OPINION. OZ The Ga Gti dar Sun is PUBLISHER JON JARRETT : NANCY LINGLEY JON JARRETT EDITOR ADVERTISING MANAGER JOHN SNELGROVE: PRODUCTION MANAGER DONNA ORY. ADVERTISING REP, DENISE GOLDSTONE CIRCULATION MANAGER CATHERINE Ross — FRANK ISERNIA REPORTER ADVERTISING REP, NICOLE BEETSTRA BRENDAN HALPER REPORTER PRODUCTION CLIFF WOFFENDEN PRODUCTION Direct Department Phones Display Advertising editorial comment Fun and games in the provincial legislature Let the games begin! ’ Have you ever gotten the feeling that life in the B.C. Legislature is nothing but fun and games? Where else can you act like children and get paid like adults? With that in mind, it is amazing what is going on in our provincial capital of late. The Social Credit Party is either enroute to a political graveyard, or on their way to a landslide victory in the next election, depending on who you talk to. Premier Rita Johnston has clearly taken the early lead in the race to succeed Bill Vander Zalm as the leader of the party, but her critics claim that she has gotten an unfair advantage by becoming Interim Premier. . . There are even rumours that Johnston may call a snap election if the polls indicate good public Tesponse to the new provincial budget. That election would come with her party still not having held their leadership convention. Just where you put the resignation of Mel Cou-_ velier into all of this, only our Premier really knows. His resignation only adds the confusion that sur- rounds Victoria. And you can’t ignore the fact that those very same MLA’s and cabinet ministers that were stand- ing right behind Vander Zalm prior to his resigna- tion have done an about face and now refuse to accept him as a member of the legislature. It is ironic that as the legislature reopened this week Vander Zalm found himself assigned to a seat about as far away from the Social Credit hierarchy as humanly possible. In fact, Vander Zalm’s new seat is the same one that Jack Kemp had when sitting as an indepen- dent. It is situated on the opposite side of the floor from the Social Credit, on the opposition's side of the house. If it is at all possible, the public may in fact be feeling sympathetic towards Vander Zalm. - He has been left all alone to fend for himself, with all of his old friends having deserted him for greener pastures. The bottom line here seems to be for our so- called ‘political leaders’ to take whatever action suits them best, not what action suits the Province of British Columbia best. By Don Addis ‘Try swallowing the anchor! — Whatcha, mate! ‘Ang about! Hatta filippin’, mol! I got news fer yuh, , , The other curds and whey I’m up them apples and pears at the h’office, So I picks up the dog and bone and calls me trouble and strife. No answer, Complete pain in the Gregory Peck, if you asks me! Out, out again! Probably at the chain and crank, Or watching the flamin’. cus- - tard and jelly. Or buying a tit-for-tat, No, you haven't gone starkers! " ‘That's perfectly clear and acceptable English — provided you were bom in ide, London, within the sound of the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow Church. How we've trashed and man- gled the French language across the years, he said petulantly. . . as an aside. Bow: tha’s a remote corruption of beau, but it should be belle. The name of that church honors the Virgin Mary: Mary the Beautiful. Or what about all those pubs, here and in Britain, called The Elephant and Castle? From the French, y’know: a glottal-stopped, tormented-tongue version of L'Infante de Castille. But that’s for another article. Let’s get back to the Bows and the Bells. T owe you a translation of that first bit of frolic or you will go starkers. Here it is: “The other day I was upstairs at the office. So I picked up the phone and called my wife. No answer. A complete pain in the neck! + again! Probably at the bank. and it’s one of the more humorous, clever, witty and inventive resources of the English language. Cruel, too, if you just happen to be a wind-on- prairie-wheat Canadian and don’t understand a word of it. But it’s easy. Take a word, any word. Find one that rhymes with it. Add another word complementary to Hannaford Syndicated Columnist It was all fairly predictable. The Ontario NDP announced a deficit. A huge $9.7 billion deficit, ly. The BC Socreds said, “Ah! See what happens when you get