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The Citizen, 1990-05-30, Page 5Arthur Black THE CITIZEN. WEDNESDAY, MAY 30, 1990. PAGE 5. Elvis knew how to treat machines There are two things I will always love about Elvis Presley. One is the way he sang “That’s Alright Mama’’. The other is the way he shot up television sets. Story goes that whenever Elvis played Vegas, there was an unspoken understand­ ing with the hotel management that the King might need a new TV on very short notice. In fact it wasn’t inconceivable that he might require two or even three new ones sent up to his suite in a single night. That’s because when it came to channel changing, Elvis was ahead of his time. If he was watching TV and somebody came on that he didn’t like, ol’ Elvis would haul out a gold-plated Colt 45, squint down the barrel and dust that program -- and the TV tube - straight into vacuumland. Legend has it that the TV icon Elvis most enjoyed blowing away was Robert Goulet, but that’s probably too delicious to be true. I can’t count the number of times I’ve wanted to shoot my television - or at least put a Greb Kodiak through the screen. I never do it, of course. You have to be rich or psychopathic to get away with that. The International Scene Chizse and effect in the money markets BY RAYMOND CANON I have, it seems, a number of students in my economic classes who come from the towns that wait in rapt anticipation the publication of yet another of my incisive articles on the world around us. At least one of them goes over each article very carefully to see if there is anything that I say in print which I contradict in class and I take it from this bit of information that the same student is ready to pounce. I guess that is the right word since pounce that student did as a result of reading my article to the effect that Ottawa was not always to blame for the economic decisions^ i.e. high interest rates which currently afflict us. Never one to back down from a challenge, at least an economic one, I took the student into an empty classroom and proceeded to use the blackboard to illustrate the point. Let me show you how this works. Let us assume that the United States, Germany or Japan or perhaps all three of them decide for some domestic reason to raise their bank rate or interest rate set by the central bank which guides all other interest rates in the country. First of all you have to realize that they do it without giving any consideration whatso­ ever to what Canadians will think about it or how they will be affected by it. Keep in mind that we have free trade in money; that is, money can flow across borders without any difficulty and there is a great deal of money in savings acocunts or pension funds looking for the highest rate possible. If the managers of this money decide that this attractive interest rate is not to be found at home in Canada but in other places, they will take the money they have invested in bonds or short term savings in this country and move it elsewhere. What this does is create a demand in Canada for foreign currencies and the Toward the end there, Elvis kind of had both bases covered. My TV isn’t the only hunk of hardware that fuels my homicidal fantasies. I’ve often dreamt of drop-kicking my Ronson electric, cuffing my clock radio and slap-shooting my bedside alarm clock right out the bedroom window. My eight foot Amana side-by-side is too massive for a simple, unarmed frontal assault, but that doesn’t stop me from entertaining reveries of dropping a burning tractor tire over its top and necklacing the mother into the big display room in the sky. What characteristic do all of the afor- mentioned chunks of technology share? Treachery. They have all, at one time or another, betrayed me. Usually when I needed them most. Not being rich - or owning a gold plated Colt 45 - I have forgiven, but not forgotten. But I’ve got a hunch the day of reckoning is at hand. In Atlanta, Georgia there is a place called The Bullet Stop. It’s a shooting range where you are the hunter and the quarry is - well, your sock-eating washing machine, maybe. Or perhaps that stupid toaster that skims burnt crusts across your kitchen like a skeet shoot. At Bullet Stop you can rent shotguns, handguns, semi and full automatics and then proceed to riddle the utility of your choice. And some of them are tougher than they look. One disgruntled housewife lit into her vacuum cleaner with a Thompson submachine gun. It absorbed 50 rounds before it finally hoovered its last. result is totally predictable. The exchange rate of the Canadian dollar will drop below the level which the government wants it; it will, in fact, continue dropping or else stay at this undesirable rate until the Canadian government, i.e. the Bank of Canada, bows to the pressure and raises our rates to prevent any further flow out. All this has come about, don’t forget, as a result of decisions made in Washington, Tokyo or Bonn but most assuredly not in Ottawa. What makes the situation even worse is that high interest rates are used in any modern economy to fight inflation. You may recall that back in the early 1980’s, the then Liberal government resorted to ex­ tremely high rates (about 20 per cent) in order to fight the double digit inflation that we were suffering at that time. It worked but it took time to have any effect. For this reason, if we are in the middle of trying to bring down the rate of inflation when the other countries decide to raise their interest rates, we suffer something of a double whammy. That is precisely the situation right now. You think that is all? Far from it! We have in effect a triple whammy. You have all heard of the large budgetary deficit which has to be financed and, if you have Letter Take a look THE EDITOR, Although the recent furor over the “Rails to Trails’’ idea seems currently laid to rest at the local level, the plan is far from forgotten at the provincial, national and international levels. The June, 1990, issue of the National Geographic (available at libraries) features an excellent article on the concept of linear parks. Mabel’s Grill Continued from page 4 hear they’re having a crackdown on street vendors in Toronto. It says in the paper they may even seize some of the vending carts to keep people from selling where they aren’t supposed to. “The way prices Is mankind about to overthrow the technological tyrant? Last month some Pasadena, California neighbours threw the world’s first Sledge-O-Matic Party. Parti­ cipants gathered up all the machines in their lives that either didn’t work or performed perversely, put them in a big