Busybodies

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Memory Lane. Thanks im Tim the Enchanter":


In the "good old days" referred to everything seemed simpler, and easier to repair.

Possibly life was more enjoyable then without the rush-rush of today and the intrusion of the world into our homes and into our lives.

I suppose it's a matter of perspective.

Posted by Anonymous to Our Town and Its Business at 25 May 2014 12:00

**********************

No it's not ....life  never  has been simple or easy to enjoy. 

People had the same responsibilities, the same joys,the same sorrows. 

Before phones and  family cars, they walked to bring news . We walked to the post office to pick up mail. We stood in line everywhere and  discussed  current affairs.

There were no malls , shopping centres, donut shops or bank machines.No online banking or bill-paying.

Taxes were paid over the counter and Dorothy Wardle and Colleen Gowan brought  people up to date on town business.

Water rates sent out  with the hydro bill were  paid at the office.

Polio left survivors crippled. Cancer was a death sentence. Childhood Diseases  long forgotten  were rampant .Epidemics carried off dozens. 

Life was precious, grief  just as devastating.

Tuberculosis was a scourge

A war that carried off hundreds of thousands of lives  settled nothing thanks to the incompetence of those in charge. It started again and hundreds of thousands more men were led to slaughter. 

Stupidity was obscured by jingoism and grief assuaged with medals,statues.monuments and endless
jargon about the glory of death and dismemberment. 

Damage to survivors and their families was smothered into silence. To speak of the horror became   a betrayal of those who did not return. 

We send young people today to the bleakest places in the world,  minds full of the same jargon.

It didn't work then and it's not working now.  Some come back in caskets. Others  terribly scarred by their experience. It's not new. 

What's new is, the reality and futility of war  can no longer be hushed up or glorified.We are not a country at war. Why are young Canadians being killed in God forsaken places and  paying such a  heavy price?

The  perspective of war  must change.

This post  has not gone in the direction intended. 

As well as citing cronyism and entitlements as twin problems for government of the day. the Economist editors  listed government involvement inareas that   are none of their business.

This week we have a Culture Master Plan on the agenda. Council directed it be prepared. 

The usual guff. Meagre participation measured against meagre participation, deemed to be 
satisfactory. But not.

We' compare it to other municipalities and feel good about ourselves.

We will refer to the  Strategic Plan  which promises an  "exceptional quality of life".is sub-sumed in the Official Plan , requires an army of managers  to implement and swallows up wheel-barrow loads of cash from our pockets.

Of  the nine representatives  sitting at the table to consider the plan. only one  opposed the Culture Master Plan.. Only one is likely to think like a freak 

The rest will raise their eyes  and follow the magician's instruction to a T.