Post 5--Senior Discounts (2)

Post 4--Senior Discounts (2)

I am slightly deviating from the subject I promised to deal with today, though only slightly, for I am still in the same realm of finance. I am appealing to another and earlier promise that many of my posts would react to articles in the Vancouver Sun. 

Yesterday, the Sun featured an article about the discounts Canadian seniors are getting at every front. The writer, along with writers in other publications, questioned the need and morality of these discounts. The conditions that led up to them have changed, especially the economic  conditions of most seniors. To be sure, there are the poor among them, but it can hardly be said that seniors as a whole constitute a poverty-stricken class today.  In spite of that, lobbyists for seniors, especially CARP--Canadian Association of Retired Persons--demand that the practice continue. CARP officials allegedly claim that they must advocate for the poor among them. Indeed, but that does not mean for all of their members, for the poor among its members are a minority.

I was sufficiently annoyed with CARP and their ilk that I did what comes natural to me: Write a letter to the editor. Herewith I reproduce it for your edification:

My, my, my! Where has the spirit of Canada’s parents and grandparents gone? Are we no longer (grand) parents and have instead turned into an egoistic lobby group to squeeze the most out of our system for ourselves?  Amazing! Shameful!

At a time:

       when wages are on a downward spiral and workers supporting families—our      

                   children —are having a tough time of it;

       when young secondary and tertiary graduates—our grand-children—cannot find   

                   jobs suitable for their skills;

       when single mothers—our granddaughters-- are squeezed to death;

       when school children—our grand- and great grandchildren-- come to school 

                   hungry;

       when the pool of wage earners supporting seniors is dwindling due to seniors 

                   refusing the responsibility of raising families, 

 

we seniors are demanding continued privileges for ourselves instead of our needy families!  And that not because we are necessarily poor—many of us are not—, but because we are seniors.

If there were any love, charity and sense of justice in our hearts, we seniors would lobby for our children and grandchildren as well as for the poor among us. CARP ought to be ashamed of itself. A bunch of well heeled and well organized egotists! This is the reason I have never joined them.

Post 4--Senior Discounts (1)

Post 4--Senior Discounts

I promised to continue a topic related to Post 3. Sorry, but I am changing course, though only slightly.

In yesterday's Vancouver Sun there was an article about the discounts that Canadian seniors get all over the place, no matter how poor or rich they may be. Just because they are seniors! The subject is discussed more often lately and is thus of general interest. It is also of interest to me. After all, I am a senior.  However, my take on the subject may not be what you expect, for it is not in my immediate personal profit.

I quite annoyed with the senior lobby, represented especially by CARP--Canadian Association of Retired Persons--that demands the continuation of this privilege. So I wrote a letter to the Vancouver Sun that I share with you below:

Re;

My, my, my! Where has the spirit of Canada’s parents and grandparents gone? Are we no longer (grand) parents and have instead turned into an egoistic lobby group to squeeze the most out of our system for ourselves?  Amazing! Shameful!

At a time:

       when wages are on a downward spiral and workers supporting families—our children —are

           having a tough time of it;

       when young secondary and tertiary graduates—our grand-children—cannot find jobs

           suitable for their skills;

       when single mothers—our granddaughters-- are squeezed to death;

       when school children—our grand- and great grandchildren-- come to school hungry;

       when the pool of wage earners supporting seniors is dwindling due to seniors refusing the

           responsibility of raising families,

we seniors are demanding continued privileges for ourselves instead of our needy families!  And that not because we are necessarily poor—many of us are not—, but because we are seniors.

If there were any love, charity and sense of justice in our hearts, we seniors would lobby for our children and grandchildren as well as for the poor among us. CARP ought to be ashamed of itself. A bunch of well heeled and well organized egotists! This is the reason I have never joined them.

