TAKING DUCT CLEANERS TO THE CLEANERS

AS USEFUL AS SPIGOTS ON A BULL

Some friends now start their phone conversations with "I'm not cleaning ducts."
Who would have thought that in 2014, the greatest telephone problem, not counting the bill, would be the annoying 6 p.m. call from duct cleaners. Or at 8 just when a good TV movie starts.
Just how is it possible for them to annoy thousands of people all at the same time, just when supper is to be enjoyed or there is something finally interesting on TV.
It is the bureaucrats in Ottawa who should start cringing at the calls because it is daily proof that the do not call lists that they have concocted are an abject failure.
There are already many faults with those lists as I last wrote on July 14 in a blog titled Disconnecting Telemarketers. To start with, they could get rid of the calls from newspapers, and I think calls from politicians and pollsters should have strict limits.
Here we are in an era when we are being spied on electronically by every government.  Companies make fortunes compiling our personal histories from our credit card and Internet traffic. And yet these duct companies, and indeed all the other companies which grievously bug the hell out of us most days with their incoherent telephone solicitations, can't be trapped and fined mightily, since I'm sure some liberal squeamish types would vote against public executions.
Why I would even vote NDP if that promise-them-anything party would pledge to put the duct cleaner calls out of business.
Ironically, most duct cleaning is about as useless as a Liberal promise at Queen's Park. It doesn't even seem to employ many people, and goodness knows, finding jobs for everyone is a political preoccupation, no matter what the level of government.
I went to vote the other day and the gym was filled with so many poll officials twiddling their thumbs, gossiping and giving unnecessary info that I was afraid they were going to carry me over to the table to mark my X.
 Come to think of it, we no longer mark an X like we did in the old days when City Hall didn't find it necessary to employ armies with nothing better to do. Now it is a broken arrow that has to be mended, which certainly symbolizes our politics.
Petty patronage certainly has sprouted, along with the calls from the duct cleaners. And the results are just as dubious.