Master movers or master swindlers?

I moved last Saturday and I just wanted to express my disappointment with a moving company. My peeve is this: no one mentioned to me that an hour's travel time would be tacked on at the end of the job (just as we were about to die from exhaustion--my defenses were stripped by delirium), nor that the mover would bring along a cellular phone (which rang every half hour). This means that while I paid for four men, one was absent most of the time. And speaking of men, two were really, really small (one of whom coughed every time he picked up a box--we called him Tiny Tim). And, finally, they broke stuff!

I know that moving is always a hellish experience and anybody who says it isn't must be really really rich or an officer in the military. Since anyone can set up a moving company (I feel it requires less managerial skills than a lemonade stand), we the consumers are left with that caveat emptor thing. It's just not fair. It's a crooked business that hasn't any regulations. And why should it? People are desperate during prime moving season. I won't even go into what I went through with my new landlord.

But I will end my rant with this: there's a lot to gain by changing your domicile--a better neighbourhood, a bigger space, higher ceilings, cheaper rent and utilities. But after last week's move, I believe the only people who gain anything are the moving companies and landlords.

J.P. Acco

Cigar photo in poor taste

Just some comments on your Hot Summer Guide issue [June 5]: your front page photo of Pascale Bussières showed great sensitivity to the tobacco lobby and their attempts to poison the public. You are truly disappointing. North American natives consider tobacco a power plant and offer it during sacred ceremonies. Stupid Euro-peons think the plant gives them power and abuse it terribly. The recent spate of "stars" being photographed with cigars is journalistic caca. Somebody somewhere decided on your cover format. Please give them a kick for me.

Robert Cox

The microeconomics of panhandling

Why do we give panhandlers money? If we suddenly stopped they wouldn't be there. However, this isn't happening, and I doubt it will. Unemployment continues to rise, business after business continues to go under, yet panhandling persistently displays the characteristics of a growth industry. If we look to the laws of supply and demand for an explanation, we must conclude that the "success" of Montreal's growing panhandling community is glaring proof that a demand for their services exists, and that they are evidently fulfilling a need.

Despite our national myth, Canada has never had a particularly generous social safety net. And in the last couple of years we have allowed our government to begin dismantling much of the social safety net we have, thus rendering the gap between the haves and the have-nots even larger. Nevertheless, we all--myself included--have no trouble sleeping at night. Yet when we see a fellow Montrealer holding out their hand, all of David Frum's justifications (and our own) seem suddenly lacking. It is as if the spell of individualism is momentarily broken and we realize that the panhandler is somehow connected to us. We understand on some level that we are in fact "our brother's keeper." This brings us back to the initial query: what service does the panhandler perform?

The panhandler offers us absolution, an honourable service for which he or she is justly recompensed. Like our forefathers who often gave money to priests for the absolution of sins committed, when we give money to panhandlers we receive something akin to a pardon.

John Faithful Hamer

Unity through money

The conflicts that exist between the English and the French in Canada and that threaten to splinter the nation are not new. They are old struggles between Catholics and Protestants and bitter animosities between England and France that have literally crossed the ocean. All those historical grievances really must become historical once and for all.

A constructive start would be to abolish the simple but greatly symbolic ties to the "old world." I'm sure that most French Canadians would feel a lot more comfortable about their role within Canada if they didn't have to see the Queen of England all day long on almost every unit of currency in the country.

Why don't French Canadians issue a challenge to the rest of Canada to prove that old grudges have been forgotten by simply removing the image of the Queen from Canadian money? If English Canada could muster up the guts to meet this challenge, then I'm sure Canadians as a whole would benefit from a great new identity.

Christopher Gore