PAGE 4, THE HERALD, Wednesday, September 21, 1977

—{the herald)

Published by .
Sterling Publishers

General Office - 635-6357
Circulation (Terrace) - 635-6357
(Kitimat) - 632-6209 .

PUBLISHER... W.R. (BILL) LOISELLE
MANAGING EDITOR... STU DUCKLOW

Published every weekday at 3212 Kalum St. Terrace 8.C. A
member of Varified Circulation. Authorized rs second class
matt. Registration number 1201. Postage paic «cash, return
postage guaranteed.

NOTE OF COPYRIGHT

The Herald retains full-complete and sole copyright In any
advertisement produced and-or any editorial or
photographie content published In the Herald, Reproduction

Publisher.

{ Is not permitted without the written permission af the

#

Consumer comment:

Mail orders
can be gyps

In pioneer days, women who cam out to remote set-
flements to marry men they had never seen were
sometimes referred to as “mail-order brides’, the court-
ship having been conducted entirely by mail and the
_ ‘Marriage agreed to before either party saw each other.
These days we don't often hear of mail-order brides (or
- grooms), but almost anything else from fruit trees to fur-
_ hiture, can be ordered through the mail.

. . Many consumers, particularly those in smaller centres,
feel ordering by mail increases the range of products

available to them and save them money as well. As must

have been the case with some of the mail-order marriages,

however, the transaction may not always turn out as an-
icpated.

Unfortunately the mail-order business, like any other
large industry, has fring operators who trade on the
reputation earned by responsible firms.

: | You can minimize your chances of being fleeced by
; dishonest mail-treder orperators by taking a few simple
precautions.

: First, before you clip out the coupon and send it off, take a
~ long, hard look at the ad that accompanies it.

. _ Does the ad make unusual claims for a common product?

Strawberry plants that produce berries the size of
- tomatoes, for example. Or shade trees that grow ten feet

per year.

. Are gadgets you have never seen any where else being
. promoted? Be suspicious. If there really were a product
' which could boost gas mileage 25 per cent, or a special
’ creeen which converted black and white television pictures
- into colour; isn’t it likely they would be available in most
. retail stores? ;

. Investigate claims like these before you buy. Check with
, people in your community who are in allied businesses and
- are likely to be knowledgeable. Phone or write the nearest

: Better Business Bureau before you buy for a firm that is-

- unfamiliar to you. Even if the company in question is in
another province, the Better Business Bureau will probably
have a record of camplaints if the company has not dealt
farily with customers.

Consider wheter you are ikely to be satisfied with the
’ quality of the item offered. When you receive that $5.98
_ Caftan you may find it disappointingly shoddy in spite of the
~ glowing description in the ad. Any time the price of the
‘ article is a fraction of the normal price, there will usually be
: @ corresponding reduction in quality.

Nearly all mail-order ads offer a “refund if not satisfied’
: but don’t assume this means you having nothing to lose if
. the item is not satisfactory.
Some caompanies take months to ship the merchaddise
| although they cash your cheque immediately), and are
- even slower to issue the promised refund. These firms
ignore letters of enquiry and delay refunds by demanding
. copies of cancelled cheques, of denying receipt of the
returned item.

You will also have to pay for the cost for the postage to
return the item if you decide not to keep it. (The Post Office
will not accept parcels unless postage is paid at the time of
- Mailing.) Itis a good idea to register the parcel in case the
company demands proof or return

Always keep a copy of the ad and make sure uou retain
the company’s address. In some instances, only the coupon
you send away shows the firm's address, and once it is
mailed you have no way of contacting the company.

Don’t rely on the magazine in which the ad appears to
have checked out the company. Most magazines de not
’ have the resources to investigate the claims made by their
- advertisers and must accept copy on good faith unless there
’ is something obviously dishonest about the ad. It may be
_ worthwhile writing to the magazine if you feel you have
been taken by an advertise though. A responsible magazine
will not continue to run ads which are aimed at defrauding
_ its readers.

The department of consumer adn corporate affairs.

HEGAAN

IS77 Unrversal Prev Sypd<ate

‘i

ha

“How can | be over-qualified? | left school
when | was eight!”

Oil shortage me

BY RAY WARNER gasoline consumption that

as turned a broader P
segment of the public on to folk
motorcycles.

“We get about 20 per cent
of the customers concerned
with the gasoline situation
but the rest are out for fun
and relaxation.”

“We sold four
street-and-trail
ikes last year and 20 this

HALIFAX CP-Things are
changing with motorcycles-
and the people who ride

em.

The ‘‘over)25’’ set is
turning to bikes and dealers
think that rising price of
gasoline prices are a
secondary factor.

urpose

Tom Harper, 25-year-old
partner in Cycle World

ast, a major Halifax
motorcycle shop, says he
noticed a definite change.

“We're selling more bikes
to the over-25 category this
year, especiallyin the 100
400-ce street bike." .

