Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes-Advocate, 1985-03-20, Page 4Page 4 Times -Advocate. March 20, 1985 Times Established 1873 Advocate Established 1881 Amalgamated 1924 a dvocate Published Each Wednesday Morning at Exeter, Ontario, NOM 1S0 Second Class Mail Registration Number 0386. s' Phone 5 19-23-51- 33-1-- - -_ LORNE EEDY Publisher PCNA BiLL BATTEN Editor JiM BECKET T HARRY DEVRiES Advertising Manager Composition Manager ROSS HAUGH Assistant Editor DICK JONGKIND Business Manager SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Canada: $23.00 Per year; U.S.A. $60.00 C.W.N.A., O.C.N.A. CLASS 'A' Keep them informed What responsibility do politicians have to keep those they represent in- formed about what is happening in their municipality? Hurt and angry Hensall property owners are asking that question after discovering through the local press that a restaurant is being built on the southwest corner of the interesection of Highway 4 and the village's main thoroughfare, King St. A delegation of homeowners ap- pearing before the regular March ses- sion was as concerned about being kept in the dark as they were about the fear their privacy may be disrupted by such an enterprise in their neighbourhood. • The idea of a restaurant in that location was first broached to council at a special closed meeting on January 7 by a London man. He was asked to return the following week to present a detailed site plan at the regular January council session, but phoned shortly before the meeting began to say stormy weather was for- It is a very bright person who is able to decide exactly what> he is worth to his employers - and persuade them he is right. Bill Caudill, a relief pitcher the Toronto Blue Jays wanted, will play with that team for his price - $9 million for five seasons. Now that's very encouraging for postal workers and school teachers and automakers. Gives them something to shoot for. And how about the doctors who feel under -paid? They could make a pretty strong case for cing him to turn back a Elginfield. He promised to return Yater that month. The impending visit did not ap- pear on the printed January 14 agenda. A bylaw to establish site plan con- trol on part lot 201 and lot 202, plan 267, was read at the regular January meeting, with the explanation this was being done for a prospective pur- chaser of the property who had not yet submitted a detailed site plan to council. No mention was made of a restaurant, or the developer's inten- tion to meet again with council in January. Hensall residents read of the fait ac- complit in press reports of the regular February council meeting. Hensall residents support the growth and accompanying prosperity of their village. However, until a zon- ing bylaw is in place to provide pro- tection, villagers depend on their council to keep them informed of pro- posed development. r price the value of healing as opposed to the prive for watching a pitcher hurl a ball 60 feet a few dozen times a summer. It's all relative, you know. The doctor can make some highly valid comparisons between his work and that of the fellow who sorts letters. And then take a look at the farmers. Neither the ball playerk nor the letter - sorter are going to fare too well if we happen to run out of food. Wingham Advance -Times Looked in wrong place A joke book in which the writer took great delight in his boyhood years contained many "moron" jokes. A couple have remained in my repertory, although they ob- viously fail to match up to today's sick or risque standards. One told about the two morons who quizzed a farmer about what he was going to do with the load of manure he was hauling. When he advised them he was going to put it on his strawberries. one turned to the other and com- mented: "They callus crazy. but we put cream and sugar on ours". Another related to a moron who was searching under a street Tight when a policeman ap- proached to ask him what he was looking for. The moron respond- ed that he had Inst his watch. After joining the unsuccessful search for several minutes. the policeman asked if the moron was certain he had lost the watch in the general area in which they were looking. "Oh. no." he was told. "it was up the street a hit. but I'm looking here because the light is better". Okay, that's all the punishment that will be inflicted upon readers from the contents of that old book. but the latter situation has a modern corollary in the case of Ontario Hydro. / Several years ago. Ontario Hydro embarked on a plan to build nuclear power stations and one of the sites chosen was near Kincardine. The proximity to Lake Iluron was apparently onq of the major considerations in that decision due to the part tp be played by lake water. However. it now becomes rather apparent that the site selection was not particularly r 0 1 well