Bundles
of $20 bills ‘offshore’
by
Robert LaFrance
Since this newspaper hits the stands
(as they say) on November 22, it behooves me to mention John F. Kennedy, the
dashed hope of a generation. Yes, I know he liked interfacing with women too
much, but compared with what the Americans have now, really?
On to the major and vital issues of
the day, and you’ll notice I didn’t say “vitally important” because once
something is vital it’s already important.
Who can go an entire column without
mentioning Donald Trump? Well, apparently I can’t, so we shall go on to mention
someone else. How about Queen Elizabeth II who has been “raining over us” (Yes,
I know I spelled the word ‘reign’ incorrectly) since the early 1950s when I was
a towheaded kid wandering around Tilley and getting into trouble there.
It is said that our beloved
sovereign (soverain?) had been keeping some money – a few billion dollars of
housekeeping money no doubt – in offshore accounts to avoid taxes. Let us try
and picture that concept. Here is the titular head of the British ‘empire’
stashing money in the Cayman Islands or somewhere. Imagine, the queen ripping
off the British treasury.
I am just hoping that the
journalists looking into those offshore accounts (as they say) do not find the nest
egg that Flug took there last year. It would be rather embarrassing for my old
friend. He was saving up for a new cricket bat and a vacation to England where
he planned to use it.
And what does that mean anyway,
‘offshore’ accounts? Whenever I hear that I think of bundles of twenty dollar
bills sitting in a dory somewhere in the north Atlantic off Cape Spear
lighthouse.
**********************
Continuing my comments on the
butchery of the English language, I just heard that a federal government agency
had “tasked” a certain bureaucrat to learn all he could about social unrest in
Bristol, New Brunswick. What if he were “asked” to do that? Besides, there is no such place as Bristol,
NB, now that it’s become part of Florenceville-Bristol. You can “reference”
government records to find out for sure. Or you could “refer to” them.
On another subject, we all love
Political Correctness, don’t we? A pet-loving group in southern New Brunswick
was recently in the news because its members were upset about the insulting
language their dogs had to endure. When you think about it – but not too long –
you can see that the word dog is insulting. Carol and Jon Fridloch, the leaders
of this movement, have suggested that from now on we refer to Rover as a
“canine equivalent”. For efficiency they now refer to their friend, the CE.
Some people just don’t have enough to do.
A few years ago I wrote a column about killing a
mouse and the mobs arrived in front of my house within an hour of that edition
hitting the stands. Picket signs (although I didn’t see any Picketts in the
group) were everywhere. Old Bob was everything from a murderer to a politician.
During that confrontation my canine
equivalent Belvedere made his mark, so to speak. One of the mob’s leaders came
too close to Belvedere’s food dish and received a good bite on his anterior
thorax, according to the nurse who treated him there in my driveway. He lived,
and went on to become famous as the author of “Mice Are People Too”.
Moving quickly and not very
logically to the subject of phone messages, I came home from church early
Tuesday morning (about 3:00) and found three messages on my land line phone.
The first was from the bartender saying I’d left my Harris Tweed hat there in
the church; the second was from a telemarketer who informed me I had won a
cruise up the St. John River from Gagetown to Four Falls if the river happens
to be open on February 14. A very romantic outing for St. Valentine’s Day.
Skates not provided.
The third message was one of those
that burn my rear echelons every time I get one. Here it is in its entirety:
“Hello, it’s me. Call me and keep me informed willya?” No clue as to who it
was. What would be going through the ‘brain’ of a person who would leave such a
message?
I checked on Google and
the population of this earth was 7.442 billion as of late 2016. Of course it
may be up to 7.5 billion by now, but even that smaller figure presented me with
quite a challenge in guessing who had left that phone message. I deleted the
message and went out on the lawn for a game of croquet before the predicted
snow arrived.-end-
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