Page A4 — Terrace Standard, Wednesday, February 5, 1992

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EDITORIAL,

~ Mind bender

Get drunk. Get in a car. Get in an acci-
dent. Hurt or kill someone. Get arrested.

The need to protect society from such
maniacs dictates that the proverbial
book should be thrown at them. But this
is not always the case, judging by three
recent appeals court decisions.

All three cases involved drunk drivers
who killed or maimed other people in ac-
cidents.- One driver had his sentence
reduced from four and half years to 18
time off for good
behaviour and other lollipops for bad
guys, this person could serve only one-

months. With

third of that sentence.

The reasoning of the appeals court, in
part, comes from a person’s intent at the
time a criminal act is convicted. That
means a person who did something bad,
without meaning to, shouldn’t be held
responsible for his or her actions.

This is one of the more popular
defences used by defence lawyers in the

courts. It’s a credit to those Jawyers
because every person deserves and must
have the most vigorous defence possible.

But the wheels fall off the judicial cart
when it comes to the deadly combination
of alcohol and driving. The unfortunate
message being spread is that alcohol is a
mitigating or softening factor in
punishing an impaired driver who hurts
or kills someone. What it means is that
alcohol is an accepted defence in reduc-
ing the ability of a person to understand
what he or she is doing.

This kind of reasoning must be re-
jected when it comes to drinking and
driving. The overall responsibility of a
person and the resulting consequences of
all actions must start when a driver’s
licence is issued. That responsibility can-
not be eased when a person who drinks
gets behind the wheel of a vehicle.
Nothing else will suffice.

Lotto mania

Gadzooks. Remember the good old
days of all that lottery money flowing
around the province? The provincial
government’s financial watchdog put the
boots to that last week in a report which
said some of those grants were given
‘without required reviews and reporting.

; And so ends.a;period in.B.C..’s history: «
of a deadly combination of political am-
bition and pure democracy.

The politics comes in the form of
elected officials striving for maximum
public exposure by handing out money.
No matter that the money was probably ©
contributed by those very same people in
the first place. Call-it a gentle kind of
bribery. The democratic aspect was that
‘people who bought lottery tickets, could
reasonably expect a portion of the

revenue to be returned.

Taken together these two concepts
turned the handing out of lottery monies

into a thriving industry. From a relative-
ly decent idea — even if it was built on
the dubious notion of encouraging peo-
ple to gamble for that elusive pot at the
end of the rainbow — the government
created yet another social and economic
welfare programy" ni dais an :

it became an accepted; expected: and
even demanded source of financing for

Page os

various projects. As has been shown in

any number of other government pro-
grams, availability of money leads to a
state of dependence. Once you squeeze
the toothpaste out of the tube, it’s darn
tough to get it back in again.

If lottery monies were given out
without following the required rules and
regulations, the previous government
hasn’t done us much of a service. By

following suit in expecting lottery grants,

either.

we haven’t done ourselves any favours

In the thick of last Wednes-
day’s snowstorm that left twe
soggy inches between supper
and The National, an am-
bulance and two police cruisers
sniffed out an address on our
street. Precious seconds were
lost as the drivers squinted fora
house number to match their
dispatch orders.

I watched the slow motion
rescue with apprehension, im-
agining whoever might be
waiting for their arrival: a
middle-aged logger felled by a
heart attack; a child fatally
stricken with meningitis; a
mother with a broken hip; or a
basement handyman spurting
blood after a saw mishap.

Locating house numbers is
something  postiés, taxis and
delivery services do a lot of.
And welcome they are to it. Oc-
casionally I must visit a strange
address. But never am I on an.
emergency mission, though
‘some customers would like me
to think 1 am. So 1 know the an-
‘noyance of creeping along an
unfamiliar street, deducting
from or adding to legible house
mimbers to deduce the address
I'm after.

Often house numbers are so
far from the street you need
20/20 vision and_a telescope to
read them. Privacy seekers post
theirs on the back fence, behind

. fertilized rose bushes, numbers
smaller than the Surgeon
 General’s Warning. Signs may
be nailed to a tree, a ferice post,
a-carport, or a mailbox. Some

Where are you?

‘dangle by one corner. Painted - °

Through
Bifocals

by Claudette Sandecki | a

signs may be peeling; an 8 or a5

becomes a 3; a 7 looks likea 1.

‘They can also be blocked from

view by a cabin cruiser, or a
parked motorhome,

Neighbourhood Watch ad-
vises keeping porch lights on

from. dusk to dawn. Besides

lighting house numbers to speed

response. by firetrucks or police.

in emergencies, porch lights
deter crime, and adda measure
of security for family or
neighbours arriving home after
dark.

Our address is identified by a’

homemade’ sign nailed to our

front cedar fence, Six inch high
“white ‘numbers on a - black

background. Yet during some

-snowfalls, flakes cling to the
~ gedar like cat hair to suit pants,

and-heap on the top edge of the

black board. Voila! No sign.