thought out. While the general area had some of the re- quisitions for a power generating station. the moguls at Ontario Hydro didn't give the appropriate consideration to how they were Batt'n Around sith TrakThe 1(111.)1 going to get the power out of this relatively remote and under- populated area and into the homes and factories several hun- dred miles distant. * * For the past several years. they've been conducting surveys and public meetings in an at- tempt to get approval fora power corridor that will carry the ex- cess electricity to the areas where it is needed. Area residents will recall that a couple of years ago. there was consideration given to crossing the prime agricultural land of Huron and Middlesex to carry the power from the Bruce station to London. There was a battle royal and area tamers heaved a collective sigh of relief when 011 decided that it would take the power from bake Huron across to the Barrie area and then hook London up with a new line running from the Milton area. That was all well and good, un- til property owners in the area selected for the new lines manag- ed to get the whole idea tossed out and Hydro was back to square one. So. now there are again sugges- tions to run power corridors through Huron and Middlesex. Of course. Ontario Hydro wouldn't do anything as simple as make recommendations for one corridor. No, they've chosen two in this area. just to double the number of property owners who could be affected and therefore have to get involved in the fray. * When all the smoke clears and the war of words and nerves is completed, there is still a good chance that Ontario Ilydro will not recommend even one of the two corridors in this area. in fact. it would he difficult for them to justify any other recommenda- tion than the one made a couple of years ago to take the line through to the Barrie area. However. area farmers are quite correct in making their views and concerns known at the present. because there is every indication that Hydro will end up choosing the line of least resistance. although that may be most difficult to ascertain. So. while the moron would never have been successful in his search for his watch under the street light. it will he necessary for Ilydro to find a route to get power out of the Bruce area despite the fact they were ob- viously looking in the wrong place when they made the generating station site selection. if they could only harness all the energy that has been expend- ed to date. and will be augmented in the days ahead. in the battle over the final corridor selection. they probably wouldn't need a generating station at all. Serving South Huron, North Middlesex & North Lambton Since 1873 Published by I.W. Eed), Publications Limited TRY OWNERS FOR VIOLENCE IN SPORTS — Report MILLER SERVICES "... and all Semenko received was five minutes for fighting!" Avoidingtroubles Some people, like me, believe in rolling with the punches, rather than sticking out our chins to show how many we can ab- sorb. I have found that, in general, if I avoid trouble, trou- ble avoids me. If I know that some pain in the arm has been trying to get me on th me r iately that he or she wants me to do something that I don't want to do.Therefore,.1 take the phone off the hook and leave it off until the pain has found some other sucker. Another invention of mine to stay out of trouble is patented as Nega-Prod. This is short for Negative Production. The theory is simple. Themore you produce, the more problems you have, whether it is children, mattufac- tured goods or farm products. The more children you have, the more emotional and economic problems you create for yourself. The more goods you produce. the more you have to hustle to find customers and meet payrolls. The more farm stuff you raise, whether it's beef or beans. the greater your chance of being caught in a glut on the market. Our great national railways caught on to this years ago. When they had lots of passengers, they had lots of problems. People wanted comfort, cleanliness, de- cent meals, and some assurance that they would get where they were going on time. There was much more money to be made, -and fewer problems, by transpor- ting wheat and lumber and cattle. So the railways began treating people like cattle. Passenger trains became uncomfortable and dirty Quality of the food dropped like a stone. And they never arrived on time. Presto. End of problems. No more passengers. So the railways were able to cut off non-paying passenger lines. get rid of all those superfluous things like sta- tion agents and telegraphers and train conductors. and concen- Give 1 think it's about time that we did away with the Canadian dollar altogether. It's just one more imitation of the Americans that we can do without. Let's call it the ('anadian heaver or the maple leaf. Give it a