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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes Advocate, 1994-01-05, Page 4Page 4 Times -Advocate. December 29,1993 Publisher Jim Beckett News Editor: Adrian Harte 8416ess Manager: Don Smith Composition Manager Deb Lord CCN. Publrcations Mall Registration Number 0386 Within 40 miles (61 km.) addressed to non letter oardor addresses $30.00 plus $2.10 Q.S.T. Ovtdde 40 miles (61 km.) or any letter oanier address $30.00 pies $30.00 (total 30.00) + 4.20 Q.S.T. Outside Canada $05.00 (Inolydee $88.40 postage) • • E1)I'1'()RIALS Now we will know for sure hase one of Exeter's waste manage- ment program is just about complete. Most households are running out of the free tags that were distributed back in July. The good news is that it has been a success in exactly the way town councilAvere hoping. The amount of garbage being set out at the curb in this town has dropped considerably. The incentive to make those tags last has giv- en most people a new w y of looking at their blue boxes and backyard composters: they are not only a way of saving theenvironment, they can also save tI m money. , To its credit, our local blue box program is leading the province in the wide variety of materials it collects for recycling. Without that, it would be much harder to meet the one -bag -a -week target that council is impos- ing on households. ' In fact, some families are boasting success at not having to set a hag out every week. So far, so good. Now comes the real test of this program. Now that most people are going to be actual- ly paying $2 a tag to put their garbage out, we will find out if abuses of the system will creep in. The discovery last summer of dumped gar- bage in the townships around Grand Bend highlighted the fact that some were unwilling to pay $2 a bag to get rid of their vacation re- fuse, and they didn't mind spoiling someone else's property to avoid the cost. Granted, Exeter is most unlike Grand Bend. The townsfolk are permanent residents, and everybody is well aware of the $2 fee and the reasons behind it Still, one wonders if there are residents, having exhausted their supply of free tags, who will refuse to buy more. Will garbage bags mysteriously appear in commer- cial dumpsters, or end up anonymously on boulevards where no one will claim them? Of course this will happen. There will ways, al- ways be those who want to cheat the system. The question is how often this kind of abuse will occur. In all likelihood, these problems will be fairly isolated, and perhaps little worse than the in- considerate dumping and littering that already goes on. If so, town council stands to score an- other point for its "green" plan, and Exeter may very well be all the better for it. A.D.H. Changing rules in agriculture orkers in Canada's dairy, poultry and egg industries are going to have to look . ahead, now that the country's supply manage- ment systems have been lost at the bargaining table for the, General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT). .,Supply managemet'iT is based on marketing boards - bureaucracies which analyse the mar- ket for agricultural produce in Canada, and make sure farmers produce enough to fill that market, but not so much that a surplus is creat- ed. Marketing boards will be lost The people who work for them will have to look else- where for employment. Remember, though, that not only will Cana- da's borders be opened for these three com- modities to come in from other countries, but Canadian farmers will also be allowed to pro- duce as much milk, poultry or eggs as they want Canadian farmers, if they are willing and able, will join the "global" marketplace. Former marketing board employees, knowl- edgeable of the business, will be qualified for jobs importing and exporting, Besides, the jobs in marketing ioards are white collar jobs. They include many bene- fits, such as hefty severance packages and sizeable pensions. Even if they are let go, a lot of these people will find it easy to carry on. Not so the farmers who will lose their jobs. Who provides their severance packages? Who provides their pensions? Their wealth comes not from investment in the banks, but invest- ment in their farm operations. Up until a couple of weeks ago, the quota they had purchased from the marketing boards had five or six -digit dollar values. In one shake of hands, in tar -off Geneva, it has be- come worthless. Without this sizeable nest egg, fanners.will have to realize that the rules have changed, and they're going to have to figure out what those Hiles• are. They can get out of farming, but that isn't easy for people who, like their parents before them, grew up on the land and feel a responsi- bility to take care of it. The chances of getting a job elsewhere are also pretty slim. They can join the global marketplace.that GATT has forced upon us. To do so, they will have to take great financial risk, expanding and utilizing new technologies (such as the new dairy hormone) to the point where they can compete with producers in other countries. Or, if the rules change as drastically as they could, farmers may take advantage of the fact that there will be much less policing of the in- dustries. No longer will it be illegal to sell to anyone but the marketing boards. Innovative farmers will be able to do their own process- ing and market their own goods in their own commodity. Whatever the rules become, let's hope farm- ers can adapt, so their own livelihood, as well as that of their communities and the land they work, does not suffer. From the St. Marys -Journal Argus 1 BLUE RIBBON AWARD 1993 "Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely." ... Thomas Macauley Published Each Wednesday Morning at 424 Male St., Exeter, Ontario, NOM US by 1.W. Esdy Publications Ltd. Telephone 1-619-2361331 O.S.T. /10621017 NMM... FORMER PRIME MITER a ATELAINEs WOMAN of THE YEAR,, I -VERY IMPREssIVE. BUT THE REcESSIoNS VEIN 1otiG1-(AND SIRE D041-SIzING, so I'M AFRAID 7HERErs REALLY WRING AT THEI,i Where are the Gay '90s ? Where do we go from here?. Now there's a question