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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes-Advocate, 1983-09-21, Page 4Page 4 Times -Advocate, September 21 1983 imes Times Established 1873 Advocate Established 1881 Amalgamated 1924 dvocate Serving South Huron, North Middlesex & North Lambton Since 1873 Published by J.W. Eedy Publications Limited . IORNJ Ftl)1' Publisher SIM HFCKt [ F (1%f'1ti'ini Atan,lgr•r 14111 RAI [[N i door HARRY D[VRl[5 Composition Manager ROSS HAt'c;Ii Assistant Editor DICK IONGKIND Business Manager Published Each Wednesday Morning at Exeter, Ontario Second Class Mail Registration Number 0386. Phone 235-1331 , SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Canada $21.00 Per year; U.S.A. $56.00 C.W.N.A., O.C.N.A. CLASS 'A' and 'ABC' Should have volunteered Prime Minister. Trudeau has been accused of dereliction of duty in not checking out the background of former mines minister Roger Simmons who resign- ed his cabinet post after a brief 10 -day stay because he was facing charges of tax evasion. The criticism is justified although it would appear that the main concern is that Trudeau would appoint anyone foolish enough not to decline the appointment when he knew of his difficulties with the revenue department. Simmons suggests that had he been asked if there +CNA BLUE RIBBON AWARD 1980 fCV BLUE RIBBON A1^:ARD was anything in his background that may embarrass the government, he would have revealed the situation. Obviously, he should have volunteered the information and that such a lack of common sense was displayed is incomprehensible. Nonetheless, cabinet appointees who all have ac- cess to sensitive and confidential information should be routinely subjected to exhaustive security review before they take office as well as being required to search their own souls for reasons that they should not be placed in such as high level of trust. Get the habit Wearing seatbelts in cars should by now be a mat- ter of habit in Ontario. Yet Transport Canada statistics indicate that barely half of the province's drivers buckle up. Perhaps Ontario Solicitor -General George Taylor's campaigns to have the law enforced more rigorously will encourage remiss drivers and their passengers to wear seatbelts - but for how long? Once police relax their vigilance, any offenders will doubtless revert to their old, bad habits. One city's experience with spot seatbelt checks suggests that intensive campaigns toenforc„:the law get immediate resuits. Police report that when the checks began only half the motorists were complying with the law.; by the end, 82 percent were wearing their belts. In the longer term, however, there's clearly a lot of backsliding. To some citizens of course, compulsory seatbelt legislation remains an encroachment of their rights. They are. strongly, if misguidedly, opposed to man- datory use of seatbelts. Many more, however, go un- buckled out of indifference; or because they're lackadaisical or simply fogetful. Still, it's )Hard to understand how half the drivers in the province can continue to ignore seatbelts when they're a fixture in cars. Evidence of their safety value is far more persuasive than claim's that seatbelts are sometimes an impediment to occupants of a car. To the extent that they reduce injuries on the road, and consequently medical bills paid through public health insurance, seatbelts have a lasting social and economic value. The claim that compulsory seatbelt legislation offends individual rights is specious. It's no more a violation of rights that the mandatory use.ofhard hats on construction sites- What happened to Sunday? Although Sunday is still a day -of worship for many, it has also become a day of frantic activity - far remov- ed from what the Bible indicated was to be a day of rest. Moral and religious grounds entirely aside, a great many people seem to have forgotten that rest is a necessary component of successful living. Listening to radio early this past Sunday morning we heard a long list of places and events where the restless could go to spend the day. Fall fairs, parades. sports events, boat and horse races, baseball games. The list seemed endless. It is true, of courFe, that rest may be described as any sort of change from the daily grind required to earn a living, but one of the great values of worthwhile rest is found in the quietness which provides room for reflection, for enjoyment of family affection and relief Disadvan tage Those who remember the old cartoon strip which featured a chap by the name of Henry will recall the numerous occa sions when he was banished to sit in the corner of his classroom with a dunce cap placed upon his head. The scene was not unusual perhaps in classrooms of a previous era when: a youngster was punished in that manner for misbehaving or for poor academic performance. When it was the latter, the student's poor performance was only compounded by the punishment as he fell even farther behind his classmates as he sat With his face to the wall while they continued to (earn their lessons. To an extent, it would appear that the negative results of that situation are be- ing attained by the action being taken against the Soviet Union regarding the re cent shooting down of a Korean airplane in which some 280 civilians died. As punishment for That atrocity, the Moscow Circus performances were cancelled in several