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HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Citizens News, 1980-11-06, Page 4x ? ilin'in i-ri•°► ► T 7Ae— Png* 4 1 Citizens News Novemb.r 6 1980 • It's up to you IlHglllllllllllllllllllllllilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllillllllllllllllllllilllllullllilllz =iewp—J_.. _ nihil/llllll111111llllllllllllllllllllllllllllNllllllllllulllllullllll......l Milli l lilll l 111 1 1 1 l.... l ll lll......l l llllllllll....,.11ll h i l l lull 111 h i l l ll H i l l l......11 llllllillulullllll hill. Z.C.N. Go to the polls and vote Few municipal elections posses the charismatic allure and colorful rhetoric often found at the senior, and larger, provincial and federal levels. True, the feds and the provinces have the numbers game going for them in money and people. And often the election planks have more promises than a professional con on the hustle. Yet, for the little bit of autonomy that is still left in the hands of local governments, particularly in the smaller towns, townships and villages, there is a strong and urgent need to not only muster a suf- ficient number of candidates but, more important, a sufficient number of "knowledgeable and qualified" candidates. Voters in Zurich and area have many candidates to choose from and if elected should perform very adequately in the service of their 2ommunity. There is an excellent mixture of candidates who have both previous political experience or who posses a background which be advantageous in the political system. It very well could be that this election heralds a new era in municipal politics as the property owners in Zurich and Stanley township take a more active interest in the affairs of their community. This can only serve to benefit all parties concerned. This year almost every municipality in our area is having an election. That is good! And our thanks go to the men and women who have decided to run for the various offices available to them. By their com- munity minded actions these many candidates have taken a giant stride in defeating election com- placency. It remains only for the electorate to com- plete this victory over complacency by taking the time to evaluate the credentials of the candidates, to assess the issues and then, by all means, to go to the polls and vote on election day, Monday, November 10. PubNshsd Each Wednesday Ay J.W. Eedy Publications Ltd. Member: Canadian Weekly Newspapers Association OMarie Weekly News►apers News Editor - Tom Cr.ech Second Class Mail Registration Number 1385 Subscription Rotes: S8.50 per year in advance in Canada S19.S0 per year outside Canada Single copies 25d, Association i 1 e%IM1eot Rumblings By TOM CREECH Gnomes and characters 1111111111111111111. It's election time - all around -us tvith ,Ontario municipal elections only a few days away and the United States president election coming to a conclu- sion. In light of all this electoring which has been going on the following article appeared in the Stratford Beacon -Herald. What caught the writer's eye was the headline "Gnomes of Zurich." "ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) - The first thing I did when the express pulled into the Zurich station was to look around for a gnome. "Having lived in England for eight years and listened to a succession of Labor party politicians, I knew the gnomes of Zurich for what they were: mischievous malevolent money manipulators responsible for most of the world's monetary • problems. Lord George Brown copldn't have said it better. For it was he who popularized the term "Gnomes of Zurich," which afterwards fell so easily from the lips of prime ministers Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan, According to William Safire's- Political Dic- tionary, Brown, as British foreign secretary in 1964, accused the "gnomes of Zurich" of making.a killing on the revalued pound sterling when currency speculators who downgraded Britain's credit standing forced the Labor government to adopt another austerity budget. A gnome, especially a neutral, non-aligned Swiss one, was a handy bogeyman for any politician to have around at election time. Gnome flogging was a stan- dard feature of every paid party politicial broadcast during my tenure in the British Isles. The word gnome, Safire writes, was coined by a 16th -century Swiss alchemist who investigated mining and the diseases of miners. He says the word "is from the Greek ge-nomos, earth dweller, and originally meant a misshapen being who guarded the mines and quarries of the inner earth... The mining derivation made Brown's phrase especially apt: in Zurich, the gnomes deal in gold, a metal that was the quest of the alchemists." Wil Huygen's best selling Gnomes book of a few years back_ puts the average height of a full-grown gnome in the prime of life (about 275 years of age) at 15 centimetres. The gnomes of Zurich are much taller - mostly normal human size - and there was no trouble finding them. They were hurrying In and out of banks with an attache case in one hand and three newspapers in three languages tucked under the other arm. The male of the species invariably wears expen- sive Italian loafers dangling a gold tassel and a severe- ly cut German suit with shoulders that seem to conceal. the coathangers from his last three hotels. He 'wears gold -framed tinted eyeglasses, chomps on a Davidoff cigar and carries his garishly visa -ed passport in a handsomely tooled Florentine leather wallet. In their attache cases, gnomes carry a calculator, a fold -up umbrella, several financial magazines in several languages, a Swiss chocolate bar (the gnome quick lunch) and a bottle of mineral water (gnomes are suspicious of everything,. especially the local water) . Gnome conversation is a gazetteer of pesos, baht, zelotes, drachmas, rubles, krone, rupees, escudos, cruzeiros; yuan, ' dong, piasters and other global tender. Ask ' a gnome, "How's things?" and he will counterask if you want the computation in yen, marks or dollars. In general, they are stolid, almoststumpy in build, like Swiss rhedieval church architecture. Gnomes are prompt, meticulous, cautious, aggressive, slow with the quip but quick with the calculator. They jog, deter- minedly, for relaxation, and prefer the stately tea danz to the,disco. If someone approaches you in the Zurich airport and whispers, "change money?" - this isnot a gnome. But if the air reverberates with a chorus of unseen sprites cooing "the rate today is .6171 U.S. dollars to the Swiss franc, you know the gnomes of Zurich are at hand." Talking about gnomes, reminds us of the fact that each community has certain individuals who are referred to as "characters'. The term "character" is not used in a demeaning Please turn to page 9