Yet another McGuinty assault on seniors

 News item: "Ontario may crack down on drivers with dimentia" 

[see: http://autos.sympatico.ca/auto-news/13170/ontario-may-crack-down-on-drivers-with-dementia]


The following is a letter that I sent to an Ontario newspaper expressing my views. It needs no further explanation.

I swear that if Dalton McGuinty could he would confiscate all seniors’ money, use their properties as daycare centres for unwed mothers, and ship us (seniors) to Baffin Island.

The first thing he did when coming to office was to rescind Ernie Eves’ property tax rebate for seniors—legislation that had already been passed. The second thing was to remove the ceiling from hydro so that my energy costs are now almost equal to my mortgage payments.
Then he enacted a ‘health premium tax’ so that my generation of seniors became the first to pay for health services after sixty-five.

And now he is proposing a graduated driving license for seniors, claiming seniors are subject to dementia.

Whether or not this is true, all doctors in Ontario are required to recommend to the Ministry of Transportation that an individual’s license be revoked for medical reasons. This suggests there is a secondary reason behind such a heavy-handed proposal, and given McGuinty’s record I suspect it has a lot to do with all those administrative dollars it would generate.

Besides being an insidious erosion of civil liberties, there is also a question of priorities here. At a time when the major oil companies are poised to price some Ontarians out of their cars anyway, it appears the only concern Bob Chiarelli and Dalton McGuinty have is restricting seniors.

As a seventy-six year old writer working on my fourth novel, I am willing to test my mental capacity against McGuinty’s anytime, and if this proposed legislation passes I am going to prove my intelligence by removing myself and my money out of Orillia; out of Ontario; and out of Canada. Let McGuinty ponderously ponder that one.

Gerry Burnie,

Only you can end the senior menace

News item: The McGuinty Government may crack down on senior drivers in the Province of Ontario.

*sigh* Here we so again!

I swear that if Dalton McGuinty could afford to get rid of seniors, he’d turn our homes into day care centres for unwed mothers and ship us off to Baffin Island. Mind you, you’ll notice that this proposed crackdown comes in a non-election year.

The claim is that seniors may be suffering from dementia, so here’s a handy list of things to watch for. No: If you see any senior exhibiting the following symptoms, notify Dalton McGoony immediately.

• Died hair—especially orange, purple, lime green or puce.
• Body piercings—especially eyebrows, tongue or belly button.
• Driving erratically while talking on a cell phone or texting
• Listening to rap music in excess of 200 decibels, or that will shatter windows at 200 feet
• Mooning pedestrians on the sidewalk
• Driving while tending a kid in the back seat.

Remember: Only you can stamp out the senior menace!

I'm not the smartest guy in the world...

Not even close, but sometimes I feel pretty adequate compared to some of the other turkeys I hear or read about. Take this dumb-ass politician, MP Sana Hassainia, who is bent out of shape because she was asked to remove her kid from the House of Commons chamber during a session.

Now the rules of the House clearly state that no unelected person is allowed on the floor during a session, and a baby is clearly unelected, but this MP is obviously one of those people who think that having a kid not only gives them carte blanche over rules, but also other people’s rights–i.e. quiet enjoyment of a meal.

In fact, I can’t begin to count the number of meals I’ve had ruined–even in expensive restaurants–by someone’s obstreperousness kid screaming its lungs out or even playing tag while the parents looked on, admiringly of their little darling(s).

Equally culpable in my opinion are those types, generally women, who, upon see a sleeping baby have to “coochie-koo” it until they get it all hyper. Then, apparently satisfied, they go one chatting while the kid screams its lung out.

No, compared to insular thinking like that I fair fairly well in the IQ department–if only because I can think in two dimensions; what suits me and what suits others. It’s called enlightened self-interest. I can also manage 360-degree thinking at times, which is something that politicians like Sana Hassainia (et al) haven’t mastered yet.

As an example of modern parenting, however, Ms Hassainia is a sterling model (which is not a compliment).