Ad - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, November 15, 2000
ESTABLISHED APRIL 27, 1988
ADDRESS: 3210 Clinton Street Terrace, B.C. * V8G 5R2
TELEPHONE: (250) 638-7283 « FAX: (250) 638-8432

TERRACE
PUBLISHER: ROD LINK
EMAIL: standard@kermode.net

Details needed
FOR MORE than a year, the Terrace Health
Watch Group and local doctors have been locked
in a battle with Skeena NDP MLA Helmut Gies-
brecht.

Both sides have been asking those who have
had problems at Mills Memorial Hospital to
come forward with the details so each can be
thoroughly examined.

For the health watch group and doctors, the ex-
pectation is that a series of situations will show
there simply isn’t enough money flowing to
Mills to do its job, regardless of what the provin-

cial health ministry may say. Mr. Giesbrecht’s

expectation is to determine what exactly did or
did not happen in each particular case and if there
are circumstances where the health care system
failed, to give him ammunition to ask for more
money.

This is a highly emotional situation. When the
ultimate happens, when a person dies, no amount
of cold, dispassionate post-examination of each
and every facet can bring that person back.

Health watch members and doctors criticize
Mr. Giesbrecht, saying that asking for examples
of when a person dies, relives the pain and suffer-
ing of the family. They regard it as an intrusion
into the family’s grief.

They are also highly suspicious of Mr. Gies-

brecht’s motives, alleging that what he wants will .

only buttress the position of the province that
while there are problems, the system is funda-
mentally sound.

But the health watch group and doctors cannot
have it both. ways. They: cannot themselves ask

for éxamples to prove their case and then deny

Mr. Giesbrecht the opportunity for the same level
of inquiry.

One particular criticism levelled at Mr. Gies-
brecht is that he’ll say doctors can always over-
ride whatever decisions a hospital makes or cir-

cumstances encountered when it comes to patient .

care. In response, the health watch group and
doctors say hospitals can enact standards forcing
doctors to make decisions that are medically un-
suited for the patient at hand.

If this is indeed the case, then it is all the more |

important for Mr. Giesbrecht to receive examples
of medical situations at Mills Memorial Hospital.

Doctors are highly skilled and intelligent
people. They will be able to punch through any
findings related to standards or to care which
does not accurately reflect what happened to their
patients. More importantly, they have the backing
of the health watch group which has shown itself
to be a watchdog of local medical care and which
has strong public backing.

Mr. Giesbrecht has exposed himself to the
strong possibility of electoral defeat in his call for
examples relating to care at Mills. The health
watch group and doctors must respond.

PUBLISHER /EDITOR: Rod Link
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“BLUE:
RIBBON

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Senving the Tarrace and Thombhili area. Published on Wednesday of each waek al 3210 Clinton Streal,
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and occasionally

OK, FOLKS..LET'S GO OVER THE B.S. ONE MORE TIME..
1. YOU TRAVELLED FOR 75 DAYS ON THIS TUB..
2, YOU'VE LOSTALL YOUR IDENTITY PAPERS IN ASTORM..
3, YOU ARE APOLITICAL REFUGEE AND YOUR LIFE
WAS IN DANGER...
AND MOST IMPORTANT: TRY NOT TO
SNICKER.. CHOCKLE OR GIGGLE...

BANGKOK -- Two days in
Bangkok isn't quite long en-
ough to fully understand how
the traffic works, but the out-
lines of the system are begin-
ning to emerge.

Drawing on my experience
of driving regularly in Victoria
in Vancou-
ver, the word chaos comes to
mind, as our taxi driver jostles

. for position in a nearly perpet-

ual gridlock that makes rush
our in any North American
city look tike kids' play.

We're talking serious traffic
jams from the early hours of
the morning until about eight
o'clock at night in this city of
more than 12 million.

The only time traffic runs
smoothly in the capital of
Thailand is late at night, like
when we arrived and were
picked up by Peter Coo, gen-
eral manager of Right Trips
Co. Ltd, specialist in every-
thing to do with travel in Thai-.

“I Yand‘and beyond. |e oo
‘ During the 45-minute trip ~
“from the airport to the Royal

City Hotel, Peter alternated
between passing ather cars at
120 kilometres an hour and
tailgating at 95,

A couple of days later |
came to believe that Thai dri-
vers make up at night for all
the frustration of driving during
the day.

The other thing that impres-
sed me was how pedestrians
fit into the traffic scheme of
things. There are pedestrian
crosswalks, but they don't offer
protection. The gentle honk

Humour can be clean

LAST WEEK’S American
presidential election should
convince us of an individual’s
power. At my bedtime, CNN
was saying the final outcome
of the election might have to
wait 10 days for all the mail-in
ballots to be counted.

If one person's mail-in bal-
lot can swing an American
election, it’s time we put our
individual influence to work
on saciety’s ills. For a start,
we cam pressure sponsors to
clean up television.

Because of the gutter lan-
guage that passes for humour
of programs such as Just for
Laughs or Friends, my daily
TV schedule is short. Very
short. And petting shorter since
Steve Allen died October 30,

Steve Allen is acknow-
ledged by top comedians to be
one of the wittiest comics

- ever, He did it with humour,

not gutter language, and all
his life fought for clean pro-

DANG veer my
WALLET AT THE
GAS STATION
IN DOGGEREL!

RETURN! ALL THAT
MONEY 'WHAT 22 WE
DO WHEN WEGET
ToTHecry7!!

-FROM THE CAPITAL
HUBERT BEYER

you hear is but a warning that
unless you jump out of the
way, you're going to be run
over.