It. was probably no help
orienting the ambulance driver
last week. By .contrast, our

business sign catches your eye

winter and summer. One side of
it is candy apple red, the otheris
royal blue. Neither colour

blends into natural surroun-
dings...

Last August, returning home

from a bike ride, I pretended to
be an out-of-town visitor. To
my consternation, 1 discovered
willow branches had grown
hiding our sign until I was op-
posite our driveway. Too late
for a racing fire truck to make
the turn. Too late for an am-
bulance.

For months I’ve intended
replacing our black and white
house number with a royal blue.
I have a rectangle of plywood,
cut to specifications, waiting.

The wait’s over. Last week's
ambulance was too slow for
comfort. Even 911, if it is to
save lives, will depend on house
numbers,

_Socred. convention...

/

WHAT DO YOU PREFER.
AOL OR ATRIPLE E 2.

. MAKES NO DIFFERENCE
THEY ALL ARE TOUGH...

TASTELESS AND VERY
HARD TO CHEW...

Defeated Socreds
on the wrong path |

VICTORIA —‘‘We have to
give the other parties a chance
to make mistakes, and then we
can capitalize on them’’ —
Jack Weisgerber, Social Credit
party house leader at the

-What a premise on which to
rebuild a party. Having
sacrificed original thinking on
the altar of political expedien-
cy and empty platitudes years
ago, the Socreds have decided
to stay irue to form.

God forbid that the seven
survivors of the recent elec-
toral slaughter would draw on
whatever options, principles
and convictions they may have
salvaged from the voters’
wrath to build a sound plat-
form for the future.

If the post-election conven-
tion showed anything at all, it
was the Sacreds’ inability or
unwillingness to admit the er-
ror of their ways,

According to a report that
was prepared by a Rita -
Johnson-led panel, the massive
defeat at the polls was the
result of a breakdown in com-
munications between the party
and its grass roots,

Well, that’s one way of put-
ting it. One could also say the
party had become too ar-
rogant, too corrupt and bereft
of ideas to wrestle another
mandate from the voters.

There were other revelations
at the Socred convention that
threatened to snuff out any
hope for the party’s revival.
They include the massive debt
in general and a specific
$300,000 that’s missing from
the so-called life-members
fund,

The life memberships were

"sold at $100 a pop after the

1972 defeat, Much of the
credit of swelling that fund to
about $300,000 went to Grace
McCarthy who, at that time,
travelled the province for three
years, preaching the Socred
revival gospel,

The original intent was never

From the
Capital

"by Hubert Beyer © -

to spend money from the fund
itself, just the interest it ac-
cumulated. That promise was
even inscribed in the constitu-
tion,

At the last convention,
however, angry delegates were
told that the fund was empty,
Where did the money. 30? To
help pay for the fast election
campaign,

Party treasurer Gordon
Leversage told delegates that
yes, the fund was still there. It
just didn’t have any money in
It.

The explanation bore more
than a passing resemblance to
the famed Budget Stabilization
Fund which, you will
remember, also had no money
in it.

Meanwhile, the seven dwarfs
feel it may be too soon to hold
a leadership convention. Better
wait until the other parties
make mistakes.

Even the election of Dave
Mercier as the Social Credit
party’s new president shows
that the party hasn’t learned
anything from the thrashing it
got last October 17,

Mercier, as you may recall,
chose to rather quit politics
than extricate himself from a
conflict of interest.

Mercier was environment
minister when Ted Hughes, the
conflict of interest commis-
sioner, informed him that he
was in a potential conflict
because he was financially in-
volved in a number of
Tesource-extraction companies
in B.C.

Hughes recommended that
Mercier sell his mining claims

L GWE UP

NOPE! I'M DECIDING
WHERE ‘To PUT THE
FRONT WINDOW!

to steer clear of any potential
conflict, but the minister said,
no, thank you, and announced
he wouldn’t run again.

That decision prompted then
attorney general Russ Fraser, to
advocate the relaxation of the
guidelines governing conflicts
of interest, a rather curious
reaction from the province's
chief law enforcement officer.

True, as party president,
Mercier can buy, sell or keep
as many mining claims as he
wants to without being in any
conflict of interest, but | sug-
gest that his selection for the
job doesn’t send the right
signals to the public.

One of the few who appear
to have grasped the importance
of a real fresh start is John
Reynolds, former cabinet
minister and contender in the
1986 leadership race.

Reynolds to the convention
he believes that the next leader
must be someone who has had
little or no association with tha
party. Unfortunately, his views
don’t seem to be shared by
everyone.

If the Socreds want to sur-
vive as a party, a highly doubt-
ful endeavour at best, they
should at least stay away from
those who contributed to their
woes.

Should they make a clean
break with the past and start
attracting some new ideas and
new faces. The convention
didn’t give rise to hope for
either.

Based on what I’ve seen so
far, | have graye doubts that -
the Social Credit party will
even be on the ballot sheet
come the next election.

Rte