Deforest City Blues PT 2: Where do Londoners get complete news?

The welfare state has roared back to bite the British lion in the rump.

Ditto for the Irish economy.

Saddled with massive debt and staggering under unaffordable social programs, both the British and the Irish are facing massive cuts.

So begins a recent editorial in our local paper, The London Free Press. (Dec. 28, 2010)

And shortly after I read it, I began to write a long but useful rant. (Some stuff you just shouldn’t hold inside!)

Though the headline, i.e., ‘Canada must take lessons from European debt woes,’ wasn’t a bad start (we all might be able to learn something from the debt crisis in Ireland and England), the first 3 sentences above left a lot to be desired, especially certain key words.

I.e., the welfare state... unaffordable social programs.

Does QMI Agency call this “reliable, complete and up-to-the-minute news coverage” as per their mission statement?

Don’t make me laugh. If social programs are the only or chief cause of fiscal problems in Britain and Ireland then I’ll eat my hat - the sexy straw number made in Caracas, Venezuela!


["The sexy straw number from Caracas": photo GH]

And if that’s the chief lesson Canada will learn from European debt woes then I’ll even eat the silk hat band.

The anonymous editorialist makes the point that “this country has weathered well the economic storm that has battered the U.S. and Europe. But we can’t sit smugly back on our laurels.”

Good for him or her. Smug is bad. Cocky, even worse.

But to suggest only the following remedies is way past smug, way beyond cocky.

“We cannot continue to fund costly programs such as all-day kindergarten when we can't afford them.

“We must get civil service salaries and lavish pensions under control.

“We must get public sector pay hikes under control - now.”

Why, the writer’s list is so incomplete, so devoid of proper balance, it is little wonder he/she didn’t provide their name.

To conclude the above list by saying ‘they are ticking time bombs waiting to blow up in the faces of future generations’ is so much a joke the whole piece deserves to be posted on the comics page.

And - coincidentally - on the comics page, the same day, I found a Dilbert strip that delightfully puts the editorial in proper perspective.

Below is Scott Adams’ second panel of three.


["Corporations actually transfer their tax burden?": dilbert.com]

So, what’s the punch line?

Stay tuned.

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Scott’s first panel and Deforest City Blues PT 1 can be found here.

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