Keith Dryden

How to blow it We are beset by television advertisements extolling the “freedom” one will acquire if one buys a lottery ticket and wins so many millions of dollars. I’ve recently come back from touring the estate of a newspaper baron who acquired and spent several hundred million dollars. William Randolph Hearst owned a chain […] Read more

Building a party Following the recent Vancouver meeting, the Reform party must regard the national press as a crowd of jackals continually harassing them, looking for a wounded member who can be pulled down and eaten alive. Preston Manning and his crew need to remember nothing is accomplished in the political arena without a few […] Read more

Less government Today we hear a great deal about the need for less government. Whenever there is a downturn in the economy the Keynesian solution is for government to pump public money into stimulating industry, creating jobs, jobs, jobs. When we get a long stretch of doldrums this pump-priming results in an unacceptable level of […] Read more

Inflating egos In this era of rampant psychology degrees we are being forced to reconsider what we once referred to as the dregs of society. Persons once passed by with a disdainful sniff are now sought out by national television reporters who seek to titillate their audiences with weepy exposes of how these persons were […] Read more

Talking cars “You’re too close. Back away.” I had taken a short cut between two cars in a parking lot and this sharp warning had come from a sports model. The other car was more polite; it did not say anything. Now we have talking cars to contend with. Apparently if I had stayed next […] Read more

Still with us The Goods and Services Tax is not gone, as had been promised by the Liberals in the last election campaign. This must cause some chortles from the ghost of Brian Mulroney. Actually, what ChrŽtien and Company had in mind was giving the tax a new suit of clothes, calling it a sales […] Read more

They’re survivors A crow just flew by crowing about her success in finding a suitable tree for a nest. Now if she could get her mate to quit wasting his time cawing about being the toughest bird in the territory, he could get on to fetching some dry sticks. Building a nest in a semi-isolated […] Read more

The numbers game On Oct. 1, 1995, Canada’s population was estimated by Statistics Canada at 29.733 million persons, an increase of 1.3 percent from the previous year. Of those 29.733 million, 13.422 million were listed in December of the same year as being working folks. That means 16.311 million Canadians were considered non-working. That includes […] Read more

Conservative party It’s time for the Progressive Conservative party to call a national conference of its snake-bit forces and draft a new image for the future. The recent by-elections suggest they have some shovelling to do before they get their party vehicle out of the mire. They might consider dropping the Progressive from their name. […] Read more

The spanking Should you spank your kids when they try every nasty trick in the book to see if they can get your goat? Educationists are debating this issue and many of them think it should be possible to raise a youngster without resorting to physical force.Their argument is that if you whale your kids […] Read more