Bullying the bullies

I am glad to see Craig Segal expose injustice in our society so well week after week. His latest ["Tenants get the boot," Nov.9] was shocking and, honestly, I would have preferred to read a more fleshed-out version of this very newsworthy story.

No tenant should put up with Mafia tactics from landlords who want to illegally evict them. And it is illegal to evict any tenant, no matter the reason, unless the Rental Board issues an eviction notice. Why do so many tenants refuse to fight despotic landlords? Do we live in a Third-World country or what?

These landlords who behave as bullies and illegally evict tenants should be harshly fined by the Rental Board to send out more warnings that such behaviour will not do, and to prevent the recurrence of similar future incidents. And since landlords have a lot of money, their fines should be collected.

Enough of these grubby owners and lousy real estate developers who will cast aside all rules and morality when they see dollar signs flashing!

--Dean Dunbridge

[Ed's note: As it happens, you're in luck: for full coverage of this issue see Craig Segal's "Bye-bye Mackay," p. 13]

Voting for values

This is in response to R. Hamilton's letter "Getting a grip on democracy" [Nov. 9] and his disheartening and demoralizing plea for voters to "put idealism aside and look at the big picture." This person's response is exactly the reason why people become disillusioned with the political system and fail to go out and vote. To advocate that people ignore their own beliefs and values and merely vote "strategically" is, to put it quite simply, immoral.

It's not even that I disagree with Hamilton's analysis of the effect that vote splitting has on who eventually gets elected. It's true that the more candidates and parties there are, the less likely it is that the elected candidate will hold their position by a majority of votes or even by popular acclaim.

But when has that ever been the case in Canadian politics? No matter what the eventual numbers end up being, there are going to be a bunch of people (most likely a majority) whose candidate did not win. Just look at what happened south of here, where it is very possible that the next U.S. president will be someone who didn't even win the most votes.

Please, do not listen to Hamilton's kind of "realism" and vote your conscience. If you truly believe that a candidate from the Marijuana Party or the Popular Party of Prostitutes is the best choice to represent you in the government, then vote for them. Vote in whatever way and for whatever candidate you think best represents what you believe in and what you stand for.

If we do not vote the way our values and ideals would lead us then the entire concept of democracy becomes a farce. I may not like the way you vote, I may not even like the way it eventually effects the outcome of the election, but I would hate it even more to live in a country where our values and beliefs are considered irrelevant or immaterial in regards to how we cast our votes.

--Richard Walker

Hipper than fur

On a recent trip to Montreal I was reading the fall fashion supplement in your September 28 issue [Hots, not-so-hots, still-hots and not-at-all-hots]. I was shocked to see fur listed as a hot fashion item, not once, but several times. I had assumed that the Mirror, like many news and arts weeklies in other cities, would be more politically correct than that.

Are you trying to be so hip as a paper that you are willing to overlook the cruelties of the fur industry and encourage thousands of young people to do the same?

I hope that you will amend your position in future issues.

-- Carol Mangan