I FEEL A SURGE COMING ON

"Surge" is the new in-word. I used to think it meant to thrust forward, as in:"So I put my foot on the gas, surged from 80kph to 140 and made it from Dwight, Ontario, Canada, to Huntsville, 23 ks away in five minutes. The cop car surged, too, and now this is coming to you from the local slammer."

But there's something coined in Washington called a "troop surge,"sending another 20,000 soldiers to Bagdhad immediately. The aim is to win the war. Perhaps in years, or even months to come the word "surge" will be defined as "catastrophic stupidity" or "how to become bogged down in the mother of all quagmires."

As a journalist, getting to that quagmire is dangerous, especially for the accountants. The latest rate for a ride from the airport to the Green Zone is $10,000. That's right, ten thousand dollars. And there are no discounts if your vehicle hits a landmine, or roadside bomb.

BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE --A QUARTER??

Great news for the new year. The minimum wage in Ontario, Canada, has soared 25 cents to a sizzling $8 an hour. Man, that extra 25 cents will send stampedes of over-paid cashiers, fast-food friers, dish-washers and students to the chic local galleries, golf clubs and gourmet gratification centres, revelling in their new-found wealth, enabling them to avoid forevermore the greed machine created by Jesus-and-money-loving Sam Walton. Even my own cramped, dowdy, now-friendly Dwight corner store could be transformed into a pleasure palace the likes of which have not been seen outside of the Arab Emirates.....unless you include that brown and down Muskoka structure that passes itself of as an upscale resort , Deerhurst. No doubt they are preparing to be swamped with bookings from the newly-wealthy minimum-wage earners of Ontario.In monetary terms,the percentage rise is just over three. And what did our heroes, members of the Provincial Parliament just give themselves? A raise of over 20%.. Of course it's fair. And I'm a ham sandwich.

...MINIMUM RAGE
...by the members of the board of US Home Depot who fired their CEO of one year because of his catastrophically inept performance.Severance package awarded to him by outraged board? $210 million dollars



COOL-HAND STEVE
Another note of new year comfort comes from Steve who shuffled his cabinet as opposed to his wonderfully co-ordinated feet, The great news here is that Steve, with his steel trap of a mind, read opnion polls that concluded Canadians care about climate. (I can see a very bare Hidden Valley ski run from where I'm typing and the only snow I've come across this week is a dubious brown heap near my driveway), So Steve's brilliant gesture to save the world and Dwight from Farenheit 451 was to fire the hapless Ms Rona Ambrose and replace her with an unspeakably loud-mouthed robot called John Baird. Word has it, Baird is not to help the environment, and therefore earn the wrath of big business, but to shout down all those pathetic tree-huggers and naysayers who worry when huge chunks of the Arctic break off and see no snow in winter.

ALZHEIMER'S + A PLUG
One of the local rags has a whole page devoted to the mind-bogling complexities of tax breaks for folks who look after Alzheimer's patients at home.I have read the thing three times and I still do not understand who gets what. It's as though the plan were designed by a bureaucrat who did not want to give these brave, unsung caregivers a hope in hell of collecting what seems to be a pittance, anyhow.
Now the self-serving bit about Alzheimer's.. Next month, 360 Vision, the Vision TV current affairs programme nominated for a prestigious Gemini Award as the best current affairs programme in Canada, will run a powerful, provocative 20-minute story on Alzheimer's.
360 Vision's new season starts on Wednesday,January 17, at 10pm, with an explosive investigative documentary that should scare the hell out of you, the cops and the churches. The following week, a gripping, vitally important story about women leading a revolt in Islam right here in Canada.It is a revolt with world-wide ramifications.
For more details: http://www.visiontv.ca/

BRITISH TO THE BONO

We've got snow! The vibrant (pop.45) village of Dwight, Ontario, proved itself yet again one of the world's great natural wonders, with actual snow in winter in Northern Canada. If that's a stunning surprise, as opposed to a stultifying one, and this being the season of giving, I have another one for you. Oh, joy! Can it be true? Does this great humanitarian do nothing but give? Oh that there were more like he, forsooth. Why did you say forsooth? Because I'm a sooth-sayer.

The other seasonal surprise is that one of the world's most famous and richest Irishmen has accepted an honourary knighthood from Britain. He, too, is a great humanitarian, a beacon for all those who cry out for social justice, equality, and an end to Aids in Africa. But it turns out that Bono has suddenly forgotten his Irish heritage and embarked on a voyage of cynicism and hypocrisy. This hurts.

U2's version of "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" is perhaps the most furious and rightful condemnation ever of the British massacre of 13 unarmed civil rights marchers in Londonderry in 1982.

Clearly Paul Hewson (that's his real name) has conveniently forgotten all that protest nonsense and the valourous men and women of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Irish Republican Army who died to free Ireland from five centuries of murder and starvation by the Protestant British. Clearly Sir Saint Bono has chosen to forget that the reason he and the Irish Republic are the greatest success stories in European Union precisely because the IRA drove the Brits out and allowed him and his country to develop into unfettered economic giants.

