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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes Advocate, 1998-04-01, Page 4Pagi' 4 Times -Advocate, April 1, 1998 Publisher & Editor: Jim Beckett Business Manager: Don Smith Production Manager: Deb Lord Advertising, Barb Consitt, Chad Eedy News; Kate Monk. Craig Bradford, Brenda Burke, Ross Haugh Production; Alma Ballantyne, Mary McMurray, Barb Robertson Brenda Hern, Joyce Weber, Laurel Miner Transoonation: AI Hodgert Front Office & Accounting; Sue Rollings, Carol Windsor Ruthanne Negrijn,.Anita McDonald; Cassie Dalrymple, Ruth Slaght, The Exeter Times -Advocate is a member of a family of community newspapers providing news, advertising and information leadership Publications Mail Registration Number 07511 $UBSCRIPTION RATES: One year rate for Canada subscribers - 835.00 + 05T Two year rate for Canada subscribers - 863.00 + GST OIAN COM k, Q«A`o) ,/1 II-AtO %�,. aS fsO 4' 'ti•tit,6Vi RS CO"'" OTHER RATES Outside Canada - $102.00 Published Each Wednesday Morning at 424 Main St., Exeter, Ontario, NOM 1S6 by I.W. Eedy Publications Ltd. Telephone 1-519-235-1331 • Fax: 519.235-0766 emall:taUeedy.com O.S.T. NR105210835 EDITORIAL How to deal with old tires he decision-toget rid of old tires by grinding them up and making roads out of them makes such a lot of . sense, it is a wonder someone did not think of it sooner. It is a great idea, turning a liability into -an asset. Actually, someone prob- ably did think about it decades hack, but as• long as•tires could -be disposed of cheaply at the local dump, there was no• need to do anything more. It -was not until it started costing extra to dispose of tires that they became a problem'. . A11 of a sudden, old tires seemed to he everywhere - in ditches along rural roads, in abandoned warehouses, and in . quasi -legal private dumps. • The governnient's move to provide - funding for cleaning up the tire dump in Egreniont and using the contents in- . the county's.rubberized asphalt road • program truly is a win-win solution to a . very nasty problem. . - - • But it does raise the question of what else is buried -out there, leaking toxins into our drinking water. Until recently, humans made use of just about everything. Kitchen waste was -either fed to the hogs or thrown into the compost pile where it would producc rich soil. Building materials consisted of wood, animal skins or rock - the first two eventually decayed and returned to the soil; the- third would be reused for something else. Many an - English harp foundation•contains stones that once -were part of a castle. or even Hadrian's Wall. Then came the era of the automo- • bile. the plastic bag, and the -micro- wave. Technology could. produce new- er, Netter models long before the old ones wore out. So we just threw things - away. • ... • Now our cities arc bulging 'at the scams, and good farm land is at a pre- mium. We are- finally coming to our senses and realizing that most of the stuff we throw away does not disappear - just because we cannot see it. It sits. there, sometimes breaking down into dangerous toxins. .The time is fast approaching when a company manufacturing a fabulous new • . item will not only have to come up with a marketing plan, ad campaign and the rest of it, but also a disposal plan. Items which cannot he broken down into reuseahle components will not he al- lowed 'on the shelves. In the meantime, our local dump` . (both legal and illegal) contain more . garbage than we know what do do with. It is taking up some of our hest farm land, and contaminating our environ- ment. What we need arc -more projects like the Grey County ruhherized asphalt pro- , grani. Talk about turning trash into treasure - not only can ground up tires -he used to pave roads. but the paving . material is better than conventional as- phalt. It is quieter, less subject to skid- -ding, and provides better traction. • • It does take funding to'develop pro- jects like this, however, because when push.comes-to shove, it is apparently still cheaper to throw things out. Cheap- er, that is, unless one considersthe cost of cleaning up acres of contaminated soil. or fighting an environmental disas- ter like the Hagersville tiro lire. There are too few markets for recy- cled materials. We have to find markets. It will no doubt require an initial invest- ment of time and money, but the poten- tial benefits are tremendous - a cleaner environment, safe drinking water, more land for growing food; and perhaps some products that turn out to he better than the original. Bravo to Bill Murdoch, Dolton Becker, Karl Braeker and all the people •.responsible for the decision to recycle the Egremont tires, .and most of al 1, to the driving force behind the rubberized asphalt program - Gary Shaw of the Grey County highways department. 1!r/rrnurJ,hvnn S((uie,-n fire New What's on your mind? The Times Advocate continues to welcome letters to the editor as a ,1C • forum for open discussion of local issues, concerns, complaints and kudos. The Times -Advocate reserves the right to edit letters for brevity. Please send your letters to P. 0. Box 850 'Exeter, Ontario, NOM 1 S6. Sign your letter with both name and address. Anonymous letters will not be published. A View from Queen's Park TORONTO -- Premier Mike Harris is furious because opponents got, hold: of and "leaked" one.of his major policy announcements, but in trying to manipulate voters his own govern- ment has sprung more leaks than the Titanic. -- Harris's Progressive Conservative. govern- ment had planned to make an announcement of how tnuch it will spend on education now that it has taken control from school boards,. among the most eagerly -awaited statements of the year. The premier had let it be known that his gov- ernment would make it at a suburban school, but two days ahead of time Liberal leader Dal- ton McGuinty called reporters and handed them the document outlining how much, and on what, the money will be spent. McGuinty explained that he obtained it from "an unnamed source who is a friend of public education," presumably one of many disgrun- tled civil servants. Harris, agitated and