This Is A Government Who You Elected And.......

.....promises to end poverty, keep the lights on, reduce gun crime, make sure senior's diapers are changed at least daily, who won't give Comrade Miller a handout, etc. etc. and while they seem to have a problem delivering on these promises they are able to spend time dealing with this serious threat to society.

Licence to stifle plate expression TheStar.com - News - Licence to stifle plate expression

November 29, 2007

Jim Coyle

If there's any cosmic justice, the devil himself will be firing up a special ring in hell for the Ministry of Transportation.

Only a body called the Personalized Licence Plate Review Committee, after all, could have so lost touch with goodness and decency as to object to a United Church minister from Whitby – Rev. Joanne Sorrill by name – having the vanity plates REV JO on her car.

That the objection has been made almost 20 years after Sorrill got the plates as a 50th birthday present, shortly after her ordination, takes matters from the merely absurd to the utterly bizarre.

As the Star's Carola Vyhnak so delightfully reported yesterday, satire is rarely a match for reality.

Evidently, the ministry refused Sorrill's recent request for fresh REV JO plates to replace her rusted ones on the grounds that (a) the term REV might be taken as an incitement to dangerous driving or (b) could incite road rage among those construing it as government bias toward Christianity.

For starters, let's consider the inequality of the decision.

Why should Sorrill be barred from showcasing her occupation any more than, say, the folks who have "I OBJCT" or "ICUB4DK" or "IBLD4U" on their plates?

Most of us probably have more reason to harbour grudges against lawyers or dentists or contractors who've billed us to within an inch of insolvency than we would person of the cloth.

And not to get political, but a car bearing the plates "MAYOR MEL" was spotted rolling up Yonge St. not long ago. Does the ministry think that any less likely to get some citizens cross-eyed with fury?

As a matter of principle, shifting the onus of temper control from potential ragers and religious bigots to anyone who might inadvertently tick them off is unjust on the face of it.

But if such fears are warranted, why has the province allowed so much else on licence plates that could provoke conflict?

Thousands are adorned with the logos of sports teams. And if you think things could get ugly if some religious nut got their holy book in a knot, what about this?

What if (and it does happen once a season or so) the Leafs beat the Senators and, say, a Sens fan had lost a bundle on the game and, on his way to work next day, had an old Pinto with Leaf plates cut him off, so he ran the offender off the road, then reached through the windshield and bashed the driver on the head with the Darcy Tucker bobble-head doll sitting on the dash?

And what about those university logos on plates. What if you'd applied to Queen's and been turned down and saw some cocky commerce sort speeding past in his mum's Lexus with logoed plates?

Or what if U of T (far-fetched though it be) had just beat Wilfrid Laurier in a football game and some Blues fan got lost driving in a dangerous section of Waterloo?

It's a motoring minefield. "4U BUBI" might outrage anti-Semites. "DE RIEN" could offend francophobes. And the potential for class war is also rife.

The other day an acquaintance found himself behind a Rolls-Royce (which by itself had the blood pressure rising) with the vanity plate "8DAYWEEK."

What was the Rolls dude saying? That he worked more than the rest of us? That he had more leisure time? Who wouldn't have had the middle digit twitching at the sight of it?

But enough of that.

Just honk if you think REV JO —– hide not your calling under a bushel, girl! – should keep her plates.