an NDP goverment.” ‘The Ontario NDP said, “Well, we knew they were going to say that,” as if that somehow neutralized the fact that they had just brought down Cana- da’s largest ever provincial deficit. The NDP in BC said, “Well of course the SoCreds would grumble, the one that rhymes. You en noms bilingual Cockney-Canadian. Here’ an example, That:trouble and strife of his or, if you want, cheese and kisses (missus) was probably out spending money. Money. .. ah yes!... honey, What goes with honey? Bees,.of course. Bees and honey... .money. Not bad! Piece of duck and drake (cake)! * But give his China plate (mate) her due. She was probably out paying the Duke of Kent (rent), or buying a pound of cough and stutter (butter), a bride and groom (broom) or even a case of Forsyte Saga (lager). « I mean, she wasn’t wasting the family’s dot and dash (cash) on pure tom-foolery (jewelry). His fork and knife (wife) has a crust of bread (bead) on her shoulders. She knows how.to keep the dot and dash in the old Davy Crocket (pocket). Other- wise, they'd be coal and coke (broke), out in the pleasure and pain (rain), in a cold George Raft (draught). Or that lithe and supple (couple) might even land up in. the bucket and pail (jail), svosting {nthe watten's Enos Aiea ). Slang, all slang, is a secret ‘lan. initiates to amuse, Btar- : tle, stun, deceive but especially to conceal the real meaning from out- siders. ‘Fhat explains why hoods, grifters, con artists, heavy-metal rock- ers, actors, soldiers, lawyers, doctors, educators, tax collectors and all the rest of us who belongs to.an in-group are so inordinately fond of it. What ‘was. once slang often -becomes part of the language, accept- ed even by » Blossog- yaphers and comma-counters; Think of the simple word man and what we've done to it across the years: stiff, bozo, bloke, guy, rube, prole, rubble- head, nerd, pleb, lowlife, grunt, sap and homo sap — right down to that most maligned (and over-taxed) of all creatures, the Man on the Street.) ‘We all use slang but those Cock- neys and their fellow Brits, when they aren't rhyming or blimeying, are among the most inventive wi in tbe world. Try swallowing the. anchor, if you want. That's Royal Navy talk Yor just and loafing about, And in the process, you might want.a few mugs of dark and dirty (rum and cola)’ before you bate the doggedly devoted to the ladies. Nice bitta lingo, now ain't it, mate? RR. Jeffels is a Richmond free- lance writer and former principal of The Open Learning Institute.’ B.C. PARLIAMENT RECONVENES... =yatt “but that’s ai to deflect criticism from © the fact that they’re’ going to have a‘ deficit budget themselves.” Yes, it was predictable but don’t be deceived by the posturing. There really are two very different philosophies at work bere. The SoCreds in BC are genuinely horrified by budget deficits and if they have one in BC, it will be with profuse es and consi ment. Socialists however find nothing ter- tibly wrong with a budget deficit. in. Heaven knows, they have the wor- thiest of intentions, after all. They have a whole long list of people they want to help and we should want that too, right? So why not take a little loan to tide us over? Only trouble is, so often the ship gets sunk and tomorrow never comes. Actually, that’s not the only trou- ble. One wonders whether a certain amount of basic maths wouldn't be helpful. A ding to the ently: for ars monilis. ne Furthermore, who are you trying to help and how? One example of the NDP in action in Ontario came to Light just before Christmas. It was deter- mined that abortion was not sufficient- ly available to women in remote communities, so the provincial gov- emment has begun buying the plane fares for them to fly into Toronto. One suspects ful research into the budgets of all their ministries would reveal many a payoff to this or that interest group, few of which could be justified as in the public interest. Leaving aside - for once - the high- ly charged abortion aspect, the most charitable interpretation that I can imagine is that this was job protection for Air Ontario Pilots. The rot set in during the 1930s when the British economist JM Keynes proposed a, ‘puna priming’. much of the deficit is intended to save jobs - about 70,000 jobs at an estimat- ed average cost per job of $90,000. I ‘hope the analyst was wrong because if that is