LIFE'S TOO SHORT

Perhaps I've just been around too long. Perhaps the fact that my patience has worn thin is a function of age. Possibly my growing cynicism about public opinion is part of a kind of mental decay. Perhaps I was always this way - cranky and critical.

I realize that I am totally sated with certain social/[political cliches. Tops on my list is the proclamation currently in vogue: belt-tightening. Politicians trying to woo support from a disenchanted public proclaim that there will be this tightening of our collective belts. Sounds great, Sounds really attractive to mindless voters who believe that all governments and all politicians are nothing but vermin who feed off their (the public's) hard-earned money. "Belt-tightening" is supposed to mean that there will no longer be lavish spending on things like the Arts or Welfare, of Education. Why, in belt-tightening times are these almost always the first things to go.

The whole evocation of "belt-tightening" has a ring of sincerity to it. It says: "We're really trying to put the pressure on the lavish spenders." It's B.S. and they know it.

You and I, and perhaps one other person, realize that belt-tightening always falls on the most vulnerable, the ones who are on the verge of unemployment, the chronic poverty that affects one in five of our children, the single mothers - etc...etc...

People of means, the rich and the near rich simply hunker down in their big homes or condos and postpone for a year a trade-in to the newest Mercedes. Belt-tightening does not impact too severely on their cruise ship holidays or their visits to their condos in sunnier places. Yet they are the first to deplore the "waste" of their hard-earned dollars at a time when the financial world seems to be tanking.

Chief among the political architects is our own Finance Minister, who champions the whole hunkering down principle and vows not to spend money on anything - thus guaranteeing him a place in the Pantheon of miserly creatures who speak only for the affluent.

And you thought you were feeling rotten before you started reading this.

I guess what troubles me most is how so many people swallow the guff that comes from above. The people of the Oshawa-Whitby-Bowmnanville area are looking doom squarely in the face as the major area employer cuts back and eliminates production of new cars and trucks. They are holding their collective breath waiting for some pronouncement from Ottawa that may save some of their jobs. They watch the American Senate and House both insisting that the Big Three spend whatever money they may get right at home in America. They are sweating. But, and this was my point: they voted for that same Jim Flaherty who sneers at them while making sanctimonious prono8uncements about weathering hard times.

So we have to blame the people who gave us the government we all deserve.

They are the same people who fall for guff like "soft on crime." They are same nitwits who actually believe that tougher sentences "send a message." Send a message - to whom???

The same guys who sent Parliament home are responsible for stoking that fire. Ironically, when a national crisis is hanging over us, the Prime Minister usually recalls Parliament for an emergency session. This guy - the :tough on crime" guy - sends them home!

Maybe i am getting too old and my patience is gone. But it seems top me that even when I was a whole lot younger I insisted, often to people who didn't, wouldn't and couldn't listen - that tougher sentences deter no one and that extreme cases make bad laws.

And that ":belt-tightening" is just another way of saying: less money for those who need it.