Re;

Post 3--Your Dough

POST 3—November 15, 2013

Your Dough

What kind of a trip am I on? you may well ask. Blog 2 is about death and now about dough, meaning, of course, money!  It’s a subject that lends itself to all kinds of moralisms, warnings, finger wagging, guilt trips and reams of more negative stuff. Why such negative topics so early in this blog?  Should you move on to more positive ventures?

Well, no! I told you the choice of topics I will be discussing is often, if not mostly, picked from current events and issues. November 2013 happens to be Financial Literacy Month in Canada. Not just literacy. That gets its own month, at least, in British Columbia (BC), my province. This one is about financial literacy.  Literacy campaigns try to overcome illiteracy and ignorance; financial literacy tells us that there is serious financial ignorance. The Canadian government has discovered that such ignorance has reached alarming levels in this so-called advanced country and is using this campaign as one of its tools to overcome it.

The Vancouver Sun highlighted the campaign with an article featuring a secondary school teacher who had fallen into the debt trap. A secondary school teacher. In other words, an intelligent person. I can find only one word adequate to describe his financial behaviour as he personally describes it, but I am loathe to use it, since some of my grandchildren have been forbidden to use it: stupid. He “over-indulged” his children with “the very best designer cloths and toys,” all the while living “from month to month.” He managed this stupidity with a whole raft of credit cards, “all maxed to the limit.”

Fortunately, he came to his senses when he reached bottom and now “shakes his head and wonders how his spending habits could have become so skewed. He wonders how he strayed so far from a path of responsible spending established within his family.”  He was, in the words of Yvonne Zacharias, the writer of the Sun article, “swept up in the debt tempest” that now has Canada worried, for his is an increasingly typical situation. 

Canadians are slipping “deeper into debt,” with “the ratio of household debt to household income” having hit “a record high of 163.4 per cent,” a level “alarmingly” similar to America’s just before the 2008 crash. No wonder different levels of government are taking steps to bring some rationality into this mess—and responsibility.

By means of this and occasional subsequent blogs I hope to contribute to the government’s campaign, but promise not to make it too heavy or dreary. In the next blog I will share a few similar situations I have come across myself, along with a few comments. I’ll move on after that, but fully intend to get back to the topic now and then.

In closing, a little smile.  I came across a cartoon by Jeff Keane under his rubric “Family Circus,” in which a boy seeks his father’s advice: “Daddy, I want to help the ‘conomy. Should I spend my nickel or save it?” There you go!

But before I go, congrats to our intelligent secondary school teacher for having dug himself out of his hole. 

(The Vancouver Sun material in this article is from Yvonne Zacharias’ “Climbing a Mountain of Debt,” November 2, 2013.)

Post 2--Remember and Honour

Death....

For only a second posting on a blog that aims to talk about "My Neighbour," death seems like a morbid and ominous way to start the day. But apart from birth, it's the only thing that all of us share, even more so than taxes. 

There's a good reason I have chosen this topic today. For one thing, it's Remembrance Day in Canada, something I always take very seriously, for I am old enough to remember and visualize the day Canadian soldiers marched through my Dutch village back in 1945 to liberate us from the German Nazis--our immediate neighbours next door. I will go to the cenotaph in downtown Vancouver today to join the crowds in paying homage to those who have fallen on my behalf during World War II as well as in Canadian peace keeping efforts subsequently. I remember and honour them. 

There are more reasons for the choice of this topic today. Yesterday I came home from a memorial service for a sister-inlaw. The new widower, my brother, chose to call it a "celebration." As such events go, it was kind of a family re-union. It took place in the same facility in Mission, BC, where my sister Elly and husband Fred lie buried. So, quite a number of us, including Fred and Elly's children, now grand parents in their own right, used the opportunity to visit their grave. 

We shared about whether anyone of us ever visits their grave. Even their children confessed they never do, for, it was explained, there's nothing of significance there. The important thing, their souls, are with God; the physical part has returned to dust and is no more. So, why visit? Do what? Most just shrugged their shoulders. Remembering and honouring their parents? Of course they do, but you don't have to come to an empty grave to do that. It's the same attitude an already passed-on brother-in-law expressed.

