 400,000 marks, to be assumed by the city. The debt will be liquidated through the savings on energy that would otherwise have to be purchased. Are you listening, Labatts, Molsons et al? Instead of pouring money into sports and all these phoney ads about as sub- tle as a kick in the ribs, indicating that beer - drinking will make your life macho, full of fun and beautiful girls in skimpy swim suits, why don't you channel your heat into hospitals? Think of the free publicity! Ain't them Germans something, though? If they didn't start a war every so often and get clobbered, they'd own half the world, with their resourcefulness and hard work. Last time I saw Ham- burg was in 1944, and it was. literally hamburg. The RAF had firebombed it by night and the USAAF had pounded it by day until it was a heap of rubble. I was a prisoner of war and saw it from a train window on my way to an interrogation centre in Frankfort. Forty -odd years later, it has risen from the ruins like a phoenix, and is a booming city, visited by over a million travellers in 1981. But Hamburg- Schmamburg. I'm not go- ing to urge my readers to go there. It was the arti- cle on heating that caught my eye. Aside from . the breweries in Canada, this country has another in- dustry that could produce enough heat so that if it were properly channeled, we could thumb our collective noses at the Arabs. I'm talking about politics. Town and city councils produce enough hot air to heat at least one hospital within their limits. Provincial legiislatives produce enough hot air to replace half the oil used in their provinces. And from the vast deposit of natural gas known as Ottawa issues daily enough hot air to heat Montreal's Olympic Stadium, even though it has no roof. And that's only touching the bases, without going to the out- field or the infield. Think of all the hot air produced by teachers and preachers, union leaders, abortionists and anti - abortionists, public relations people, medical associations, school boards. And there's lots more where that comes from. The squeals of those caught with a mortgage to be renewed, the moans of farmers who are losing their shirts, the bellows of angry small - businessmen; all these are wasting energy by blowing hot air into our rather frigid climate, there to be dispersed into nothing. Add to this all the hot air that is poured into our telephone lines, that is batted back and forth over business luncheons and at parties and over the breakfast table. It's perfectly simple. All we need is a means of bottling the stuff somehow, and dis- tributing it to the right places. If our scientists can send a missile to Mars, surely they can find a method of storing and channeling the in- credible quantities of hot air that rise in clouds over our country. Peter Lougheed might have to cap some of his oil wells, but if somebody came up with the.solu- tion, we could not only tell the Arabs what to do with their oil. We could probably buy Saudi Arabia. Maybe I'll drop a line to the Mayor of Hamburg, see what he suggests. Would you hire these men? Remember Bryce Macka- scy? He was the minister who boosted UIC benefits so much that people were discouraged from working. Then he became Postmaster General and we had one of our worst postal strikes, after which he was moved to Consumer and Corporate Affairs. That didn't suit him so in 1976 he resigned his Commons scat and got himself elected to the Quebec National Assembly. in the provincial election of 1978 he was defeated and spoke of going into private business. • • • • Evidently the offers weren't overwhelming because in October 1978 he ran again for the Commons in a federal by- election. Defeated once more, he got a consolation prize. Without consulting the air- gara Falls in the 1980 federal election. That time he won and he's now in the Commons CITIZENS' TO CITIZENS By Cohn Brown By Colin Brown line's board, Mr. Trudeau appointed him chairman of Air Canada, a job for which he .had no qualifications. Fired when Joe Clark became Prime Minister, Mackasey collected a $38,000 fully indcxed pension, spoke again of going into private business, but turned up instead at Nia- as a backbencher. • • • • Why this piece of history? Because it shows the folly of trying to mix politics with business. Whatever we may think of Mr. Mackasey's per- formance as a cabinet minis- ter, there is no doubt of his durability as a politician. As a businessman, however, he was a non-starter. Supposing Pierre Trudeau, Marc Lalonde and Allan MacEa- chen resigned or were defeated? Would any respon- sible businessman hire thcm? Yet they are the people who arc supposed to be "manag- ing" Canada's economy! It wouldn't matter if govern- ment confined itself to governing. instead, it has become the biggest busine..' in the land, the biggest adver- tiser, the biggest employer, and by far the biggest bor- rower and, tragically for us all, the worst managed. Colin Brown is President of the National Citizens' Coalition. t