Canadian cities and daily now we hear of North American basketball and hockey teams cancelling games with touring groups from Russia. - The cancellations of those visits appear justified. but one wonders if those cancellations aren't negating the oppor tunity to inform the average Ivan about the incident and to let him know how bar- baric it is considered. • * « « The fact is, the average Russian citizen knows very little about the magnitude of the incident. Reports from Moscow would indicate that the Soviets are telling their citizens only that a spy plane was shot down over Russion territory. Given that same information, most of us would quickly dismiss any suggestion from the fierce activity which the workaday world demands. So many people have lost the ability to simply relax. If they must stay home at the weekend, out comes the power lawn mower to help fill the void created by lack of more mercenary activity and to drive quieter neighbors nuts. As is the case with so many of the guiding rules set out in scripturc., the designation of Sunday as a day of rest was based on a wise understanding of human beings. We need one day in seven to recharge our men- tal and physical batteries - a difficult achievement if we are rushing off at top speed to catch a parade 75 miles away. to du of wrong -doing oil the part of our national defence system. 1t would then follow -that we would not be particularly upset over the fact our basketball team's trip to North America BATT'N AROUND with the editor had been cancelled because the citizens of North America were upset over the fact ()tie of their spy planes had been shot down while violating Russian Territory. The Soviet leaders know well the reasons for the cancellations, but you can rest assured that those reasons are not be- ing conveyed to the teams involved or the general population behind the Iron ('ur- tain. That's not the wad the system works! In effect, the basketball and hockey players are being banished to the corner of the room to the dunce's chair and any chance there may have been to inform them of the incident is thereby lost. Also lost is any opportunity for those players to return home with information that could have been passed along to their friends and acquaintances. « ♦ « • « A person would have to be naive to think that details of the incident could be easi- ly passed along to a group of Russian athletes visiting in North America. They are generally well -protected from any at- tempts at indoctrination or communica- Wingham Advance Times e's chair tion with the people they are visiting but they can not be totally protected. Some well-placed placards On Russian, of course ► in the auditoriums or arenas they visit could give them some hint of the situation. Even some messages over the public address system could he employed. The reaction of learn officials would probably be to pull their squads off the playing field, but at (east they would have some questions to answer from the athletes. • • * * • Some would argue that such attempts at propaganda would be useless, but it does appear that it is worth the attempt. II is impossible for this writer to assume that the average Russian citizen has been totally programmed to not think or question that which he may see or hear in a foreign country No state can control a person's mind to that extent over a prolonged period of time, although it is undoubtedly easier to control when the influences of the outside world are cut off. There is little doubt that it is akin to walking a tight rope to exert any punish- ment on the Soviet (Inion without adding. more fuel to the cold war or negating some of the small links of communication that have been established. History, and indeed current events. would indicate (hat the Soviet leaders will seldom be swayed by pressures exerted from the outside world; many of those. such as wheat embargoes. being seft- defeat ing: The main hope still stems from pressures from within but they will never be successful if the free world makes the Russians sit in their corner of the world with their faces to the wall. Same old racket CJf rimencusaxitliticeM,A, An ode to the young One of the many things that occasionally arouse my ire is ancient, self- satisifed, right-wing jour- nalists who reiterate that Canadian young people are basically bums, spoil- ed by affluent parents, ready to flop onto welfare, eager to grab unemploy- ment insurance after a few months of work, lazy on the job, irresponsible, averse to anything resembling a dirty job, or a menial one, whatever that is. These writers would prefer our young people to besemi-robots, like the Japanese, who join a com- pany, eat with the coni-. pany, suckle from the company, clap hands when the company gives them a holiday, and are retired when they are too old to work any more, but not fired: they get a job sweeping up the joint at barely enough yen to put rice on the table. The same writers celebrate young Germans who go into an appren- ticeship at 14, work like dogs for peanuts until they are journeymen, and by the time they are master craftsmen, are too old to enjoy anything but a glass of beer and a snooze in front of the television set. That is a lot of crap, and one of the worst purveyors of it is R.J. Needham, an occasional columnist with Canada's self -boasting ti tle of Canada's National Newspaper, one of the great misnomers of the