Let
us weep with the anger and joy of government cuts
by
Robert LaFrance
It would be funny if it weren’t so
sad, annoying, and ludicrous. The provincial government hires consultants (at
who knows how many tens of millions of dollars) to find savings in the
Department of Health and they identify $236 million or some such figure.
First of all, isn’t that why we pay
our own (bless ‘em!) high-level bureaucrats zillions of dollars in salary?
Aren’t THEY supposed to be running things at maximum efficiency? Isn’t that why
we pay for their fact-finding trips to New Zealand and Norway?
That $236 million is going to be
found in individual hospitals, and my grandmother wears Super-Ked army boots to
bed. I get the feeling that the figure was picked off a tree by the government
when it should have stayed in the orchard.
One of the points was that hospital
cafeterias in New Brunswick cost $30 per patient to operate, while in Quebec
they cost $10. Hmmmm. It wouldn’t have anything to do with the billions of
dollars in extra subsidies that Ottawa sends to Quebec each year to calm the
separatists, would it? Are those consultants really that naïve? Apparently.
“It will impact staffing levels,”
said one government bureaucrat, “but services will remain the same.” Yes, I
seem to remember hearing that same tired refrain before, like every time any
government cuts any services.
***************************
Let us leave that subject and go to
Belgium.
Many people I know are all atwitter about the
Stanley Cup playoffs. They have evidently forgiven the greedy owners and
players for the lockout/strike that chopped off the first few months of the
season, and now they’re settling down to the Armageddon among U.S. hockey
teams.
I’m not going to talk about the
Stanley Cup Playoffs. I am referring to – or ‘making reference to’– as many
people insist on saying these days – the Warfarin Cup in Belgium. A
manufacturer of pet food – I believe the stuff is fed to rats – is sponsoring a
competition among professional teams there for a top prize of that cup and
50,000 Swiss francs for each player on the winning team. A team from Brussels
is leading the final, three games to one. Just a side note: It’s curious that
the headquarters of the European Union – lots of Mike Duffys there – is in the
same city as a maker of rat food.
“Bob, you do realize that Warfarin
is mouse and rat poison, don’t you?” said Flug.
Ahem, well, yes, of course.
**************************
Each of us has a list of things we’d
like to see invented, do we not? As I look at the six spoiled items I just
found in the back of the fridge, it occurs that a Lazy Susan (a name my cousin
Susan hates for some reason) would be a great thing to have in a refrigerator.
Possibly some fridge manufacturers
do include this item, but our old Maytag doesn’t have that feature. Here’s why
it is a vital one: after we have spent our hard-earned dollars in buying things
like cottage cheese, they usually get pushed to the back of the fridge. Three months
later, after the neighbours have reported a stronger than usual stench coming
from our house, we take a look.
Take this morning for example; I
know that the turnip I just took out of the back of the vegetable tray was put
there no later than Jean Chretien’s second term as prime minister. It was
wizened and it was the colour of the Mediterranean Sea. “It’s not all spoiled,”
I said to my spouse. “I could cut off a piece at one end and put it in a stew.”
Some people don’t appreciate humour.
That Lazy Susan would be a good idea
though, and would save us untold (I’m not telling) dollars in grocery bills.
The problem is, as I have mentioned, that once some foods go into the fridge,
they are blocked from view and therefore forgotten until the neighbours call.
****************************
My late mother’s sister is cursed
with a name that sometimes gets a severe reaction. It’s Semetik. Last month she
was walking along the sidewalk in Ottawa when she got ‘caught short’ as the
saying goes, and had to dash into a nearby hotel to use the washroom. Unknown
to her, her nephew Sigfreid was the desk clerk, and when he saw his aunt coming
out of the washroom, practically hollered: “Auntie Semetik!”
That’s all right so far, but
mingling in the lobby and waiting for the annual meeting of Ottawa B’Nai Brith
to begin were about 30 members of that organization which is a ‘Jewish advocacy and community volunteer service
organization’ as they say on their web page. The lobby went silent, because
what these jewish people heard was “anti-semetic” and they had had enough of
that over the past few centuries.
-end-
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