Danielle for Premier; Newt for President

I have believed all my overly long life that there are some things the governments do well and there are others best left to private enterprise subject to the proviso that the industry is not dominated by a few mega giants. However, many people, perhaps wiser than me, believe otherwise. Their mantra is that the governments mess up whatever they undertake and smallest possible government is the best government.

I have been fortunate over the years that I did not have much dealing with the government agencies. I pay my taxes, fill the forms as well as I can and get approximately the refund I expect, sometimes a little less other times a little more. I leave other things like building permits to contractors and they resolve the issues if there are any. But the situation changed recently. Fortunately, it was nothing personal and it does not affect me at all. If this were critical to my well-being, I would be joining the Wild Rose party and be sending money to Gingerich campaign. As it is, I am only thinking about it.

Although it is in common use most people are not familiar with the origin of the term ‘broken record’ because records from where the term originated have gone the way of the dodo. Before the digital revolution and imusic, there were compact discs which are still in use by older generation. The discs replaced tapes which were on the scene for no more than a few years. Before tapes they had a contraption called record which rotated on a plate and a needle floating on it picked up the vibrations pressed on its surface. The records reproduced sound accurately and were in use for several decades. However, they did have a problem. If the surface had a scratch, sometimes even a dust particle, needle got stuck and played the same notes again and again. This constant repetition was called a ‘broken record’ and soon the term was applied to any one who repeated the same argument over and over disregarding counter arguments of others. Politicians and ad agencies realized that repeating a statement ad nauseam persuaded a large number of people that this was true and soon became adapt at it.

Enough of diversion and back to the story. I noticed a while ago when buying a carton of milk that on top of $3.29 for a two litre carton there was a deposit of 25 cents. On returning the carton a few weeks later, I got a refund of 18 cents. Thus, I paid seven cents extra for the milk not counting the cost of time and transportation to the bottle depot and back. It occurred to me that this was an imposition on the citizens who pay a substantial fee to the city for the curbside pick up of the recyclable material. Moreover, there are families whose means are limited and the deposit may force them to reduce their consumption of milk, thus harming the health of our future generation.

These considerations prompted me to write letters to my alderman and he was kind enough to reply within a few days. He informed me that the deposit was a provincial matter and had nothing to do with him. I now sent the letter to the MLA. It is my misfortune that the MLA is now the Premier of the province and has no time for the concerns of her constituents. She did forward the letter to the Environment Minister who got a staff to draft a response. It said, in effect, that the deposit was reducing the amount of garbage in the dumps and achieving the goal of recycling 85% of such material. There was no mention of the economics of recycling or the deposit.

I am a retired grumpy old soul with not much to do unlike our civil(?) servants. I fired back a note stating that the reply did not answer the issues I raised. Lo and behold, a few days later there was the reply – an almost verbatim repeat of the previous note. Having grown up in India with records of poor quality and being aware of the futility of playing the broken record, I did the only thing one can do in this situation, gave up.

The private companies are no better in this regard. In case a reader is having difficulty remembering the last experience of this phenomenon, I will relate my recent experience. A few months ago I wrote to my discount broker suggesting a very minor change in their monthly statement which will make it much more convenient to the customers and save many trees too. I received the automated response telling me how much my correspondence was appreciated but they had no plan to make any changes. Last week, I sent a similar letter adding to it my frustration with the company not paying attention to a customer’s problem. Guess what? I received the same letter as before, only under a different name. What should I do?

In old days when the record was broken we went and bought another one. To transpose that solution to the existing problems, I am investigating the possibility of moving to a different broker. As for the government and its response, it may be time to switch my political ideology from ‘middle of the road pragmatic government is good’ to ‘less is better’. I need new slogans – ‘Danielle Smith for Premier’ and ‘Newt Gingerich for President’ will do for now.