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to resign if his countrymen continue to be lazy. "If by next year all the five million Zambians choose to be lazy as they are now," he said, "I would willingâ€" ly step down as a president because I don‘t want to lead people with lazy bones.‘"‘ ~ s â€"Esquire magazine. We‘ve all heard the stories, repeated them, made them up, laughed at them. About the five city workers doing a road job, one holding a shovel while the other four are directing traffic. The 30â€"minute cofâ€" fee breaks. The twoâ€"hour lunches. Fattening up exâ€" pense accounts. Having someone punch out for you so you can leave early. A short interesting discussion last week with a couple of coâ€"workers prompted these thoughts about a feeling that people in labor and management, don‘t seem to be working as hard today as they once did. _ While acknowledging there are plenty of hardâ€" working dedicated people in this country, there is still a sense that we‘re not working as hard as in the past, particularly in the face of constant platitudes from Ottawa that urges us to work harder, make more sacrifices, produce more, etc. * Will the Power of the Puff continue to rule supreme, or will the city of Waterloo put the boot to the butt and enact a smoking bylaw? It‘s too early to tell, pending the outcome of next week‘s public meeting on the subject (Wednesday, Jan. 11, 7:30 p.m., Adult Recreation Centre) but early indications from a chamber of commerce survey of merchants show they want to nix the idea. In effect, they‘re saying government has no place in the nation‘s ashtrays and humidors. What the city‘s lawmakers are going to do about the situation is hard to ‘say. Though (I think) only two members of council are nonâ€"smokers, they, along with the rest of their cohorts, wheezed their approval earâ€" lier to at least try to formulate a model smoking byâ€" law They had rejected an allâ€"encompassing bylaw of banality, such as that adopted earlier last year by Metro Toronto. Such that it is, it prohibits smoking in public places, namely stores, banks and the like. leaving offenders liable for up to a $1.000 fine. The catch here is that enforcement of the bylaw is left up to shop proprietors and their employees. The part that Waterloo merchants haven‘t been too crazy about concermns just that. Why should they leave themselves open to verbal abuse, or worse. from agâ€" gressive smokers who don‘t want to butt the butt. About the only areas left in which one may chance a remark without fear of inflicting a wound are polâ€" itics and sex. DON‘T you get a little tired of the touchiness of modern society in which, no matter where you step, it‘s on somebody‘s toes, no matter what you say or write, it‘s a slur on someone‘s backgound, color, creed or convictions? Aside from sex and politics then, there is scarcely an aspect of the human scene where even angels fear to tread, lest they step on someone‘s sensibilâ€" ities. It‘s extremely difficult to inflict even a bruise on a politician. He must have a fat ego in theâ€"first place, and he quickly acquires a brass hide to go with it. Add an ability to talk out of both sides of the mouth at once, and a certain skill in straddling fences, and you have cabinet material. In the field of sex, there don‘t seem to be any limits any more to what can be said, presented or simulated. Movies, magazines and theatre club us over the head with raw, unembellished sex, or seek to titillate the spook in each of us with highlyâ€"emâ€" bellished, freaky sex until the whole onceâ€"exciting subject has become a crashing bore. Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda threatened Although an overused phrase, the work ethic seems Besid;e;. it would look funny to see a scrawny 90â€" Our magazines are either tiresomely "liberal"" or narrowly nationalistic, or both. Tied in tight bundles, they make better firewood than they do reading matâ€" ter. Television and radio news reporting, most of it culled from the late editions of newspapers, is inâ€" credibly unimaginative and repetitious. TV programs, on the whole, are pure pap, offensive by being so inoffensive. Public figures are so frightened of offending someâ€" body or losing a few votes, that their public utterâ€" ances come out as mush wrapped in marshmallow. What this country, and this society, need is a good dash of cold water from somewhere, to wake us from our mindâ€"numbing, paralyzing "niceness." and dedicated effort would propel a worker up the ladder to success. Your hard work would be re We need a Bob Edwards or a Grattan O‘Leary to jolt us with some honest vituperation, some colâ€" orful namecalling, some hard facts, and some comâ€" mon sense. _ We need.some politicians with guts, who don‘t give a diddle for the popularity polls, and who would give us the facts of life without any sugar coating. _ We need some educators with backbone to tell the people who claim that Huckleberry Finn is racist and The Merchant of Venice is antiâ€"semitic and Catchâ€"22 is dirty and The Diviners is disgusting, to go fly a kite. pride in producing a good days work and product or service and the selfâ€"esteem that went along with that doesn‘t seem as apparent as it once did. > That change in attitude is not entirely bad. It appears from this desk that many workers in the past often made too great of a selfâ€"sacrifice under harsh and unfair conditions and wages to fill the cofâ€" fers of others. ; ~But when that change in attitude is reflected in Hard work isn‘t appreciated as much as it once was. Whether right or wrong, many people are put down for putting out an extra effort. ‘What are you doing that for? they‘re asked. ‘It‘s not Worth it.