i

A6- Wednesday, August 31, 1983 - North Shore News

EEE editorial page J

A new threat 1 to , West ‘Van's. heloved Blue Buses arises from the hassle hetween West Van and North Van District over North Shore transit centre locations.

North Van District wants a single depot accommodating ALL North Shore buses to be’ established on District-owned land adjoining the ICBC claims centre on Lloyd. Unlike West Van, the District doesn't operate any buses and its top priority is optimum. land use. To that extent its proposal has a superficial tidiness.

The ICBC site, however, would impose significant extra operating costs on the Blue Buses because. of “dead-heading” (the running of empty vehicles between the depot and West Van). Costly “dead-heading” in North: ‘Van itself would increase, too, with the additional transit services needed to cater to development of the Seymour area.

«West Van. officials. also fear a shared central depot:could erode the separate Blue Bus identity.and eventually lead to the loss of the independent West Van system through enforced. merging into the overall B.C. Transit operation.

The alternative urged by West Van is a satellite depot for its Blue Buses on the old Lions Gate Motel site at the north end of the Lions Gate Bridge — together with retention of the present North Van depot at 3rd and St. David's and a new facility at the north end of the Second Narrows. It makes sense.

B.C. Transit will decide betwen the two proposals Sept. 30. For West Van residents more than a bus yard is at stake. The future of the Blue Buses themselves could once again be on the line.

Smarten up!

_., Orderly political protest in public places is one thing. Invading the privacy of a home | -with a rent-a-crowd is quite another. The

Women Against The Budget who did just ~ that last weekend at Human Resources - Minister Grace McCarthy's home were ’ practising the kind of “democracy” Hitler's

brownshirts practised against the Jews - and giving the women’s movement a black eye in the process. Smarten up, ladies!

A sunday

news

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1139 Lonsdale Avo., North Vancouver, 8.C. V7M 2H4 Publisher Peter Speck

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North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent community newspaper and qualified under Schedule Mi, Part ill, Paragraph t of the Excise Tax Act, is published each Wednesday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Lid and distributed to every door on the North Shore Second Class Mail Registration Number 3885 Entire contents ‘ 1082 North Shore Free Prese Lid. All rights reserved.

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a 84,700 (averago Wednesday & Sunday) SOA DIVISION

vere none

THIS PAPER IS RECYCLABLE

MAINSTREAM CANADA

: By W. ROGER WORTH

ARE CIVIL SERVANTS really coddled, or is that just a myth perpetrated by people who don't really understand what our public sector is all about?

That question is now high on Canadian conversation

lists following British Columbia Premier William Bennett's plan to dramatically change the face of that province’s civil service.

Yet the issue is decidedly a national one, directly

affecting every taxpayer (and the amount of money paid in taxes).

Here are a few situations

ACCORDING TO THE ENCYCLOPED BOTANICA ie CHINE CROP CROWN IN LIBYA ARE CEREALS, FRUITS

LITERARY FAME comes in many different shapes. As the world’s novelists are rated, for.

example, Canada has yet to produce a Dickens, a

Balzac or a Steinbeck. But a Vancouver publisher ‘

has created a unique form of literary achievement that, in its way, is no less outstanding.

It’s called the Three-Day Novel Competition and it happens again, for the sixth year running, this weekend.

The tide of the com-

tition means exactly what t says. Starting not earlier than 12:01 a.m. Saturday, September 3 (or one minute past midnight Friday, as you prefer), you write and finish a complete novel before midnight Monday, Sep- tember 5.

Don’t shake your head. Since the zany idea was first bounced off a Vancouver bar in 1978, it has generated no less than 252 novels, including six from the U.S. It has made famous writers out of unknowns like Tom Walmsley (1979 winner with Dr. Tin) and Ray Serwylo (1981 winner with Accordion Lessons) — and an even more famous writer out of bp Nichol (1982 winner with Sall).

One suspects most of the other 249 novels have been mercifully forgotten, even by their authors. But no matter. Getting there is half the fun.

TRULY CANADIAN

The contest is organized by Pulp Press Book Publishers of Vancouver. They say it “began as a joke, became a darc and is now on its way to becoming a literary institution”. They claim it has spawned what is

probably the only genuinely Canadian genre in world literary history.

The Pulp Press lle concede that a thre y contest is not in the business of producing deathless literature. But, they add, eWe, as contest sponsors, continue to be amazed at the quality, depth and com- pleteness of the entries we receive.”

