I don’t like strikes.
A long time ago I was with a newspaper in England that had just won a contract to print the magazine for the National Union of Teachers (NUT) when the typographical association called a strike. I think we were the only newspaper that kept on publishing. At around that time England was recognized as the shipbuilders of the world. Someone invented the wildcat strike – and England ruled the waves no longer.
Certainly, strikes don’t bother the owners too much. The people most affected are the general public, who can’t catch a plane to see their grandkids or are stuck on Maui or somewhere worried about getting back to work, and how farmers are going to get their goods to market. I do understand the quest for more money but there has to be a better way.
Which brings me to the postal strike. Unions like to talk about profits. But how could people working for a company that is losing millions upon millions of dollars expect a raise?
Talk about digging your own grave.
Most of my mail is made up of flyers or requests for money anyway. And ask the next person you see how many Christmas or birthday cards they now send. Even many of the seniors I hang around with have mastered the technology of online banking. There’s a danger there will be nothing left for the postie to deliver.
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Having had the reason to pay a lot of visits to a hospital lately, I can understand the frustrations of doctors and nurses as well as the poor patients. We arrived to emergency at 3:30 p.m. and finally got to see a doctor at around 7:45 p.m. We were fortunate to have a curtained-off bed – every corridor seemed full of hurting people still on gurneys.
We need many more beds, but if a decision was made today to build another hospital, by the time too many meetings were held, designs agreed upon and tenders awarded, we are looking at a minimum five years to completion. Meanwhile the city keeps growing, and the fact is even the healthy imports just might need hospital attention.
And whatever happened to TVs in a room to help the boredom?
The only time I have experienced an overnight stay in a hospital – many years ago. Besides a television, I was comforted by Candy Stripers – volunteers who chatted with patients and looked after simple needs like a drop of water. Did they go the way of the dodo?
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Driving around this city is becoming frightening. People seem to be driving faster – about the speed of a Not-in-Service bus – but it’s the death-defying motorists who in their haste dodge in and out of lanes to get somewhere a couple of minutes earlier who are the big danger. Especially those who, knowing the lane will be ending, race along as far as they can and bully their way into the moving traffic. That means a car must brake, as will the car behind and the car behind. And woe if one of them isn’t paying attention.
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Final words: Three things happen when you get older. The first is you lose your memory . . . and I can’t remember the other two.