different name and put on it a value of five American dollars for starters. Then if it drops again we don't get into.this big panic that seems to grip some people every time the dollar drops a cent or two. Let's examine for a moment what happens to the average per- son if the American dollar goes up. Sure. travel costs to the U.S. go up. instead of the eighty to a hundred dollars a night that it costs you in a Toronto hotel it might now cost you thirty-five or forty in an American. Food and gas are still cheaper there even with the exchange. t it really trate on taking from one point to another things that paid their way and didn't talk back: newsprint, coal, oil, wheat. Perhaps this is the answer for our provincial governments, which, are quickly and quietly building massive mountains of debt for future taxpayers. s op building highways, and repairing those already in existence." We'd Sugar & Spice Dispensed by Smiley all be sore as hell for a while, but as the roads got worse and worse. most of us would stop driving our cars. The governments would save millions of dollars now spent on highways, and they could fire two-thirds of the highway cops. I don't quite see how the governments could use Nega- Prod to get out of the liquor business, which certainly pro- duces plenty of problems. The booze trade is so profitable that asking government to abandon it would be like asking a millionaire to forsake his country estate for a run-down farm. Perhaps if they had a Free Booze Day, once a week, every week, say on Saturday. it would solve a number of problems. it would certainly reduce the surplus population. This, in turn, would cut down, drastically, the unemployment figures. Should the provincial govern- ments find that Nega-Prod is all I've suggested, some of it might spill over into the federal govern- ment, usually the last to catch on to what the country really needs. Instead of the manna and honey flowing from Ottawa in the form of baby bonuses and pen- sions, we might get some terse manifestoes: "People who have more than one and a half children will be sent to jail for four years. Note: separate jails." "Persons who plan to live past 65 and claim a pension will. be ar, rom October 1 to Thanksgiving Day. Shotguns and bicycle chains only." "All veterans of all wars may claim participation by reason of insanity, and may apply to Ot- tawa for immediate euthenisation!" These might seem slightly Draconian measures, but they sure would put an end to a lot of our problems and troubles. Think of what they would do for such A sinful activities as sex, growing old, and hanging around the Legion Hall, playing checkers. But we must also think of the economic benefits. With a plug put into that river of paper money flowing from Ottawa, taxes would drop. inflation would vanish and undoubtedly, separatism would wither on the vine. People would be lined up six deep at the U.S. border, trying to get across, andthat would solve, in one swell foop, our unemploy- ment difficulties. We could go back to being hewers of water and carriers of wood, which was our manifest destiny before the politicians got into the act. Fishermen or lumberjacks, in short. which most of the rest of the world thinks we are anyway. Nega-Prod may seem a bit lof- ty and abstract at first glance, but it works. I know from per- sonal experience. Every time i try to make something. or fix something. it costs me a lot of money. and I get into a lot of trouble. So, I have a policy of never try- ing to fix something or make something. it's a lot less trouble to put up signs: "Beware of fall- ing bricks: Not responsible for slivers from picnic table." And so on. different name burns me that we are paying $2.60 a gallon for gas in Sarnia while acrss the border it is about $1.50 even when exchange and gallon By the Way br SYd Fletcher size are taken into account r. if the government artificially tries to bolster the Canadian dollar by raising interest rates. as the Liberals did. then you will see us plunged into another reces- sion as young people forget about buying' a house and other folks toss out for another year any pur- chases that they might have con- sidered. Forget about getting parts for a broken-down ap- pliance in a hurry as business- men will carry less and less in- ventory due to increased interest costs and the spiral will continue. I low•ever. if the beaver is allow- ed to seek its own level American dollars will flow into this country as the American consumers realize what a good deal they are getting for our products. It has already happened in the pork in- dustry where many hogs are be- ing sold at an excellent value south of the border. Let's hope Mulroney and his cohorts realize what is happening and don't resort to foolish bor- rowing to bolster the dollar as it's only a temporary measure at best