truly so, it would have been a lot cheaper to write these people a cheque for $45,000 each, which pru- role for gi seized upon it and launched the New Deal, setting the USA on track for what has become a multi-trillion dollar national debt. This has not all come But it was the New Dealers who made debt ‘acceptable and every wes! tin Country has been following suit since. And going bust in the process. But some people never learn and in fiscal matters, our socialists are fright- eningly slow to change. Dave Barrett spent money like a drunken sailor while be was in power in BC, trying perhaps to do for the province what Mr Trudeau was doing to Canada. is even a kernel of truth in that. There’s nobody so down on the poor as somebody who hauled himself out of the gutter on his own efforts. On the other hand, with the social- ists of the world, we have too much beart and not enough bead - and a cyn- ical appreciation that the public will vote for the biggest handout. “But we may as well face it now, fish like to swim and the NDP likes to spend. If Mike Harcourt gets the chance, he will do exactly what Bob Rae is doing and for the same reasons. If BC chooses to elect the NDP later Sus Yeaty 20 De Hut let nobody be surprised if in twelve months time we are looking at some kind of record deficit in BC and we are all where the money went - sl view is going to come from. Responding to unfair attacks As a Crown Corporation, the CBC has to expect public scrutiny. But the one-sided, ill-informed attacks being . launched against ‘one of the CBC’s — and the nation’s — finest journalist cry out for a response. the journalist: Elly Alboim, Ottawa bureau chief for CBC TV news,.and the man who was my boss for more thar a decade. © At issue: Alboim’s comments to a 1987 academic symposium on the Mcech'Lake Accord. Alboim — who also teaches journalism at Carleton — gave the S Garoonal view of Prime Mini. ‘Trudean could not. That was, to my mind, the sole ‘motivation for the fed- eral initiative.” Alboim went on to say Meech was a “highly political and highly cynical exercise that had very, very little to do with the re-constitutionalizing of Tough stuff. But note Alboim’s comments dealt with the Meech pro- cess, not with the content of the accord itself. Now Queen’s University professor John Meisel is using some of Alboimn’s remarks to claim CBC TV news deliberately set out to torpedo ‘Meech. : “I was aghast and shocked by what ° struck me as the appallingly arrogant and facile stance of one of the most senior CBC joumalists .. ay * “So far Meisel is okay, He's enti- tled to his view. But then like so many un, or under-informed critics of his _ the:CBC, he goes that step too far, Brian Mulroney's motivation for - y for Meech. “Brian ‘Mulroney needed, his own purposes, to establish that he could do in Quebec: what Pierre’ * 2g ing a plot to pper the accord. : In the summer of 1987, writes Meisel, ‘the CBC “was bitterly bostile * and was vigirously trying to drum up commentators that would attack” (the accord) Bver since the Warren commis- sion, the quickest way to generate a wave of uninformed public support is to allege a conspiracy by sinister forces. And Meisel goes that route, suggesting Al Alboim had decided be would hamess the power of the CBC to defeat Meech. “I am deeply trou- bled by any joumalist in Possession . . - of an immensely powerful instru- ment of opinion to Sopot his bias thesis. Meisel’s comments receive fervid support from Ottawa Citizen colum- nist Marjorie Nichols. He attacks on Alboim are beneath contempt, to say nothing of ber curious conclusion: this affair proves that because the ’ CBC is government funded, the net- . work is a. government mouthpiece. (Mayj: pay attention her, Meisel says the CBC tried to kill Meech, if he's corer. now can the CBC bea gov- emment so critical a role to himself or berself, ‘without being in any way accountable to anyone.”..