Though I do not criticize their attitude, for I know them well enough to know that they do remember and honour. But I do confess to be baffled, for to me remembering and honouring includes occasional visits to the graves or just the name plates of loved ones gone ahead of me, or perhaps some other kind of shrine dedicated to them, at least in so far as distance does not make that too difficult.  I know: to each his own and mine may be no better than theirs. 

In fact, over the weekend, together with my wife, Frances, two children and their "significant others," and four grandchildren, we also visited the graves of my parents in a nearby cemetery in Abbotsford, BC. Whenever we go to Grand Rapids, MI, where Fran is from and where I met her during our college days, we never fail to "greet" her parents and one sister, who are buried in Cascade, a Grand Rapids suburb. Depending on the time of the year and weather conditions, we may even clean up the site a bit and perhaps leave some flowers. That's our way of remembering and honouring them.

Halloween 2013 is still fresh in our memories. It is a time when the Mountain View Cemetery in Vancouver tries to counter "the macabre tones" of that "celebration" when "the dead are depicted as something grotesque and frightening." The cemetery turns it into an opportunity "to honour our ancestors and understand and appreciate where we came from and acknowledge the role the dead play in our lives every day." "It is a wonderful way for families to spend the evening and introduce the concept of mortality to the kids," explained a spokeswoman (Gerry Bellett, Vancouver Sun, October 26, 2013).  I might insert some other elements into this programme, but I deeply appreciate the attempt on their part of, if I may put it this way, bringing the dead back to life for ourselves and our children.

Remember and honour. Reminds me a bit of Jesus' invitation to "remember and believe...." That goes one step further.

Post 1--Hello Neighbour

Hello Neighbour

I don't know your name, your gender, your location, your religion, your race, your nationality or anything else about you. But one thing I do know: You are My Neighbour!   That's one of the most important relationships that we can have with each other.  So, Neighbour, welcome to this blog.

This is not the first time I've started a blog. In fact, it's the fourth time!  I left the other three, all Blogspots, not because I was unhappy with them, but I had taken too much hay on my fork and simply did not have the time to pursue them. That was a few years ago. They're still out there. If you google my name, either Jan H. or John H. Boer, you'll probably find them. I promise not to just leave you hanging this time. My big writing projects are now behind me, so that I can devote the necessary time to this blog.

A bit about that name thing. "Jan" is my native and passport name, inherited from my grandfather; "John" is my unofficial handle for the English-speaking world. The middle initial "H" stands for--dare I tell you?--"Harm," the name of my father's oldest brother. So, name wise, it's all pretty traditional. As far as that "Harm" label goes, don't let it scare you off!  Nothing threatening. That uncle was one big gentle spirit who never hurt a fly.

I don't have a particular agenda or topic on which to concentrate in this blog. I'm just going to react to what's out there on a daily basis, whether local or global. Since everyone is my neighbour, whatever this everyone does or whatever happens to her, is my business. I am under obligation to love everyone, an obligation I joyfully try to live up to, though it will not prevent me from some hard hitting critique at times. Jesus was gentle, loving etc. etc., but when He dealt with oppression or oppressors, He was one mean terror and would light into them ferociously right in front of the people they were leading.

I should also point out to you that I am big on responsibility and tend to dig into issues from that viewpoint, though I also take serious note of circumstances. I am radical, not in the popular sense of the word, but in the sense of going to the radix or root of things. That's where you need to face and fix problems.    

So, welcome to this blog. And, like a good neighbour, be sure to support, critique or correct my opinions or the way I state them.  I am totally open.  Just don't charge at me like a bulldog!

If you have the time, feel free to check out my website, so that you become more familiar with me:
<    www.SocialTheology.com   >. And feel free to email me at  <boerjf@hotmail.com  >.