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Page 12 THE HERALD June What happened to the national crisis on toxic diesel fuel Idler is provoking and challenging On The Hill With Girth Turner OTTAWAI guess this place takes some getting used to because Im still trying to figure it all out Three weeks ago for exam ple the House of Commons was obsessed with toxic waste being put into diesel fuel and shipped into It was a national environmental crisis But have you beard anybody talking about toxic gas lately Has a single politician brought it up Has any investigation found anything This place seems to bounce around without direction some days I swear the agenda is set by newspaper headlines The tempta tion to overreact to things is strong So is the tendency to con fuse current events with those things which really matter All this means a newcomer like me has to work hard not to get sidetracked by things and to keep my eye on those longerterm goals which brought me to apply for this job Topping the list are three Working for the environment working against Canadas debt and making damn sure our tax money is spent responsibly the past few weeks my eyes have been opened wide to the fact that none of this is going to be easy Dorothy and I were in Bolton and Burlington the other day to take part in roadside cleanups that had been well publicized and which helped to mark national En vironment Week Both mornings we pulled up to the appointed meeting place and met a small handful of people Disappointed Sure we were Ill admit It put the experience just makes me more determined too All of us have an activist role to play if Canada is to be protected and im proved for the next generation Between now and next June I have a year to convince a lot more peo- ple that bending over for a morn ing picking up trash is as good the soul as it is for the dirt Back in Ottawa the House of Commons committee I chair has been doing its bit to look after tax bucks Last week we had some tough questions for the public works minister Elmer Mackay I know were on the same side of the House but that doesnt mean I turn into a governmental rubber stamp Mackays department cancelled a new office building in Ottawa for 5000 civil servants through last Aprils budget The ironic thing is that having the thing built by private developers could well end up saving the feds a lot of money I have to tell you that after three hours of testimony a number of us left the table wondering if the right action had been taken I also asked why the government will spend another million putting up statues on Parliament Hill when middle- class people are being asked to stomach big tax increases Well he agreed that might be sending the wrong signal to Canadians and maybe the spending should be reviewed You bet it should be And it will On another front were in the middle of a review right now of how consumers are treated by the people who issue credit cards There are strong opinions on both sides of the issue some people think rates of per cent or 28 per cent are obscene while others say nobody is forced to use plastic to buy things As with most things the best view is probably somewhere inbet- Anyway the hearings I am holding now will ask questions like do consumers have enough in formation given to them to know the true costs of credit card usage Should the bankers and the oil companies and everybody else put ting a card out have the same method of charging interest Why dont credit card rates fall when the Bank of Canada rate falls And are we on the road to a cashless society when debit cards will take money electronically from our bank accounts It strikes me these kinds of ques tions are good for an independent allparty committee to ask And if the answers are poor well we car always recommend that some kino of action be taken Personally I think weve pro bably got enough laws already But if these bearings identify pro blems maybe the bankers and the other card issuers will move on to solve them without MPs jumping into the marketplace Well see Meanwhile Dorothy and I green garbage bags In hand are off to muck through ditches in Georgetown After all weve got to keep things in perspective faMftEntffehTMi Am Of Strip Introducing A Breakthrough 1 In Blodd Glucose Monitoring Compact for Travel 9SQ00 THI ffltlM HOfflCCARE HAD 111 ci nrac mm Ideas And The Arts Of all the boys that went to school in Georgetown in the 1960s David Warren was one of the most remarkable Very early when he was only 12 or 13 years old he had one abiding interest newspapers He taught himself everything there was to be known about the produc tion and writing of newspapers and his room was filled practically up to the ceiling with huge neatly stacked piles gf newspapers from all over the world His father a designer was sta tioned for a year each in India and Thailand and the family went with him To David this glimpse of the great world beyond Georgetown was the last push he needed to make his longing for escape com plete For a while back in town he edited a broadsheet which he call ed ISSUES pressing all his more ambitious friends into writing articles and book reviews for it But soon everything simply got too small for him here and be felt he had to get out He was only years old when he stopped going to school and left Georgetown The following years he spent globetrotting in Asia and Europe working at various newspapers in different countries taking courses when he wanted to fill a hole in his education and reading extensive ly sometimes several books a day When he came to Canada occa sionally he used to appear sudden ly in town never staying much longer than the hours to the next bus that would take him away again He had been a spindly hyperactive youth Now he grew large and hardly moved at all His nose was turned into the wind so to say and he seemed to be constant ly searching for something a fact a turn of phrase a humorous detail His white face adopted an astatic smile and when excited or amused his cheeks and forehead would quickly bloom with a pink blush He was always dressed in layers of frayed garments regardless of the weather as If the air in Canada gave him a perpetual chill He developed an extraordinary graceful style of talking and writing and the desire that never left him was to start a magazine of superior quality In his own words a magazine that is serious but not humorless learned but not pedantic literary but not closeted political but not blinkered A magazine for oldfashioned general readers who read for thought and pleasure and not to kill time Finally in December David launched what be had talked about for so long The magazine was called The Idler and the first number dated January was printed exactly 200 years after the great Samuel Johnson Davids literary hero died in London England on December 13 1784 Since then 1 Idler has ap peared timet which a kind of miracle considering the cost of such a venture and the- limited readership for a magazine of this kind At Its best The Idler is superb as in a wonderfully interview with the writer and art historian Scott Symons In the May- June issue for instance At its worst rarely it features writers like David Frum that are super cilious and overly fond of people in high places Time spent with The Idler is never boring but alwayH thought- provoking and challenging David Warren is an editor of vision and this town where be lived some of his formative years has reason to be proud of him Write to The Idler Daven port Road Toronto Ontario M5R 1J9 for a subscription Friends of Lillian Black have ar ranged a sale of oil paintings from the estate of Frank C Black to be held at the Lions Hall in Georgetown on June 24 from am to 4 pm We have asked our carriers to complete their i deliveries as V early as possible each week If your Herald is not delivered to your home please phone our circulation department CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT HOURS Tor your convenience the Circulation Department is open from to 500pm Monday to Friday 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