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Peoples Forum- THE WEEKEND OUTLOOK Friday January nil Page Some members of society inconsiderate and selfcentred To the Editor For the first time in ray life I am writing a letter to a newspaper to point out yet another example of the self centred and inconsiderate nature of some members of our society Because of a decline in my health and mobility I recently received a Handicapped Parking Permit from the Ministry of Transporta tion to allow me to use the park spaces reserved for people with physical problems whether they be wheelchair bound or as in my case have severe breathing difficulties When I started to make use of the permit I was amazed and appalled not by those people who park in these spaces illegally since I expect that to happen but by the un thinking individuals who use the spaces to dump their shopping carts They are too lazy to walk the extra distance to put their carts the area set aside for that purpose The two worst locations for this in Georgetown are beside Loblaws ana Miracle Food Mart It is extremely frustrating to find the reserved parking spaces inac cessible because of this I would also like to point out to anyone who doesnt know it that the Ministry of Transportation recently changed their regula tions and no longer issue the special license plates to permit holders A plastic coated card is now used that is placed on the dashboard or attached to the sun- visor of the vehicle that the per mit holder is using If you see so meone parking in a handicapped parking space in a vehicle that has a regular license plate before you give them dirty looks or accuse them of parking illegal ly check out the dash or sun- visor It may save a lot of em harassment and irritation for all parties Remember too that not all disabilities are readily visible and a parking permit is issued by the Ministry of Transportation only after certification of the disability by a medical doctor Thank you for your indulgence Glenn B Strathdee Georgetown Opinion Money raised for UNICEF Dear Editor History was made Sept 2930 when Presidents and Prime Ministers from countries around the world came together for the first ever World Summit for Children served as the Secretariat for the Summit The UNICEF Mandate is in essence the same as when it was originally given to help protect the lives of children and promote their development The greater their vulnerability the higher the priority We are pleased to report that Georgetown and surrounding raised for this worthy cause thus enabling to carry out some of their many projects The following schools and organizations participated in the Halloween program for which many many thanks Park Street Public School Robert Little Public School Acton 82 Pineview Public School 75 E Foster Public School Milton 480 George Kennedy Public School 27 Glen Williams Public School Georgetown District High School 321 29 Joseph Gibbons Public School 63 Public School Georgetown Nursery School St Johns United Church Sunday School 45 J Denyes Public School Harrison Public School Georgetown Public Library A and P Georgetown 40 68 Misc 43 We wish to thank the staff of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Com merce in the Georgetown Market for their prompt assistance when depositing the UNICEF monies We would like to take this op portunity of wishing you all Health Happiness and Peace in Bud and Phyllis Livinstone CoChairmen UNICEF Georgetown and District Canada depends on US financial system Will recession turn into sion Will there be a war in the Persian Gulf Will history repeat itself or worse These are the questions that loom large as the new year begins History does tend to repeat itself and certain things do get worse With each major war for example more people are killed because of technological ad vances Will the same apply to global economic slumps Will in crea singly severe depressions sweep across the world laying economies and peoples lives to waste Some forecast res think so William a respected New York predicts the coming depression will make the 1930s look like a Sunday picnic He has sound reasons for his dark forecast the explosion of credit backed by nothing but the good will of the American government The same can be said of Canada SCARY THESIS The core of Mr Tehans thesis is this when the United States abandoned the gold standard money which to him is synonymous with credit had no underlying value The prosperity of the 1970s and 1980s was false built on the principle of leverage borrowing against a small capital base Leverage sadly works in reverse This is what is happen ing to the S banking system Instead of growing it is shrink ing In Mr opinion the house of cards is about to col lapse Could this happen I dont think so It is not that Mr is wrong quite the op posite He is right and Alan Greenspan knows it Mr Greenspan is chairman of the Federal Reserve Board the American central bank And he is one scared central banker So dangerous is the situation that S policy makers will do everything in their power to pre vent what could turn into a finan meltdown People elsewhere in the world can only hope they succeed If the S financial system Canada will be dragged down with it We would not be innocent bystanders True our banks are sounder But our debt per capita is higher the economy is less diversified our market simpler and our cost of production higher NOT THE SAME Frightening as this prospect may be the similarities with the 1930s are not as great as they are often portrayed Mr would say the situation today is worse To properly compare the two periods one would have to examine arcane money supply figures balance of payments currencies real interest rates in vestment and trade So far the experts on the Great Depression are not waving red flags Chances are we are not sliding into another depression We are merely coming back down to earth after two decades of infla tion We thought inflation was here to stay Falling prices con fuse and frighten us Those who bet heavily on a steady rise in prices may have a sick feeling in the pit of their stomach Others may be more philosophical The problem is how to adjust without un necessary suffering Real estate speculators have been punished But why should thousands of pur- dent hardworking people be thrown out of work because of a reckless few This question is weighing heavily on North American policymakers as the new year begins Let us hope they have the good sense to recognize the wrong and right it Federal bureaucracy continues to grow OTTAWA Through most of the 1980s federal governments wag ed a relentless often highly publicized campaign to control the growth of the massive public The struggle was highlighted by Prime Minister Brian Mulroneys election promise to issue many Ottawa bureaucrats with pink slips and running shoes Two years later Finance Minister Michael Wilson made good on the promise by chopping jobs from the federal payroll But a Statistics Canada review of federal employment over the last years suggests the govern may have to concede defeat in the struggle to contain the bureaucracy The federal agency reports the public service grew by per cent in the past year and is now per larger than it was in June 1980 Statistics Canada which records government employment levels twice each year has found that most of the growth occurred in the first half of the decade And in spite of serious attempts to cut jobs by trimming operations and selling Crown corporations there was little change in the employ level over the last half In June there were peo ple on the government payroll compared to in June 1989 In the last 10 years there has been only one year that Statistics Canada recorded an actual drop in government employment That was when Wilson cuts took effect The total annual payroll is now about billion DEFLATE The latest figures tend to deflate the boast earlier this year in spending plans tabled in Parliament by then Treasury Board president Robert de Cotret Through seven pages of charts graphs and text the spen ding estimates impress the reader with the governments ability to trim the public service But after claiming to have scored a clear success in controlling growth the department cautions that it is not possible to it method of measurement with Statistics Canada head count Liberal treasury critic Jim Peterson thinks the government is masking the real situation Peterson suspects permanent employees are being replaced by contracted term and temporary help They must be part timing everyone he said In fact Statistics Canada calculates that only three per tent of government employees are part time but 15 per cent are now term or temporary And that has the Public Service Alliance of Canada which represents about 000 civil servants concerned PSAC spokesman Alan Pryde said the government has been replacing permanent employees with contract help The result is a The government figures he said are a lot worse than we are led to believe Their record is dismal But while the level of employ m the public service has been creeping up there have been major reductions in the numbers employed by Crown owned enterprises The number of workers in the federal businesses has been slipp ing since 1980 from at the start of the decade to 198000 in 1989 But in the month period ending in June the number plunged per cent to after the government sold Air Canada and layoffs at CN Rail Via Rail and new increase in cost to the tax payer and a problem among employees who see fewer opportunities for transfers and promotion he said We think the term process has been grossly abused he com mented A task force that recently pro posed a major overhaul of the bureaucracy came to the same conclusion To the panel that comprised Public Service it was clear that the current uses of term employment go well beyond the initial intention of meeting short term labor re quirements REDUCE IMPACT Peterson said the government is increasing its use of contract term and temporary help to lessen the impact of expansion in departments such as Employ ment and Immigration and at Revenue Canada which has hired 900 additional employees to administer the goods and vices tax Berrys World Heres some T news about global warming I