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.

***

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

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Next column: Do I go with two emails or a possible threat to national security?

Two days ago I mentioned an email from Alex L. and yesterday my reply.

I think I handled things pretty well, didn’t blow my stack or tear a strip off the guy etc., though for a second or two I really wanted to... just once!

I think I might use the little back and forth as fodder for my next column because there are a couple of things Alex said about me that still stick in my craw.

First, he mentioned that at the age of 10 he “knew the adults were crazy [and] willfully blind to what was obvious to any child 40 or 50 years ago, that the path our society was on was unsustainable.” 

His words stung.

When I was 10, not only did I not know an unsustainable path from a hole in the ground, if someone had asked me about the path society was on I would have pointed to Highway 59, the main route out of town.

And I was way too busy playing catch, delivering papers or cutting our huge lawn with a stupid push mower to look up ‘unsustainable’ in the dictionary.


I did know, however, that adults were crazy. The clothes they wore were not rad at all. Not even neato.

Second, Alex laid one on me about the title of the piece, that in it I was “telling everyone else NOW we should get ready to act ("get ready" to act - ?!).”

Hey, my editor picked that title, not me.

The original was something like “Got five minutes and seven bucks? Have I got a deal for you.”

Not too exciting, I admit.

Maybe I should go with a completely different story.

If I can prove Tim Horton’s recent decision to use self-serve coffee machines is a threat to national security, maybe even mass insecurity, I may have a winner.

gah