Harper says its not just

year

Robert Swinemar, part-
owner of city
Halifax, says his biggest
sellers are in the middle of
the range of bikes from 360
to 469 cc, priced between
$1,200 and $1.600, .
“People are buying bikes

mainly
who liked th
models when they were ki

1,000-cc class.”
dual-

around on,”

Cycle in moped cycle.

However,

perhaps because,

Japanese-made

Losing the greaser image

ans profits for

for , recreation
urposes. Many of the older
e

“‘screamers” or souped-up
5

have come back to a sen-
sible touring bike of the 750-
Swinemanr said a lot of | Hamblen Insurance Co. of
rofessional people ara
uying bikes “just to jig

He said his firm had good
success as well selling the

the sales of
dual-purpose bikes wre slow
“there’s
no place to try them out.’”
e preferred to sell
bikes

theft-a big problem said
Hamblen.

Five years ago fire and theft
insurance cost $100;today
it’s $255. Collision Insurance
was $34 five years ago; now
it’s $117 annually.
He says most riders are 25
ears of age or older and
inan accident the biker is
often not at fault but rather
a car or truck driver who
paid insufficient attention to
the cyclist. ;
Hamblen, a cyclist
himself says the rider must
be on the defensive all the
time. ;
The Nova Scotia regisrly
of motor vehicles offers a
motorcycle learning

because of technological
advances that had made
them “almost trouble-free.”

With the surge in
motorcycles has come a
surge in driving insurance.

Grant Hamblen of A.W.

Halifax said that in 1972 his
company isured a motor-
cycle for about one of every
400 customers.

“Today is one QO.”

The cost in 1972, was aobut
$7 for a minimum of $35,000
public liability and property

mage policy: today’s cost
is $76. But the increase in
sales has brought an ac-
companying increase in-

program and all its calsses
are filled for this year, said
George Allen, director of
highway field safety.

The registry says there

bike-sellers

the province this year,
compared with 4,699 five
years ago.

Dealers say at leass 25 per
cent of the cycles they sell
are for off-highway use and
are not registered.

Smithsaid the company
hopes to increase its sales
by 25 per cent in 1978 and
this year’s gales are 25 per
cent ahead of 1976 figures.

His concern is with a four-
per-cent increase in the cost
of the various Kawasaki
lines because ‘‘we have to
stay competitive even
though the factory costs ah-
ve gone up three per cent
and he drop in the Canadian
dollar has played havoe with
import costs.”

ith is hoping current
tariff talks between the
Canadian and Japanese
governments will make his

| Albe

GALGARY CP-Alberta and
federal government have agreed to
provide funding for a plant to
recover helium from nutural gas.

Canada currently has no source of
helium and Unites States reserves
are being rapidly depleted.

The helium recovery scheme is
one of several ventures being funded
by the Alberta-Canada Resources
Research Fund.

ERREF that will have a bearing on
the province's oil and gas industry.

The technology involves separ-
tating helium by using thin plastic
membranes,

The work comes under a federal-
provincial agreement under which

Business spotlight

rta fills new
helium market

the federal government will supply
Alberta with $96 million during them
next several years. The money will
constitute refunds from the federal
oil export taxes. .

There will be substantial Alberta
research programs into solar, wind
and biomass energy use as well as
work on coal and oil recovery. The
pact will alsosupport construction of ©
research facilities in northern and
southern Alberta and support
research at Albert'a three univer-
sities.

Earlier this month, Energy
Minister Don Getty announced that —
$3 million in ERRF funds would be

supplied to Alberta this year to
support various projects.
The solar and wind research
program is receiving about $300,000
this year.
triple within the next couple of
years, says Dr. George Govier,
senior deputy minister of energy and
natural resources for Al
The initial effort will be aimed at
gathering solar and wind energy
information throughout the province
with stations in
Calgary planned by year-end. The
program will also seek to gather
Canadaian I
literature on solar and wind energy. A, to study it-- but then, of course, A will have toC and D to
elp him.

That sum will double or

berta.

Edmonton and

and international

Interpreting the News

are 11,787 cycles registere in product more attractive.

Ottawa Offbeat

_ Parkinson’s law
still works

BY RICHARD JACKSON

Ottaw,-Not ot get you all upset, but remember the
remarkable C.Northcote Parkinson and his immutalbe
jaw? ;

Proclaimed 20 years ago in what for a long time was a
best-seller and still is a standard reference work of sorts,
Parkinson’s law was, in essence, that the number of
workers in any public service department, board, bureau,
commission, agency or whatever, will rise at an annual rate
of six percent regardless of work to be done, required to de
done, or even not done.

He Inisted at the time that the law was mathematically
provable and universally demonstrable.

But that was two decades ago before the birth of “Big
Government", and events in Canada have shown him to
have grossly underestimated.

The federal public service has doubled in recent years
which, any way you calculate it, is a shade more than an
annual six percent.

There are now, all across the land, occupying government

“offices at the municipal, provincial and federal level,

slightly more than 1.5 million public servants.

Or so goes the count at Statistics Canada.
Stats-Can put Canada’s total population as of last year at
22,992,604, and at 21,568,311 in 1971.