Speaking of horn-honking,
there is surprisingly little of it.
The reason is that any outward
sign of anger or impatience is
frowned upon in Thai society.
And people appear to live by
this credo. Friendliness and
helpfulness are unequalied in
this cotintry Of 60"mnillioft.”"

‘The ‘Cheapést way to get.
around Bangkok is by cab.
Find a car with a sign “Taxi
Meter” on the roof and you
can get anywhere for next to
nothing. My wife and I spent
close to an hour in a cab get-
ting from the Chao Phya River
in the centre of Bangkok to
our hotel and the fare was 110
Baht, about $3.75 Canadian.

Speaking of hotels, you can
spend anywhere from $150 to
$350 to stay at your typical
western hotel chains such as
Sheraton or you can de what
we did, find a Thai hotel on
the internet.

THROUGH BIFOCALS
CLAUDETTE SANDECKI

gramming.

For decades he led a group
of citizens fighting for less
violence and “sewer mouth”
on TY and in movies,

On the day he died, he had
paid for a large ad on the front
page of a Hollywood newspa-
per, with the heading

“Hollywood leading our child- —

THAT'S BACK 200
MILES! WECAN'T

The Royal City Hotel is not
in the city centre but offers all
the luxury you cauld wish for.
Fabulous room on the 11th of
21 floors. Several restaurants,
swimming pool with bar, ser-
vice you would and do give an
arm anda leg for in North
America and Europe, all of it
for $38 Canadian a night. I'm
not kidding. ,

We went to several expen-
sive western chain hotels for
lunch and found that the only
difference was that in our hotel
we were among the very few
non-Asian guests, and that's
just the way we liked it.

At the Sheraton, there was
a table of about a dozen Ger-
man men with not a woman in
sight and you don't have to
Stretch your imagination too
far to know that these guys
were here for what is widely
advertised in Europe as sex
tour.

The Thai government is try-

§ ing to shed'the image of being«.

a destination for sex tourism,
but the reality of regianal pov-
erly, particularly in the rural
areas, is difficult to overcome.

In Saturday's Bangkok Post
there was a story about a 58-
year-old Japanese tourist ar-
rested for having sex with a
13-year-old girl, supplied to
him by the girl's mother who
belongs to one of the northern
hill tribes. The man faces 10
years in prison and I hope he
will have to serve every bloo-
dy month of it.

As ] am writing his column
in our hotel room, it's 6:25 p.m.

ren into the sewer.” Or words
to that effect.

Allen believed in the view-
er’s weight to lean on program
sponsors, One viewer's letter of
complaint might seem like a
small brickbat against a large
corporate sponsor. But Procter
and Gamble or Pizza Hut has
no way of knowing whether
your letter is only the first of a
landslide.

Sponsors spend millions on
advertising developing catchy
jingles, eye-grabbing visuals,
and come-ons crafted to per-
suade us to buy their soap or
sauce. They don’t want to alie-
nate us. ,

Remember following 0.1.
Simpson’s trial how fast his
TY interview was cancelled
when the public was outraged
by the jury’s decision? Re-
member how his sponsors eva-
porated when he lost his civil
suit?

There’s no need to be vul-

Caught in a jamb in Bangkok —

Saturday local time or 3: 25
am. Saturday, back home.
Below is another giant traffic
jam on two tiers, one at ground
level, the other on the elevated
freeway on concrete stilts that
traverses Bangkok in every dir-
ection.

Without this elevated free-
way toll system, construction
of which began in 1993, noth-
ing would move anymore in
Bangkok, And it was a brief re-
mark by the king that got
things moving seven years ago.

During some speech, the
king said that traffic problems
in the capital were becoming
intolerable and something nee-
ded to be done.

Almost overnight, the gov-
emment set the wheels in mo-
tion and the huge project of the
overhead freeway system and
construction of an underground
transportation system began.

The royal family is revered
in Thailand. Even social misfits
and ‘malcontents’ will not tdler:*’
ate the slightest derogatory ré-”
mark about the royal family.

The result is that when the
king says something, the gov-
ernment listens — and acts.

However, nothing's perfect,
least of all the Thai political
system, which is rife with cor-
tuption of a magnitude that
makes Glen Clark's sundeck
episode look like a piker. But
that's fodder for another col-
umn. .

Beyer can be reached at:
E-mail: hubert@coolcam.com;
Tel (250) 381-6900; Web
http: /fwww.hubertbeyer.com

, TOO

gar to be amusing. Think of
Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Rita
Rudner. Think of our own
Wayne and Shuster, the Air
Farce no smut there, yet
tons of laughs, So why should I
tune in to Just for Laughs to
hear a bastardized version of a
sex manual?

Back on December 14,
1996, I listened to an interview
on Channel 18 titled “Caesar's
Writers”, about the writers who
worked with comedian Sid
Caesar in the early days of TV.
Comedian. Mel Brooks said,
“1950's audiences were better
educated because only the rich
could afford TV. Today comedy
is dumbed down so the tess in-
telligent viewer can get it.”

Fifty years later comedy is
dumbed down even more, And
do you know what? I'don’t wish
to “get if. L intend writing
sponsors to tell them so, begin-
ning with Pizza Hut, a sponsor
of Just for Latigits,

fever

FAT HERE !

WAITRESS GAVE YOUR WALLET TOTAKE. |
WHo fuT (T ON THE MAIL BUS AND THE
Peek SAW SALLY JA THEMALL AND
SHE GAVE (TTO SID WHO WORKS FoR
ME AND I KNoW You ALwAyS

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