BY THE great good luck of being born into a family that
had pride and principles, I was never ashamed of living in
a house with tarpaper walls or wearing second-hand

clothing.

What a blessing was mine. It
kept me out of the hands of the
moneylenders for almost all my
working life.

Whatever I held was mine. No-
body, with the sole exception of
Lord State Almighty, could steal
it from me and even the state
could be embarrassed, by times,
when its tyranny was exposed.

We have come a Jong way since
my parents’ time and it’s been
downhill.

There is nothing new in the fact
that governments lie, cheat and
steal. They always have. They
always will.

But they are now so much more
open about it, and so lacking in

repentance when caught.

This week the President of the
United States told the Americans
that he had fied to them during
the last election campaign.

“Read my lips,"’ he had said.
“No new taxes."*

This week he told them they
would get more taxes. For their
own good, of course. Even if
Lord State Almighty kills you, it’s
for your own good.

The president did not apologize.
Neither did the American people
expect him to do so because, after
all, his promise had been just one
more deception and men of com-
mon sense now expect this of
those whom they elect to public

office.

Here in Canada, cabinet
ministers seem incapable of keep-
ing their hands out of the cookie
jar.

They resign, at times, and in-
dependent investigators report that
their actions were improper. But if
they don't go to jail, they expect
their cabinet jobs to be given back
to them,

In our new morality, dishonesty
doesn’t exist until the moment
that you finally go into the slam-
mer. No jail, no sin.

This week, a committee of
Members of Parliament recom-
mended that any Royal Canadian
Mounted Police approaching
Parliament Hill should be hand-
cuffed first.

If police want to find out
whether MPs are cheating the
public on their tax-free allowance
spending, they should first give 30

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— and will probably remain there,
even though their manufacturers
are now attempting to recycle
them somewhere back east.

Well, since there must be more
people out there like him, 1
reasoned, perhaps I should do a

See Read
Page 10

9 - Friday, July 6, 1990 ~ North Shore News

days notice so there's plenty of
time to hide the evidence.

A more extraordinary demand
for exemption from the laws of
the common people would be hard
to imagine in a state that is sup-
posed to be without a privileged
aristocracy.

The large abandonment of gov-
ernment ethics becomes the small.

In she litde district municipality
of Langley in this same week,
Lord State Almighty threw a poor
family out of its home, because
the home was unsightly and of-
fended against bylaws made and
provided.

It wasn’t much of a home. Only
atent, thrown up on a piece of
grass where the family had mos-
quitoes for company. Jt was built
of bits and pieces of board and
canvas and water was packed ina
bucket.

It was exactly the kind of home
known to the first pioneer families
of Langley.

But they came here in another
century, in another moral era,
when the ethics of Lord State
Almighty were in better shape.

In those days it was an article
of faith that poverty was no
disgrace but stealing was. We have
now subscribed to the opposite
proposition.

Langley's first families contd
probably have thumbed open a
family Bible and in half a minute
Pointed out the passages telling

how Jesus Christ was born ina
hay manger, it being the only
shelter the Holy Family could
find.

Lucky for them they didn't
have to face 1990 Langley bylaws.

Today, nobody is appalled that
people are punished for looking
after themselves as best they can.

Nobody sees any lunacy in some
goverment man calling a wood
stove a fire hazard.

Nobody listens to the owner of
chat field who says that he wel-
comed his tenters and that they
are good, decent people.

Nobody scents upset about a
regular procession of people in the
ruling class who seem intent on
stealing everything that isn't nail-
ed down solid on all four corners.

The Langley tent family will be
moved out of public sight and out
of public mind.

They will probably be given
public aid which they never asked
for nor wanted.

Eventually they will doubtless
be delivered into the hands of the
moneylenders who will impose
upon them a death grip which we
call by the anc’ent French word
mortgage. They will pay the
moneylenders for as long as they
live, unless Christ comes again to
clean out the temple.

He can’t come too soon to suit

some of us who are not in the rul-
ing class.

E:coInfo

Peggy Trendell-Whittaker

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