‘ They become known as ‘company men‘, once perhaps a nickname of pride, now one dragged through mud. to have changed over the shoddy workmanship, then something appears out of kilter. warded. Today, you get an 8 per cent pay raise if you‘re lucky each year, even though you may have workâ€" pound store clerk telling a stogeyâ€"puffing 300 pound trucker to douse his offensive pacifier. Add to this the fact that the Toronto butt bylaw has never been challenged in court, and may not even be legal. It could end up a lot of legal effort for nought, and Waterloo‘s city solicitor sounded a warning to that effect when council considered the bigâ€"city bylaw. But antiâ€"smoking lobbyists will have none of it. They want to see a smoking ban adopted by the city. and that‘s that. As an exâ€"smoker, who was choking back two large packs a day before deciding to quit, I can see both sides. When I smoked, I was among those who endured the habit and figured it was my inalienable right to puff wherever and whenever I wanted. If I was in a nonâ€" smoking area somewhere, and things got desperate, I‘d light one up, one way or the other. Even if it meant hiding in a washroom, or eten sneaking outside in the bitter cold in shirtsleeves for a few puffs. Now I don‘t feel quite the same. People smoking around me usually don‘t bother me, but at times it beâ€" comes quite irritating. â€" o Sometimes 1 even launch into a stream of verbal abuse that would even turn a sailor‘s ears blue, selfâ€" righteously figuring the offensive smoke is no worse than my fourâ€"lettered bantering. It‘s a sort of touche, without resorting to outright violence. We need about 10,000 fewer smartâ€"ass commenâ€" tators on what is wrong with this country, and a few hundred honest men or women to tell us what is right with it. }Ye need far fewer "reasonable‘‘ people and a heck of" a lot more ‘"unreasonable‘‘ people, who would refuse to accept something just because it‘s always been done that way, or someone might be upset if things were changed. _ We need s};irléothhndering editorials, Some pulpits pounded, some stiff jail sentences for racism, some honesty in high places. _ ______ _ s O We certainly don‘t need a ‘"good war‘‘ or a *"good depression‘‘ to make Canadians stop whining and bitching and mealyâ€"mouthing, but we certainly need a "good" something to turn us back into the sturdy, individualistic people we used to be. _ _ I haven‘t the answers. I‘m no prophet. But I‘m sick to the ears of a society that thinks: old people are a nuisance, young people are never a nuisance; supermarkets are sexy; social workers can make miracles; and everybody is as good as everybody Perhaps if you agree with me to some extent, you would enjoy reading The Golden Age of B.S. by Fred C. Dobbs. It‘s rambling and it‘s coarse in spots, but it‘s right on. ed twice as hard as the guy standing next to you on the line. Perhaps, its a byâ€"product of our affluent society. When the pickings were thinner, people were hungrier. Its a paradox. With high unemployment, logically people should work harder to protect their jobs in the face of a highly competitive labor market. But, with the growth in union strength, improved labor regulations, a huge civil service with their own job security provisions, there isn‘t that fear about losing your job as there once was. Even if jobless, there are relatively generous welfare and unâ€" employment insurance programs to fall back on. Cynacism towards work has grown. That elbow in the ribs of your next door neighbour, bragging about how much you ripped off your employer this week. People look around and see corporations make exorbitant profits in supposedly tough times, and, combined with escalating prices, feel they are being ripped off themselvem ‘To hell with it, I‘m going to take advantage of the system too,‘ they say. The solution? Who knows. But it may be interestâ€" ing to watch and see if President Kaunda resigns this year. And I always thought I was a peaceable sort. But it does get the point across. So if you‘re a smokâ€" er, and somebody launches into an obscened tirade at you, it won‘t take long to guess why. _ But in the end, 1 usually end up pitying smokers. Most of them, even though they won‘t admit it, would like to quit. Since I‘m spouting nonâ€"smokers rights at this point, (after having vowed never to do so) I might welcome another exâ€"smoker to our midst. She‘s none other than Mayor Marjorie Carroll, who along with husband Glenn, butted her last butt Dec. 31 as a New Year‘s resolution. "It‘s a first," she said Tuesday, after carefully making it to Day Number Three. "I‘ve never tried to quit before, in 25 years of smoking, and I‘ve never made a New Year‘s resolution before." Her Mayorship said the going hasn‘t been easy in trying to break her packâ€"aâ€"day habit, adding she wants to see it through because she‘s told so many people she‘s quit, that she doesn‘t want to go back on her word. ‘‘I‘m determined to make it through. I‘m sick and tired of coughing and having my voice crack because of smoking,"‘ the Mayor said. Good luck. Marjorie, and to everybody else who made a New Year‘s resolution.