century. if a man bites a dog in Toronto, it's front page stuff. If a dog bites a man in the Yukon, or a halibut bashes a fishing -boat in Newfie, that's a little "amusing" paragraph on Page 18. ' Mad dogs attack natives". —Crazed monster fish smashes dinghy; four killed." But back to Needham and people like him. When he began his column, then daily, I liked it. He was ' good for an aphorism or two. He had a refreshing" attitude toward women and young people. Some of Sugar and Spice Dispensed By Smiley his fairy-tale analogies were delightful. He got out and talked to. kids. He thought they swere great and their straight middle- class parents were all wrong. He has changed almost completely. He now thinks most young people are bums, that Canadians have no spunk left in them. He goes on and on about how he's never been out of a job in his life. He quotes the Wall St. Jour- nal, and most of his wit comes out of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. He carries on his fiction that there isn't a male in Canada with any sense of gallantry, humor or courtesy toward the op- posite sex. He makes snide remarks about homosex- uals, and gives the general impression that he'd like to see the cops out with clubs. keeping "order" by bashing anybody who pro- tests against anything. i have signaled out Mr. Needham, but he's only a symbol. I once heard him say that no poetry had ben written worth reading since Tennyson. That's because Tennyson rhym- ed, you see. I gave him the appropriate one -word answer, and he had the grace to back off a bit. But what I am getting to, and it's taking me a while, is that most of the young people in Canada. and their elders, are will- ing to work, and want to work, but they. don't want to be slaves or blue-collar workers necessarily They want to be independent. They don't want to say, "Ah, so!" when the boss says they are going to get a wage cut; or "Bitte schoen" when the boss says they'll work Sunday morning; or else. • This is brought home to me time and again when I meet former students sweating away as waitresses or laborers so that they can go to college, instead of lying around on welfare or unemployment or bumming off their parents. Oh, sure, there are some who do. But they're bums. and they always will be. And there are plenty of them in other countries. And always will be. But parents are smartening up, and saying, "Out or get a job." iU is tightening' up, and about time. Welfare is being cut back to those in real need. But most people want to work; and are happy when they are working. I've seen an excellent example in the past couple of weeks. A construction company has torn our street to ribbons with their huge back -hoes and front- end loaders. These guys are mostly young. They work like dogs, but' there's nobody going around with a whip to make sure they don't slow down., There doesn't even seem to be a foreman, running around. shouting epithets. They enjoy what they're doing, though it's hard, - back- breaking work, long hours, and most wages below $7 an hour. (Try to get a plumber or electri- cian for that.) They're happy; they're pleasant; they're co- operative. They don't quit the minute it's noon, or six. They finish what they're doing. They don't as a government ' crew might do, stand around with one guy digging a hole and six others wat- ching him. The work they do in an hour would exhaust the average postal worker, teacher, civil servant, in eight. They don't take five coffee breaks a day. They hate some of the things they're doing, but they're happy to be working. And what do they have to look forward to when the job's done, and bad weather slows construc- tion work to a crawl? They'll probably have to. go on pogey, to keep their families alive. If that's wrong, then let's create a state in which a guy is told where he's going to work. how much he's going to get, what size accom- modation he can have, lots of whips and guns, no right to say what he wants about his boss or the prime minister - a mass of "happy" workers, produc- ing like hell. for no known reason. Horns of a dilemma One of the courses that young doctors are being asked" to take in Ontario universities is a course in ethics. There are so many situations facing doctors in which the question put to them is not so much a medical one (usually that decision is fairly straightforward), but a problem such as abortng an unborn infant or sup- plying an ;illegal dose of heroin for a cancer victim who is begging for a more effective pain -reliever than the one which is mak- ing him constantly sick to his stomach along w ith severe al)dominal pains. it tln'ns out during (he suhse- Perspectives By Syd Fletcher other side-effects. An interesting case that has been coming up recently is in emergency wards where a patient comes in complaining of ' quent operation that the doctor finds a soft plastic container of drugs inside the intestine. The patient has swallowed it for some reason (probably illegal) and now the doctor is put on the horns of a dilemma. Does he pretend he has never seen the drugs? Does he merely hand them hack to the patient? Does he call in the police and the Itt'I4l1''' I thereby violating his oath of pa- tient confidentiality). Does he wish that he hadn't come in to work to- day? No doubt Sometimes I'm sure no atnount of high salary compensates for the grey hairs of that kind of deci, sion making.