* It makes a fine theory, but. it just isn’t true. I know. I was at Meech Lake the night the deal was signed, and worked on all major aspects of CBC: TV's coverage of the ensuing debate. We spoke for many hours about Meech and its ‘potential impact. I never knew Alboim’s view of the Accord and still don’t. Reading Meisel’s piece, one leams of alboim’s © Complaints about process, but ever then you’ get only part of the story because’ Meisel uses selective quotes © Alboim is a professional, whose Personal candor with a group of his Perth academics left him open to But that’s a lot different than being guilty. © of. Sebiberaiely Setting out to acc the charge now lev- eled at him. cBC management should realize responsi .son” pe thei cutis See eho the most serious time in our nation’s history. ‘Wednesday, May 8, 1991 The Castlegar Sun Page 7A Letters to the. Editor. POWEREX meeting made benefits clear ‘To the Editor: i. I am‘ among those who went, to ‘one of the British Columbia and ‘POWEREX open house and infor- mation meetings held throughout ‘our province Tecently | to help us to d the trade as of British Columbia, Alberta and. the United States. Anyone who ° attended could no help but come away with a better understanding of this almost arcane, business and bow it can bring about savings for conducted by some of the utilities 1 am certain that ‘all can clearly ‘Young people applauded ‘To the Kditor: As reported in last weeks Castlegar Sun, a ropidl ly sp 4 with an e: crew doing an excellent job of mopping up. They also d the 1g mom- bush fire in lower Ootischenia was ‘effectively, eat tos a halt by the ing to ensure everything was com- pletely out, As well, BC Tel pera pgkinipbats ering ment of Jack Williamscn Paving Ltd., the RCMP. and concerned , As residents of the area we would like to also recognize the ible, initial and quick alarm raised by two alert neighbourhood young people, Brent Rohn and Chemoff. Also, the local BC Forest Service promptly arrived offering professional help and remained until late that evening worked th night to re- establish telephone crane. Well deserved credits go out to all these people. It is reassuring to * see how quickly this small commu- nity can pull together in an emer- Concentration clade’ This collision turned out to be one of the hardest on Sunday during a men's soccer game between Castlegar's Dexters Dynamos and Rossland. eo the benefits that come, with ‘the coordinating of thermal and hydro generating stations and of facilities in different climates and in different time zones; I am equally certain , that these same people are not so sure about a policy that calls for the building of new generating plants for the sole purpose of exporting electrical energy to the U.S. These’ reservations become even more pronounced when the new plants are to American owned so that profits as well as electricity will flow south, leaving in Canada the P and d resources, i There is. another point to which I wish to draw attention. The brochures we were all given tell us that electricity sales, (mostly to the U.S.) “allowed BC Hydro to pay a « dividend to the Provincial govern- ment to support spending programs for the benefit of all British Cc ” forcing BC Hydro to ive money to, the government, Drawing money from the operat- ing profit of a debt laden cow Cosporation is a most perverse form of folly. The BC Hydro 1990 Annu- al Report tells us that the BC Hydro long term debt is $6.727 billion, an amount not likely to be paid off in the lifetimes of most of us. Any “dividend” paid by BC Hydro must be paid out of borrowed funds. If we consider for the sake of discus- sion only a one-time “dividend” of $100 million and an interest rate of 12% we will see that for the rest of our lives we will have to Pay each and every year $12 million in inter- est and when we die will still have a $100 million debt left intact to pass on to our heirs. This may make sense to a gov- emment accountant, but not to me, or, I am sure, to the financial pun- aie who keep telling us that the "The word should really be in quotation marks. It is not a true dividend at all but is something more akin to plundcr since it is being extracted by means of an Order in Council which is a direct order from the government we can make is the paying down of our mortgages. Fred G. Marsh, «| Director, Electric Consumers’ Association SUN STAFF PHOTO/ Brendan Halper Official Opening ._. B.C.ACCESS CENTRE TR AST L May 13, 1991 at 9:30 am. “1050 Eldorado Street, Trail Honourable Howard Dirks, 2.05 Minister of Development, Trade and ‘Tourism wo officiating One Stop Shopping for the 2 follo wii ng services Government Agent ‘s Motor Vehicle Licensing --Liquor Control and Licensing “<< Blectrical Inspection nistry. 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