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rt f r 1996 st comment golden report is bad for business is it fair to reduce the taxes of 452 million the ques- so profitable to locate on metro tbronto business people by tion remains why would yonge st piling on the balance sheets of gta businesses no it isnt but thats what would happen in the event the golden report is implemented small businesses the engines that drive a town like ours will be silenced if they are forced to pay more taxes through socalled edu cation and services pooling as pro posed in the gta reform plan businesses in whitchurch-stouf- fville will be forced to pay up to 80 per cent more based on a 1 mil lion assessment in the initial impact phase if the plan is put into place uxbridge merchants will not be expected to cough up that much but can expect up to 104 a year more an amount few business people can afford all of this will raise durham regions contribution to the pool by 40 million and york regions by a whopping 170 million from residential commercial and indus trial taxes this will in turn help reduce metro torontos tax bill by someone locate their busi ness on main st when anne golden has made it businesses will be crushed all across the gta should this pooling of taxes go through jobs will be lost and our down towns will dry up tell our mpp the golden report is bad for business stouffville tribune 6244 main st stouffville ont l4a1e2 905 6402100 905 6492292 classified 905 6402874 fax 905 6405477 publisher patricia pappas general managereditor andrew mair editorinchief jo ann stevenson director of advertising debra weller retail manager mike rogerson distribution manager barry j goodyear administration vivian oneil operations mgr pamela nichols questions news andrew mair editor joan ransberry julie caspersen mike alder reporters sjoerd witteveen steve somerville photographry retail advertising joan marshman catherine dunkeld classified bonnie rondea real estate joan marshman distribution arlene maddock reception ruth le blanc the stouffville tribune published every wednesday and saturday is one of themetroland printing publish ing and distribution group of community newspapers which includes ajax pickering news advertiser auro ranewmarket era banner barrie advance brampton guardian burlington post cityparent collingwood con nection etobicoke guardian georgetown independent- acton free press kingston this week lindsay this week markham economist and sun milton canadian champion mississauga news north york mirror oakville beaver orillia todayoshawa-whitby-claring- ton this week northumberland news peterborough this week richmond hillthomhillvaughan liberal scarborough mirror todays seniors uxbridge tribune contents cannot be reprinted without written permission from the publisher surfing the net is all wet if you ask me technology sucks i have come to that conclu sion not in the last day or so but ever since i discovered that those buttons you push to get a walk signal are really not attached to anything i have had many bad experi ences with technology not the least of which involve bombing computers failing floppies and crappy cars the computer though seems to give me no end of grief when i was 16 1 signed up for a com puter course at school this was in the days of cassette tapes recording the programs you wrote to have the computer add two and two i got it wrong and wound up with 17 per cent for a grade in the course my experiences with the machine of the future have been none too pleasant ever since and theyre not getting any better last week i took the ramp onto the information super highway for the first time i was sorely disappointed it was more like being on the don valley parkway on a friday afternoon overcrowded full of loonies and a grandiose waste of time the internet it turns out has plenty of information but who wants it i called up an entertainment menu and began surfing i came across the a list and at random and for no particular reason honestly clicked on the jennifer aniston homepage it turns out 128381 people have checked into this page since minute with mair a n ci r e w ma december 5 putting it into the top five per cent of all home pages on the web why you get pictures of the tousled hair star of friends culled directly from magazines and a few biofacts there is also a segment of the tv show you can call up that is if you dont mind waiting 49 minutes for a two minute snippet to down load on your computer i checked out some more seri ous sites but found i could get the information a whole lot faster and without all the gob- bledygook by walking to the library it seems the net is only good for looking at naked pic tures of brad pitt i didnt but ive been told chatting with other people who are bored enough with real human inter action to spend their days e- mailing back and forth and users who consider it- a step toward immortality to create their own homepage i only surfed for about half an hour but it took me almost that long to get on the stupid thing no technology has let me down again i cant say i know what i was expecting and i should give the net creators the benefit of the doubt that things will get better faster and that it may eventually prove beneficial to our lives but right now if s like im back in grade 11 computers its frus trating boring and for the most part i couldnt care less democracy not perfect at the chateau when i first saw a couple of professional hockey players dukirig it out on the ice i was shocked and appalled coming from the land of cucumber sandwiches and cricket a soporific game which requires considerable force of will on the part of the audience to stay awake i found hockey somewhat swift and brutal for my frightfully sporting british sense of fair play i was reflecting on this rather naive attitude in my role as an observer at a recent meeting the participants were engaged in heated discussions on what was clearly a contentious topic everyone was frigidly polite to those whose views they found unpalatable but there was an invigorating sense that at any minute the gloves would be off and an entertaining mel6e would ensue far be it from me to recom mend fisticuffs as an appropri ate way of settling disputes but the wheels of democracy do sometimes move in a madden ingly turgid manner and the end result is all too often a com promise which though it satis fies no one takes a month ofl sundays to accomplish democracy in other words makes you late for dinner or a teteatete at the pub it requires reasoned argument a pleasant attitude to the idiot who disagrees with you and a whole raft of rules and regula tions which enshrine scrupu lous fairness and a voice for all even those you may think dont deserve it a couple of hours of unre lieved democracy can trans form an otherwise balanced person into a maniac it can make a mildmannered parent a tyrant and render the most careful driver a tailgating lunatic chateau gilderdale for instance is run along more or less democratic lines a fact kates corner which owes a greater debt to laziness on the part of the matriarchal parent than to any noble aspirations towards jus tice for all one of the haphazardly- applied rules is that whoever makes a mess cleans it up which accounts for the general ly unappetizing state of the basement this laissezfaire attitude is sometimes aban doned for an abrupt rescinding of democracy in favor of the kind of bootcamp regime which has my offsprings fin gers walking through the lawyers section of the yellow pages democracy also results in the bedroom from hell these are your rooms i told my children democratically about three years ago if you want to live in an appalling mess its up to you just dont expect me to clean it up this is a particularly good example of democracy not working or working only in favor of the young and the slap dash my fond conviction that eventually my children would get tired of the chaos has so far proved sadly inaccurate while i am generally capable of turning a blind eye to the muddle mr wallethead is less able to accommodate the rest of the familys disorderly habits although we are gradually wearing him down democracy is by no means perfect but no one has yet come up with anything better in the words of george bernard shaw democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few