no one seems to want to answer these days. Maybe no one's really asking it except me. Here we sit on the dawn of 1994, a year that should be the tail end of a recession. I say, "should be" because I don't think anyone is truly convinced we've seen the last of the doom and gloom predictions. Frankly, I'm still convinced that a recession is largely a state of mind: 10 percent money markets, and 90 percent fear. I seem to recall, sometime in late 1981 or early 1982 someone standing up on a late-night talk show and declaring "the reces- sion's over". I wonder if anyone would have the guts to say the same today. The end of the last recession gave the 1980s a stamp of iden- tity. The good times came along on a tide of rapacious con- sumerism. People who were do- ing even remotely well bought into buying, all the while con- vincing themselves they were developing a better culture. To be truthful, I found it rather fun. There was an element of chic style, all the while knowing it was really just being a little too crass and self-indulgent. It was a whole new aesthetic, and it brought along new words like "yuppie" and "poseur" to show that everyone knew they were crass and self-indulgent. •Since every decade is doomed tq dump on the one that went before, what does that leave us for the 1990s? We're just about halfway through this decade and I'm still not clear on where we're going with it. I thought we had a green, environmentalist thing going for a while, but that seems to have become yesterday's news. I look at the fashions and shudder. Clothing stores are asking me to wear colours I swore I would never be seen in for the rest of my days. Orang- es and rusts scream out recollec- tions of that horror decade - the seventies. Somebody once told me them were no good movies made in the 1970s. With the possible ex- ception of Star Wars I had to agree, and added there wasn't much of worth in music either. The eighties came along to change all that, and no matter what mean stories we may tell . our young about that decade, I'm always going to feel like those years were a liberation from a cultural hell. I imagine'that when I'm seven- ty five years old, I'm going pass over all the carbon -fiber collar- less shirts, and insist on wearing outdated cotton, button-down oxfords, even if just as an hom- age. But what of the decade at hand? Is there nothing to re- deem these 1990s? Can we ever look back at the last years of the twentieth century as being an- other "gay 'nineties", or is that just too much to hope for? There ought to be much to hope for. Nuclear disarmament, peace in the Middle East, peace in Ireland...my wish list goes on. I want something positive to re+ member the nineties by, some- thing better than a Gulf War and a recession. My fingers are crossed. 10'4. •.<;,��:>.��:s:tell.:::�.;:�:��.tl.:</fz'r:.:%i':��i.�ai;Yc.�s`�,:... ,.. ,�c. ... tsG>:>:C,;c,._ ,z�i:J�%��':1i�` . . We used to be a family of five. A mothes, a father, and three children. That is something we can no longer rely upon We're now in the midst (at the apex?) of the sleep -over era. When our kids are grandparents, they'll reminisce: "Remember the sleep -overs we used to have back in the 90s?" It all started innocently enough a few years ago with the occasional request for a sleep -over friend. No problem. Little Julie or Jill or Jane or Jennie (1 could never tell them apart) would stay with us for supper>tnd eventually settle down in a sleeping bag in Stephanie's room. Or Td count heads at supper time and say: "Isn't there one missing? Where is Stepha- nie?" "She's sleeping over at Jessica's house." Alexander (before he was called Alex) did the same with his friends. So did Duncan. But this thing is getting.out of hand. Now, Duncan and his cousin Allan have a virtually interchangeable place of residence. You never know where the pair is going to show up for breakfast - at our house, or at Allan's. The trou- ble is, they rely on adults to taxi them backand forth. Last Friday I tiptoed in to kiss Stephanie good night and found myself in a room full of giggling girls. Where they all came from, I'll never know. For our kids, sleep -overs (or "Having friends over") is the thing they cherish more than any- thing else. Maybe they crave for peer company the way we crave for "adult time". The difference is that their wishes come tare regularly, outs rarely. A while ago, after somebody was particular- ly obnoxious, Elizabeth and 1 wondered what would be the best consequences for misbehav- Sleep-o vers - a 90s fad for these days. Then Elizabeth hit the nail on the head: "De- priving them of sleep -overs". And true enough, it works better than any other correctional measure at our house. When we grounded the kids for two weeks back in December, they ac- tually behaved like human beings until the ban was lifted. Why, they even asked us what they could do to help! There is no point in fighting the phenomenon of sleep -overs. It's here to stay. Sleep -overs are part of the 90s culture. Or sub -culture. We just have to grin and bear it and do the driving. I told the kids that I envy them. "When I was a kid...." "Ya, Dad, we all know," said Alex. Stepha- nie: "You never had any sleep -overs. You were never allowed any friends." Duncan added: "And you had to get up at four o'clock in the morning, and walk twenty kilometres to school every day through deep snow". Alex: "They beat you up, and fed you nothing but bread and water...." There is no use telling them about social life or about anything else "in the olden days". Gen- erally they just shut their ears and make faces behind my back. But I wonder what would happen if the sleep - over fad would catch on with the adults. If all parents would say: "What's good for the gos- lings is good for the goose and gander". "Kids," I might announce one moming, "1 won't see you at supper tonight. I'll be sleeping overat the Slipakoffs'. See you in the mom- ing." I think I 'chow the answer already. 1t wouldn't bother the kids one bit They wouldn't even know I'm missing. No, 1 think it would be Elizabeth's reaction I'd have to worry about.