The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Page 4, News, Tuesday, January 15, 1991 2S MR SOE PR SESS LEE RS Editorial The Terrace Bay - Schreiber News is published every Tuesday by Laurentian Publishing Limited, Box 579, 13 Simcoe Plaza, Terrace Bay, Ont., POT 2W0 Tel.: 807-825-3747. Second class mailing permit 2264. Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Association and the Canadian Community Newspaper Association Tel.: 825-3747 Se) ee .....Sandy Harbinson : Singl 50 cents incl. : eet sition Bios Advertising Mgv............... Linda Harbinson (S*CNA $18 per year / seniors $12 26s | Col deepen oe Ga ge ear Se Robert Cotton fom) (local); $29 per year (out of ~SaleS REP.............s.eecseeeeeeees Tammy Smith cn 40 mile radius) $39 in U.S. Admin. ASSt...........-s:ee Gayle Fournier 3 Add GST to yearly subs. Braduction ASSt.............-. Cheryl Kostecki Not enough respect for small businesses Individuals who have refused to pay the Goods and Services Tax have been arrested only to be released because police have no charge to lay against them. Some businesses aren't collecting the tax from their customer's choosing, for the moment, to absorb it. Both consumers and small businesses are still trying to figure out the system, trying to find the logic behind why certain items are taxed while others are not. The federal government's consumer information office for the » GST received about 14,000 calls a day to either complain about the tax or ask for clarification. If the number of those calls has remained constant there have been nearly 196,000 196,000 calls in the past two weeks. Despite all of this Revenue Minister Otto Jelinek claims the tax has not created chaos but rather the problem is that some small businesses "got caught with their pants down." Once again, those Canadians who stand outside of big business and big government have been discounted by the arrogance of the Mulroney government. As John Bulloch, President of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business pointed out, Jelinek's remark was aimed at those business people who cannot afford the computer resources, extra staff and accountants required to deal with a new Federal tax imposed over nine different provincial sales taxes. Mulroney and those who support him have a vision of creating an efficient and competitive economy for Canada. However, their dogmatic adherence to economic sense and the bottom line has blinded them to the fact that an economy is not an end in itself. An economy should be efficient and competitive but only to the point that it supports the hopes and dreams of the people who have created it for their own purposes. Independent small businesses make up a large part of Canada's economy and deserve more consideration and respect than is evident in Jelinek's remark. Robert A. Cotton Dear Editor, The following is a letter sent by Terrace Bay Couneil to Mr. Gerald Veilleux, President, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Council thought it would be of interest to your readers. Dear Mr. Veilleux: I am writing on behalf of Terrace Bay Council to protest the recent budget cuts which have resulted in the elimination of 1,100 jobs and the closures or reductions in operations of ten regional CBC television. stations. Council is very concerned that such a measure will have drastic effects on Canadian society and unity of our country at a time when national unity is struggling to survive. Traditionally, the CBC has joined east to west. Council believes that the cutbacks will have a devastating effect and other options should be pursued. While they agree that some costs are unavoidable, they feel that declining television advertising revenue is one area which should be addressed. They believe that a more logical step would be to increase such revenues rather than cutting jobs. We urge you to reconsider your actions. Thank you for your consideration of our request. Yours truly, Jim Ziegler Reeve Township of Terrace Bay AN! LEAVE US NoT FORGET TAE SMALL MATTER OF E WOULDN'T WANT TO DISAPPOINT Mr. WilZon Nou), woulp WE P 2%! Where is the aristocracy now Back in the early 18th century, when Canada was a mere frontier abstraction of beaver pelts and bad whiskey, England had a society with more layers than a Black Forest cake. If you were at the top it was very, very comfortable. In 1722, a blue- chip filly by the name of Charlotte Finch hitched up with an aging buck by the name of Charles Seymour. Now Charlotte, being the daughter of the Earl of Nottingham, had pretty good papers, but the man she chose for a husband was so aristocratic he made Queen Victoria look like a table dancer. Charles Seymour was the sixth Duke of Somerset and did not intend to let anyone forget it for as long as the cerulean hemoglobin continued to pulse through his veins. Charles Seymour was a snob-but he was such an utter, 24-carat snob that you almost had to forgive him for it. The story goes that once at a dinner party poor Charlotte made the mistake of tapping playfully on her husband's arm with her fan. Instantly the Duke stepped back, drew himself up and fixed his wife with a haughty, withering stare. "Madame" he hissed, "my first wife was a Percy, and she never took such a liberty." Ah, me. They just don't make jerks like that anymore. As a matter of fact, they haven't been making them for some time. Up until the First World War the British aristocracy comprised perhaps the wealthiest--and certainly the vainest--ruling class this poor old planet's ever had to put up with. They were for the most part "landed gentry" pedigreed pantywaists with thousands of acres of estates and land holdings and not the slightest idea of what to do with it all. Most of them disdained the idea of getting their elegant fingers soiled in business, which meant that most of them faded away, nibbled to death by taxes and creeping democracy. By the end of the First World Arthur Black War the common British folk weren't bowing and scraping in the presence of aristocrats anymore. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George dismissed the House of Lords as merely "ordinary men, chosen accidentally from among the unemployed?. He further devalued the upper class by announcing that knighthoods, barorietcies and peerages were for sale. Henceforth, anybody could put a Lord or Lady in front of their monicker--providing they had the scratch. Britain was transforming itself from a nation of forelock-tuggers to a nation of shopkeepers. Aristocracy was a bad investment. "A _ fully equipped duke" grumbled Lloyd George, "costs as much as two battleships; and dukes are just as great a terror and they last longer." Even the staunch, British aristocracy could not long survive such an onslaught. By the 1950's it was largely extinct. Gone forever, people staggering under the weight of names such as The Honourable Sir Adolphus Frederick Octavius Liddell; Conrad Le Despenser Roden Noel, or, my personal favourite--I would surrender my Beatles record collection to be at a party and hear the butler sonorously announce the arrival of "Admiral of the Fleet Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurley Plunkett-Ernle-Erle- These people really lived! And supped tea with their pinkie fingers crooked just so! And now they're all gone. Well, virtually all gone. A few bluebloods survive, but they pay a price in shabbiness. The Earl' of Pembroke is in _ pomographic films. Lord Teviot punches tickets on a London bus. Lord Normanton' models trenchcoats for Burberry and Lord Simon Conyngham dishes out potato salad in an English delicatessen. Some claim British aristocracy is alive, just dormant, but journalist Nancy Mitford thinks the question is irrelevant. "An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off" says Mitford. "It may run about in a lovely way, but in fact it's dead." And good riddance, I suppose. Better to have a Lord folding serviettes than bullying serfs. Plus, look on the bright side: what a role model for Canadian Senate Reform!