In the parlance of the time,only a Quisling would have accepted an honorary knighthood from the King Billy's Boys of the British Government. And where did that King William of Orange inflict a mighty defeat over the wretched Catholics of Derry? At a river called the Boyne. But don't we have a River Boyne here in Dwight? Ooops! It runs right through my backyard. Hmm. Better keep that one very quiet. Still, may be Sir Bono will bring U2 to Dwight now that he is a knight and pay homage to the dead of the Boyne. Yeah, right..

Pity Bono's ego couldn't resist the ride.
Ironic, too, his best-known hit is called"Pride."

P.S. I tried to email this panegyric to Sir Bono but I hit a snag. To log in as a member of the U2 club you first have to pay $US40.

WHO'S A SILLY BOY?

Steve, Steve, Steve. You cannot go round saying things like that! People might think you are not quite sane. But let's give you the benefit of the doubt. A drunken reveller must have belted you on the head with a brick and caused severe brain damage. If you were a deer up here, in Dwight, Ontario, there are plenty of good Samaritans with plenty of guns who would do the proper thing and put you down. But you are not a deer, dear, so your skin is safe and apparently still very thick.

Talking of thick, Steve, in case that brick to the head has caused amnesia, let me remind you that you are our dear, deer leader. Our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. So you can't accuse just any old folks of genocide, even Arabs! Steve, you numb skull, look at the figures before you accuse Hamas and Hezbollah of genocide. If you are going to throw the word around you might want to reconsider your target.

In last five years, the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, the numbers killed are:
Israelis. 1113 (including over a hundred children).
Palestinians. 4209 (including nearly a thousand children).

Oh, you didn't know that, Steve? Wouldn't make any difference anyhow? It must be great to have a friend like you, Steve.

MADD AS HELL

Every Saturday, I walk down to the tiny, one-room Dwight Post Office, near Huntsville, Ontario, to collect my junk mail...that's about all I ever get, apart from nasty-looking envelopes stamped "Revenue Canada" and six bills in six separate envelopes from Bell Canada; having paid for a "bundle," that's what we get. Jammed into the miniscule box ("would you like me to push it out for you?" the helpful relief manager asked as I tugged and tore at the stack of mail from the other side) were the usual suspects; invaluable volumes of Canadian Tire, Zellers ,Circuit City and a dozen other fliers that go straight into the recycling bin .

But hang on! What's this? An envelope with the bold red letters, MADD Canada, clearly appealing for more money. This was just yesterday. I thought they had stopped all fund-raising until Andrew Murie, the CEO, can explain why a mere 19 cents of every dollar collected goes to the actual charity, the rest being pocketed by MADD staff and a team of telemarketers.

This is a good cause founded by broken hearts, grieving families and tireless volunteers. Now they have been deceived and insulted, as have we all, by the hubris and outrageous behaviour of a board that refuses to give any information about where the rest of the money went or even how much workers at MADD headquarters get paid. Why won't they admit the truth? Because the answer must be hugely embarrassing, and my guess is that it would reveal profligacy, largesse and that MADD has been turned into a profit- driven business, not a charity.

Experts in charity work reckon that if less that at least 60% of a dollar does not go directly to where it is needed, the organisation should be avoided because it is being ran badly and probably for the benefit of the administrators, not the needy. This makes MADD's 19% all the more grotesque and tragic. Let us hope that for once, just once, someone gets his or her just rewards for scamming the public in such a shameless way.

TAKE THE A STRAIN

With the windchill at -17, I flagged down a cab the other night in Toronto's West End. The driver barged his way to the kerb and screeched to a stop. Nothing unusual so far. As I got in he was laughing his head off.
"Oh, dear," I thought, "I've got me a nutbar."
"Yonge and Wellesley, please."
"Ok, mister,"he giggled.
Was my fly undone? Nope.
"Mister, I've had the funiest passenger, right before you. This guy was singing all the way. Singing his head off. Kind of pop stuff but he told me they were all his own compositions. He said he wanted to make a CD. I've got this little recording device here so I got him to sing a few bars into it. Listen."
I couldn't hear much, apart from static from the recording device and a faint noise in the background I guessed was the new Josh Groban.
"Was he any good?" I asked the driver."
"Well to be honest, mister, he's not nearly good enough to record a CD. But you know what? He told me he had a fulltime singing job. I couldn't believe it! This guy has a fulltime gig! So I asked him where he sang."
Outside Sherbourne subway station.


HIS PANTS ARE ON FIRE?
The compilers of dictionaries must be going nuts trying to solve a new conundrum. What do you call a person who lies, changes his mind and lies again and has a curious obsession with expensive leather riding boots?I know! how about: adj or v :zachardelli, as in; He was a bigger zachardelli than Pinocchio. Or he zachardelli-ed (past form) his way into a 36-year pension after a Canadian was tortured in Syria. (Origin: from name of former head of Royal Canadian Mounted Police accused of perjury; shed tears for himself as a great and honourable man.)