Would it not be great if…
- If new cars came in different colours? I went looking at new cars the other day and was frustrated at the colour selections. My wife would like a red vehicle…the model is negotiable. If you look at any parking lot, what colours do you see? Many different shades of greys, blacks, tans and whites and that’s about it! Very drab!
- If our local radio station did more local news and traffic reports? The other day, I was down near the Oshawa Centre and traffic was backed up. I could see in the distance flashing lights from emergency vehicles at the corner of Stevenson and Gibb. When our local radio station did the traffic report, there was nothing about Oshawa! I wish our local station had a roving local reporter, and more local news and traffic.
- If we had our own TV station? In 2011, the population of the Oshawa census metropolitan area – which also includes Clarington and Whitby – was 356,177, representing a growth of 7.7 per cent from 2006. This makes us the 11th largest metropolitan city in Canada! Our local station comes out of Peterborough, where there is less than half the population of Oshawa. Something is not right here! I presume the powers that be have decided we have easy access to Toronto stations, which is true, but how our own station could build up the community.
- If governments really enforced scalping laws? People have been so frustrated at not being able to buy Tragically Hip tickets, as scalpers and organizations like StubHub have scooped up almost all available tickets. In the band’s hometown of Kingston, the cost of seeing the Hip perform one last time ranged from $799 to $5,999 per ticket on the site atbtickets.com. Many of the tickets made their way to the site StubHub, where Kingston ticket prices ranged from $720 to $5,000. On Ticketmaster, the tickets were originally priced between $60 and $126. In the old days, we had to go to the venue to line up to get tickets…but we did get them.
- If the drive clean programme was restricted to vehicles older than 15 years? It’s a moneymaker for our province. Although initially it was to be non-profit, it does make a profit of well over $11 million a year at the cost of inconveniencing most of us every two years.
- If school literacy and math tests were administered to a much smaller sample of Ontario schools, possibly in those areas were testing shows poor results. Costs to administer and mark these tests run well over $30 million a year. Teachers have told me that they now teach to the tests and with time restraints have to skip some of the required curriculum!
- If credit cards did not charge ridiculous interest rates? Do you sometimes get credit card offers showing only one per cent interest the first year and then read down and see from then on the interest rate is 19.9 per cent! I guess the answer is not to have a balance, but reading about how close to half of Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque, using a credit card during a rough period may be the quickest – and perhaps only – option for some.
- If the predicted housing price bubble would actually burst here in Canada? The American housing burst affected over half of the United States. Housing prices peaked in early 2006, and declined, reaching new lows in 2012. It was possible to buy a nice detached winter home in Florida when prices dropped by more than 60 per cent! I don’t wish for people to lose value in their homes, but I constantly worry about how young people will ever be able to afford to live in the GTA when homes are now so expensive and so many speculators are in the market. For younger people to get into the housing market today, I believe many end up in great debt, leading to overwhelming stress and possible further health problems!
- If these things came true?
