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SINE AAS A EARS LTR SORE AIAN IF RENEE A i OME SEO SET SELF SARE rT UWE [] ef ' by Dean J. Kelly orner those horrible stickers that stores put on books and other items used -as-gifts that just won't come off instructions and so much French on the label that you need a microscope to read the instructions. This is particularily important on drug items where the instructions are vital to safe use. The elderly have enough troubles with the metric system and celsius temperatures...give them a break. One way I have found is to have the check-out girl take them off. They hate it and it holds up the line...if they refuse, I just ~~ walk ouf and refuse to buy the article. Try it...maybe we can all end these stupid and nerve-wracking experiences. I recently ded a little battery for my camera, about the gize of a penlight and almost fell over when tod they Sold for $4.51. The last time I had bought one it cost about $2.00. There is only gne ynanufacturer (Mallory) and the camera will not'work without it so they know they can rip-off the public /for whatever they like. So angered by this I went to several stores to find that the prices were all $4.51, even the stores that are supposed to be discounters, like the K-Mart. Theyoriginally were to be about 10 percerit lower than their competitores and the regular Kresge chain...but no way. Finally I went to a friend in the business and enquired why they cost so much. He looked up the cost to the dealer...it was only $1.97 each. The retail price set by the manufacturer was $4.51. Wow, that's a mark-up of 130 per cent. This to me looks like a good case for the Price Control Board. A word to the wise! When buying anything using a cartridge (cameras, typewriters, etc) or anything that cannot be bought on the open market (even car parts), you are at the mercy of the dealers'and there is nothing you can do about it after you have bought their product. Many a foreign car buyer has found this out too late...and had to pay through the nose for parts, not counting the delay for parts. TIMEX electric watches are another example of a rip-off. The batteries when I bought mine were only $1.00 each. When is the consumer going to get a break from without damaging the gift. Price labels slapped over | How come . IT TAKES 'THREE, men 70. REPLACE A 5) "with|a dash - vent OF Peanuts". Now they have doubled to $2.00 each, with tax makes $2.14. Those digital watches take two batteries and cost about $3.00 each. In ten years that's a cost of about $60.00 for batteries alone. Digital watches will soon be down to about $25.00, so why pay $75 to $100 now.¥ The same as calculators have come down to about half what they were a year ago. Remember... "a dollar saved is a dollar earned". ~The Ontario Energy Board has asked for a FULL : INQUIRY into all aspects of Ontario Hydro. The Boards 184 page report states that Ontario Hydro is not _-as efficient or productive as it might be. It concluded "that "it regrets Hydro was unable to establish more convincingly that its operations are conducted in an efficient and productive manner". This reporter has been saying that for years! Under pressure Hydro cut $5,000,000,000 (billion) from its spending on top of the 1 billion cut a few weeks ago. If pressure had not been brought to bear by this reporter and others there is no doubt that $6 billion would have been spent unnecessar- ily. Conservation is the only answer, not only for hydro but for all energy. . WINTARIO funds should be used for hospitals. I have said this for years and before the lotteries even began I presented a brief to then Premier John Roberts on all aspects of lottery operations. At the time I recommended that the funds go to the Hospital for Sick Children, rather than all that money going to Ireland (of which' an inquiry found only 10 percent went to hospitals, with 90 percent to the promoters and sellers). The millions going into Quebec could be used here in Ontario for medical care. Si A RR A AR 2 -- RA SURE i | 7 WELFARE RECORD: more More than 5,000 people - were on welfare in Durham region in January...the highest on record. . GIVE MILK TO POOR, MP SAYS } Progressive Conservative MP Jack Marshall called on the government yesterday to use a 400-million- pound surplus of skim milk powder as a nutrition supplement for poor school children. ' Marshall (Humber-St.Georges-St. Barbe) said in the House of Commons there are 1.5 million under- nourished children in the country 'and the government E should use the milk to help them rather than offering it to eastern European countries at a loss. . : But Robert Kaplan, parliamentary secretary for health, said the surplus milk is not the property of the government. It belongs to milk producers. Hear the one about the daughter who was taking her mothers birth control pills and replacing them with saccharin tablets. Well, her mother has the '"sweet- est'! baby in town. Education vs.The Buck .|. It seems to be the fashion today to speak ~ disparagingly of the educational system and what educators are doing with it. Extrava- gance, lack of professionalism and dedication are some of the things that the system is accused of. Back to the three R's is the battle cry among many parents who charge -that despite all that 'fancy stuff', Junior's learning less. : § , ! We wonder, however, if the.cry represents a true concern for our educational philosophies, or if it simply reflects another concern... ...money. : fhe: Quality education, more and more people are discovering, Is a very costly proposition. At a time of penny pinching and belt-tightening, we look more and more suspiciously at an expens- ive system that "worked fine for us without all those frills". rk Look at education today, however, and dis- cover just how much it has grown in scope,' in facilities and size. More than ever before; the: school student has become a member of thé community. 4 : School programs today seem to encourage interaction with our communities and society, rather than insulating the student from it. THere's a realism; a willingness to adapt, to be flexible, to use the total resources of our communities and our society into the main- "stream of education. It's not that the system had a choice. These are directions that had to be taken. Our society gets more and. more complicated, demanding more and more from its members, under more and more pressures. Education; then, must give the student more - and.more, and that's expensive. The "back-to-the-basics" attitude may not necessarily be a bad idea. It may well be a valid criticism, that with the accelerating rush to keep up, something has been lost. The harm, * however, confes with the attitude that such a new direction has an economic, and not an educational basis. There's nothing wrong with belt-tightening, careful evaluation, and rejecting what we don't need, but only in consideration of its own purpose. Chopping blindly at the so-called frills for purely economic reasons may give us short-term financial relief, but leave us with a permanent injury. 'Haste makes waste Canada and the United States are the highest users of energy in -the world, consuming between the two some 43 percent of the energy supplies of this planet. In our homes, busi- nesses, governments and industries more than half that amount ends up in waste. In our haste to develop non-renewable e rgy resources to meet the insatiable demands of our affluent life styles we, as. a nation, seem unwilling to take the time needed to plan our resource development carefully, rather we deal only in crisis situations. 0% The result is dangerous depletion of energy supplies, pollution of air, water and land and, above all incredible waste. : Yet, in the midst of this waste, there are many other countries, especially among the newer nations, that are suffering acute short- ages of energy needed just for basic survival. When tragedy, either natural or man-made, .strikes one of these countries we take palliative measures by pouring in dollars when some long-term international planning and restruc- turing of the present economic order might well 'remedy the situation. And waste does not end with our natural resources in this hemisphere. There is the waste of human resources: Natives caught in the web of welfare and alcoholism; the exper- tise and experience of older people carelessly cast aside; large numbers of chronically unemployed in depressed areas; creative and 'sensitive young people lost in a sub-culture. . We believe that the waste of our natural and human resources is due in large measure to crisis-oriented, shortsighted planning on the part of governments and private institutions. i "gw ® ¢ } 8 ols J » [ » e v |e 3 [ ] » &