One thing. at least, is certain. The event has destroyed for ever the notion that novels take cight years of angst to produce and lush cash prizes to stimulate.

Last year they had 100 entries. This ycar umem- ployment is expected to boost that figure hand- somely, cven_ possibly double it. Yet no quick riches accompany the first prize: publication of the winning entry by Pulp Press in the fall of 1984.

The rules are simple and there’s no entry fee. You must register in advance (like tomorrow or Friday) by phone or in person at Oc- topus Books, 1146 Com- mercial St., Vancouver V6K. IN8& (687-4233). Ask for Brownie or Jules.

Completed manuscrips must be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope and ai written affadavit, signed by at least one witness, certifying that the novel was, indeed, written within the prescribed

e civil service ta load

that may, or may not, have.a bearing on. what is rapidly becoming:-a full-fledged ' debate on our treatment of © all civil servants. — federal,

provincial and municipal. -

@ Extremely few civil ser- ‘vants are ever fired. The

losers are either promoted or shuffled to other depart- ments.

Former federal Deputy Finance Minister, Ian Stewart, for example, had a major role in developing Allan MacEachen’s disastrous 1981 budget, much of which had to be reversed or withdrawn. The follow-up? Stewart was recently made chariman of Ottawa’s huge Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., at a salary of about $100,000 per year. © Even though business was off as a result of the recession, Ottawa managed. to increase the number of federal civil servants to 222,582 last year. But that’s only direct staff. By adding employees in Defence, Crown corporations and other agencies, the federal government now employs 583,752 people. ¢ Many private sector companies use the merit pay concept to reward a few employees who are really doing a good jab. The Ontario government adopted the idea, deciding to pay its best employees a little extra. The result? A

: wo _@ ws . Cts tee : | : ‘ ts . 3 A ‘ a 4 " Ea = . -. o aes

Noel Wright

three-day period. They must be sent to Octopus Books or to Pulp Press, 986 Homer St., Vancouver V6B 2W7.

72-HOUR BLITZ You're advised to prepare an outline of the novel in advance. A glance at the vital statistics of novel- writing suggests you're going to aced it. Once the starting

gun goes, there won't be much time for heavy thinking.

The typical “short” novel these days runs to around 36,000) words. So the logistics of the 72-hour literary blitz will work out something like this.

Our entrant will likely need at least four hours sleep Saturday and Sunday. Plus three = =20-minute = meal

study indicated that 5,178 of 3,200 employees in one department received the bonus. Somehow, it is hard to believe that any group of workers, even in the private sector, could be that productive.

© According to the Auditor General, a full 30 per cent of 4,567 federal employees surveyed are not sure what they are supposed to do at work.

® Many civil servants are different from the rest of us. Ottawa, for example, buys hundreds of thousands of briefcases for employees every year, a policy unheard of in the private sector. What’s more, a group of External Affairs employees is entitled to three-piece sets of luggage.

The point, of course, is that government workers are well looked after, if not coddled. While they’ve been forced to live with wage increases of 5 or 6 per cent, thousands of their private sector counterparts have received no raise at all, or have even taken pay cuts.

It is time, perhaps that every government in the country federal, provincial and municipal —

_really considered the money

it spends on civil servants. It has been a one-way street, and the ordinary, hard- working taxpayers have come out on the short.end. (CFIB Feature Service)

breaks a day. Plus 20 minutes a day for toilet and calls of nature. That adds up to 12 hours, leaving 60 hours for the job itself.

Deduct another four hours

for yawning and _ proof- reading the finished product. Actual writing time,

therefore: 56 hours.

That averages out at 650 completed words — about three letter-size pages filled with double-spaced typing — down on paper every hour. For almost 19 -hours cach day. For three days on end.

Measured another way, the present column is about 750 words. Our Labor Weekend Hemingway will write the equivalent of about 48 of them — an effort equal to producing a complete year's supply of FOCUS.

Pulp Press novelists are clearly made of sterner stuff than columnists — which explains why, in their own peculiar way, they're putting Canada on the literary map of the world each = year. Good luck to all of them this Saturday.

Just thinking about them exhausts me.

ts your life. Wear it! deaths

80% of boating are caused by failure to wear a PFD

Play ht Safe.

The Canachan Red Crow Souety