pile and then kicked hell out of them. Balky gizmos that breathed their last at this year’s Sledge-O-Matic included a self­ winding wrist watch that didn’t, a cassette player still non-functional after nine cord replacements and a colour TV that went on the fritz during the NCAA Final Four Basketball Playoffs. Where are these aberrant appliances now? Ground to techno-rubble, every one. Frankly, I like the concept - and I approve of Bullet Stop too. So would Ned Ludd. Ned was a splendid anarchist who led a band of merry pranksters through the north of England in the early 1800s, smashing textile machines wherever they found them. The Luddites lost the battle of course. The Industrial Revolution swallow­ ed us all, and sometimes when I’m sitting in a car that won’t start, or an elevator that won’t elevate or contemplating the gray, blank stare of a computer monitor that’s just eaten my newspaper column, I dream of throwing my own Sledge-O-Matic party and inviting Ned and his gang. It would be a grand bash. We’d have music. Elvis, of course. On a hand-cranked Victrola. Letter from the editor been reading this column, you realize by now that a lot of this debt has to be financed by selling government bonds to foreign investors. These same investors who have no special loyalty to Canada, may decide that the bonds of the United States or even Switzerland are preferable to those of Canada. Again the result is predictable. We cannot sell our bonds under such conditions until our government through the Bank of Canada raises our bank rate so that it can once again compete favourably with other countries’ rates. If we had a strong economy which was able to stand on its own two feet, we could thumb our noses at the machinations of other countries. However, beholden as we are to foreign investors to finance our budgetary deficit and with a bad deficit in our current account as well (that is another horror story), we can only follow meekly along with the others, not daring to call our home our own. You can see now that there is a definite cause and effect in our interest rate procedure. I hope that you can also see that we will continue to be on the receiving end until we start living within our means as a country. So far I have seen little evidence of the latter thing happening. at trails Unless those who are opposed to the idea can guarantee that their farms and rural properties will remain in their families for the next 100 generations, I suggest they read this article and re-think their position, lest the rightful heritage of all our children be lost forever. Toby Rainey Brussels 887-6086 are in Toronto it’s about the only place you can afford to eat. Besides, you can kill two birds with one stone. While you’re caught in a traffic jam you can open the window, order a hot dog and have it delivered and eaten before you get a chance to move.’’ Caught in the middle BY KEITH ROULSTON I don’t know if it’s more exciting, but it certainly is a challenge to edit a newspaper that’s caught in the middle of a whole lot of larger communities. First of all, of course, there is the sheer size of the area we try to cover at The j Citizen. From the Moncrief area in the east to nearly Dungannon in the west, from 3 south of Londesboro to north of Belgrave, we cover an area of 200 square miles. It means that we have all or parts of two incorporated villages and seven townships in our coverage area. Students from our area go to seven different public elemen- 'i tary schools, let alone the different i separate and private schools. ; But the fun begins when you have to sort ; out the other parts of our coverage. ' Newspapers in large centres, for instance, just make it a practice to report on the activities at their local hospital. They can cover just about everything of importance at that hospital because they only have one community hospital. But residents of The Citizen’s coverage area could go to any one of the hospitals in Listowel, Seaforth, Clinton, Goderich or Wingham. We’ve always been hampered ; in those “first baby of the year’’ photos, for instance, because how did you decide if the baby was from our area. It also means that if we donated the same amount of space to each of the hospitals as the newspaper that only has one hospital to cover, we’d be a hospital newsletter rather ’ than a community newspaper. f Each week we’re also confronted with the guessing game of which police depart­ ment might have covered a particular accident or crime that has taken place. The situation is at least a little simpler here but, depending on where the event takes place, we might have to call OPP detachments at | Wingham, Goderich or Listowel. But the fun really begins when we try to cover activities of local students at the high . school level. Other papers, for instance, have one high school commencement to < cover. We have five: Wingham, Clinton, Goderich, Seaforth and Listowel, if we want to give full coverage to the students from our area. Any of the newspapers in ? these communities can just give full coverage to the commencement activities and figure they’ve got it covered. If we gave equal attention to each of those schools there’d be room for nothing but high school commencement news for several weeks in a row. This leads to the hunt to figure out which students come from our area and which don’t. Recently, for instance, we’ve been going crazy trying to ferret out the successful track and field athletes from our area. The list of winners comes out in the daily newspapers just with the name of student and school he or she represented. We can hardly devote space to the Madill student who comes from Teeswater or the Central Huron student from Varna so we have to try to figure out just who comes ji from our readership area. i Easier said than done. Many of the ' members of the team who we do know, , don’f'even know for sure where their j teammates come from unless they live next door. The schools aren’t much more help. Often the office staff and teachers haven’t the slightest idea where the student comes from before he walks in the door in the morning. All this leads to two sinking feelings whenever you try to publish the names of winning athletes or Ontario Scholar win­ ners. One is that you miss somebody and , have some reader angry and offended. The other is that uneasy feeling you get i whenever you can’t verify something as being correct. One of the cardinal rules of this business is that you’re supposed to i double check everything before you pub­ lish it but if you can’t find anybody who can tell you who is from where, how are you j supposed to do it?