That works out on Stats-Can’s own calculations at a
percentage increase of 1.32 percent annually.

Now if the overall population rises by a faction over one
percent and the growth of the public service runs a touch
ver 6 percent, what's the inevitable reading of the bottom
ine?

By the Parkinsonian law, the mathematically
unavoidable point lies ahead where everyone is bound to be
on the public payroll.

And with one of every 23 Canadians now feeding from the
trough, the population rate just over one percent and the
public service growing be six percent-well, obviously the
question remaining will be who will be filling the trough
with everybody emptying it?

Or, pputting it another way, how will we pay ourselves for
all tha unproductive work? ey

Maybe, just maybe, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau,
confronted with the prospect of a universal Canadian public
service, might prevail upon all the bureacracies involved to
repea) Parkinson's Law.

Naturally he will be expected by the bureaucratic empire-
builders toname a new task force, headed by Public Service

Carter’s disarmament plans too little, too late

BY GARRY FAIKBALKN

WASHINGTON CP-Although ham-

pered by historical inconsistencies in
§. nuclear policy and opposed by

strong economic forces, President

Carter is still struggling to halt the
spread of sophisticated
technology.

His objective is to severely linit the
availability of weapons-grade nuclear
material, reducing opportunities for
other countries and terrorist groups to
acquire nuclear weapons.

ut he is starting late-perhaps too late.
His task would have been far easler had
he become rasldent five or 10 years
earlier. arter’s chief concern is
plutonium, which can be extracted from
used uranium fuel rods and is well suited
for nuclear weapons as well as for
generating more power.

In recent years, several countries
have built plants to obtain plutonium and
the problem has been complicated by the
developement of ‘‘breeder reactors'’
that use plutonium and produce more
fuel than they consume.

The spread of nuclear reprocessing
plants is partially a result of U.S. action
three years ago in halting export of
enriched uranium power plants had
reached the limit of U.S. enrichment
capacity.

nuclear

Now, Carter is proposing that the
United States guarantee supplies of
enriched uranium to foreign countries in
return for their pledge not to reprocess
the uranium into plutonium. As part of
his effort to stop the spread of ©

lutonium, he ahs also announced that
e Untied States will not use plutonium,

- a8 fuel for its nuclear ractors, a polic
that has already produced conflte with
Congress over the proposed Clinch River
breeder reactor.

Other domestic political problems are
stirrd by Carter’s policy since
guaranteeing enriched uranium to other
nations would push the United States
further into nuclear development than it
needs to go for its own needs,

During the 1976 presidential election:
campaign, Carter criticized the concept
of reliance on nuclear plans for elec-
tricity and since taking office has sought
to maintain the support of en-
vironmentalist groups. —

While going too far down the nuclear
road for the liking of many domestic
groups, Carter is too anti-nuclear for
many foreign countries, who say

nonproliferation
ontheir sovereignity.

Carter was unsuccessful in trying to

atop West Germany and France from

plants to

Brazil and Pakistan, although he did win
their agreement to limit future sales,

Mixed results also emerged from
negotiations with Japan, which is
plutonium-production
capab ty. After a period of strained
relatio: apanes officials
complained that Hapan whould have the
ights as Eropean countries, the
Unites States and Japan reached
general agreement on the principles for
safeguards to be placed on Japanese use

uranium process

developing a
ns, wnen

same r

of U.S. uranium.

Other problems are presented in a bill,

that would ban
ration with countries
X% process to separate

now hetore Congress,
U.S. nuclear co
that use the PU.
jutonium.

3 Because of political realities, the
adminstralion has had to approve a g
exempting
Britian, France and Japan from the

“grandfather clause”

effortsas
discriminatory or an infringement

being specific and restrictive the bill should
It orginally endorsed loanguage that
would have allowed U.S. nuclear. s0-
operation with contries using PUREX if
e United States or the International
Atomic Energy Agency could be
aranteed ‘ ely warning” of any
version of plutonium, The advance
notice would enable the United States to
use diplomatic pressure.

But recently the state deprtment
reversed itself and advised Congress
that the poroposed language would be
too restrictive and a specific ban on
PUREX shouid await international
studies on alternative plutonium-
separtation processes, Meanwhile, the
U.S. nuclear industry vigorously op-
posed nuclear-exprt -restrictions,
arguing that hey would be placed at an
unnecessary disadvantage compared
with foreign suppliers of enriched

uranium,
Despite all the difficulties involved in
winning congrasional and internatlonal
support and in grappling with the
seemingly inevitable inconsistencies,

reprocessing and breeder reactors are
virtually essentail in a energy-starved
world.

He also run into diplomatic problems
with some countries objecting to his

provision fo the bill. Britain and France
already have plants in operation using
the process and soon Japan will too.
The U.S. state department, however,
has trouble making up its mind on how

Carter appears determined to press ot.

[fhe needed fresh motivation, he got it
recently when reports spread that South
Africa might be developing nuclear
weapons. South Africa denied the
reports.