red- faced, said he had not seen the document, and when a reporter offered him one, that he did not By Eric Dozed TIMETO GET NEUTERED BUDDY! We*Y Simple Cruelties By Brenda Burke May the best fool win Your best friend sneaks over 'to your house .in the middle of the night to decorate your front lawn and wrap your car with at least 100 rolls of toilet paper. Your great uncle Ned falls you in a panic at 5 a.m. to tell you he .has just hit the all-time jack pot with his latest lottery ticket. (In his lifetime, he's probably spent a million on scatch and wins, scratch and sniffs and medicated scratch cream.) Upon arriti ing at work a few hours later. you greet suspicious smiling faces and stifled giggles as you stride into your office. only to find an entire wall de- voted to wonderful snapshots of you including: one of you eat- ing spaghetti in your long johns: one of you downing small con- tainers of colored jello at a local Stag and Doe while doing the splits on the dance floor; a large one of you doing your best im- personation of your boss.. Throughout the day you get lots of annoying phone calls in- cluding one from the vet calling to say he's just put down' your pet python because it happened to slither out of its locked aquar- ium and, squeeze through the keyhole- of your front door in search of neighborhood victims. Upon arriving home, you've been told by a pot-bellied. be - speckled man standing on your front porch squinting into the Setting sun that there's been a horrible mistake.— you don't really own the house you've been living in for the past 15 years,' As you nestle into your blan- kets late that night. following hours of mysterious doorbell ringing, outrageous television news stories and prank tele- phone calls ("Is your refrigera- tor running?:..Then 1 suggest you go catch it!"). your head hits the pillow gratefully. You turn your aching head to. peer at the flashing red numbers on the clock. 12:00 midnight. You can rest now. According to famous psychol- ogist Frank Wisecrack, you can test yourself to discover your true April Fools personality. If you react to the day's practi- cal jokes and jibes with fits of • fury and threats of thrashing. he classifies you as a Number Three Fool. "You've got to control your temper," reads his handy dandy Fool Test pamphlet. "Let your' head cool in pre'iously boiled, soup for two days or longer, de- pending on your foul mood." Wisecrack claims if you react to April, Fools pranks with ap- propriate giggles and eyes - rolling -upwards motions, then you're a Fool Number Two. a well -adjusted individual who knows how to take a joke, re- gardless of how blatently unfun- ny it is or who it makes fun of. Lastly, if you don't even real- ize what's going on, or worse yet, entirely forget about this specialest of special days. you've got serious problems and should seek unprofessional help: .You take life too seriously. You're the victim of all victims, the big numbskull of the bunch. Whether you mean to or not, says Wisecrack. you're a Fool Number One. Relax. You've got another whole year before petty prank- sters torture you all over again. have timeto look at it. He was annoyed. ostensibly because the docu- ment was leaked, but in,reality because his own government lost the opportunity to leak it. All governments have leaked documents to selected reporters at times. but none anywhere near as often as the Harris administration. which has leaked virtually every 'announcement it has made since being sworn in in 1995, the only ex- ceptions being parts of its budgets. • One benefit the Tories receive from leaking statements is that they are reported twice -- first when leaked, with some reference like "the gov- ernment will announce today," and later usually with more detail after the official announce- ments. The government undeniably has been busy, but it looks more active than it is when every in: itiative it takes is reported twice: •The gov- ernment benefits as well because reporters who are allowed information that is supposedly se- cret often write suggesting it as more earth- shaking than it.really is and newspapers for the More leaks than the Titanic same reason give it more space. Reporters also find it difficult not to show gratitude to those who give them advance infor- mation. and are more likely to write it uncriti- cally in the way the government provided it, and don't insert reservations that might be war- ranted. such as it is doing less than promised or acting only because of pressure. A report based on a leak by government is un- likely to contain any balance in the form of re- action from an opposition party. Reporters know also that if they write it putting the gov- ernment in a bad light they may not be offered advance information in future, which would put them at a disadvantage against competitors. One reporter who accepted a leak but whose re- port was critical of government was told not to expect more. The government benefits from its own leaks • because if there are concerns and criticisms they emerge usually in reports of the official, second announcement, which is old news and given less prominence. Many readers by then have seen the earlier. government -friendly re- ports prompted by leaks and have read all they want on the subject. Some of Harris's own MPPs used to complain that he had one aide whose sole job was to leak stories to a reporter on a large -circulation paper. After the reporter left town, so did the aide, his usefulness expended. News media do not -write about Harris's leaks either, because they are part of the system that facilitates them or feel they are an inside story - of no interest to the public, although they give it misleading information. Harris's real concern is that he would have liked to leak the education announcement him- self so he could put his own spin on it, which would have been that government spending, contrary to many predictions, is stable and schooling is safe. But the Liberals had already put on their own spin, that a large slice of the spending is to push teachers to retire early and that many oth- ers will lose their jobs. For once they beat Har- ris at his own game.