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Our society has become so safety conscious that it's verging on the ridiculous. We are handed down with in- formation on fire, safety, road safety and just yester- day I had a package of material delivered to my desk on behalf of the Construction Safety Association of Ontario. . While I'm not about to knock the importance of sa- fety, I am getting a little upset with the money being spent on bumper stickers, pamphlets, buttons, semin- ars and educational programs. As far as I'm con- cerned, safety is the direct result of common sense in the majority of cases. I was pondering this the other morning when I heard a local radio announcer discussing school bus safety. Here we go again l muttered to myself. It appears that parents are becoming concerned about the me- chanical fitness of the vehicles being used to transport their children to and from school. I don't blame them a bit. They brought up a good point, but upon beinttas- sured that the busses are in tact checked for mechani- cal defects every three months, they've taken it one step further. How about supplying seat belts and/or padded seats to ensure the children’s safety in the event of a sudden stop or an accident? By Roger Bell (Writing for Bill Smiley, who is touring relics older than him.) For the past three years, lie been fighting land losing) a war which I call the Great Battle of Necktie. I believe in a neck unfettered by the choking con- finement of a chunk of silk or polyester. These useless cloth appendages cramp my style, not to mention my fragile esophagus. They drag in my goulash at dinner, flap in my face while I'm humming along on my ten- speed, and offer an invitation to whichever one of my 6'5" students wants to garrotte me for the E-term test I've just returned to him. - Julio, Juanita and their four children came to Cana- da about a year ago on an extended visit. During con- versation at a party thrown by mutual friends, I got the impression our South American visitors feel much the same as most of us in Waterloo do about the weather last winter, but they can't get over the amount of personal, political freedom the people here share with one another, Unfortunately, my employer and his superiors don't agree with my views on the liberated neck. I walked naively into work on the first day, collar open, spirits high, and was promptly informed of the Eleventh Commandment -- Thou shalt not offend mine eyes by allowing thy throat to appear ungarnished in my pre- sence; nor shalt thou sport turtlenecks, which vex me sorely: and lest thou wish to feel the fiery lash of By Geoff Hoile I don't even know their last name, but all the way home from the party Friday night I couldn't stop thin- king about what they had said about Argentina. I was pondering this and slowly building up a mental list of the combined injustices of the Trudeau and Davis governments, when I heard Julio saying "there have been more people killed recently in Argentinia by the military than there have been in Chile since the recent coup there." Now that took me completely by surprise I knew things were bad in Chile: the sporadic news accounts of political misdeeds. dissidents being swallowed into that country's prison system and assassinations by the military did make most of us aware that Chilean people are not as well off politically as we are in Can- ada. But Argentina. I thought, was surely operating under a popular government After all, before Friday. there had been no news to suggest otherwise And the people have lived under dictatorships before, Juan l’er'on. the facast-styled leader. had seemingly been popular among the people during his one-man rule, although he was asked to leave for a, while, Juiid and Juanita, despite the political tension m their country, both miss the latm lifestyle and the friends back home. The country's capital, Buenos Bill Smiley 'nsat'saiirhadtottearaasdiwisottironap.i0o notagreethat seatbeltsareaneeessltyinaachobl bus and if anything they woadtutextttttttly he more of a haunt How would the school bus driver ensure that every child had in fact buckled up? What's to stop Johnny from taking a belt not in use and innocently strangling Susy in thenext seat? What could be worse than an overturned bus engulfed in flames with ss trapped children inside, some unconscious and unable tojree themselves? _ I can envision an endless list of possibilities and some of them aren't very nice. Perhaps my biggest concern though is. the fact that it gives the driver one more thing to think about when, all his concentration should be on the road ahead. This so called satetyjea- ture could in fact be the cause of more traffic ac- cidents. Moving on to the suggestion of padded seats or a system whereby the driver activates a switch which in turn causes the children to be engulfed in a balloon- like mass of padding, I have a bit more sympathy. This system would be under the complete control of the driver and would only be used in emergency situa- tions, providing the driver had time to think about it. But my main concern here is, is it necessary and how This whole thing smacks of the re-appearance of the great god and teller of falsehoods, Outwardshow. I thought that the bluejeaned, longhaired troops of the Youthandtruth Army had laid his hideous corpse to rest after the hard-fought Battle of Hippie Junction. in the late 1960's. But it appears that he has risen, phoenix-like, and is slinking about the land. appealing to the conservative and the normal in all men. His in- sidious message is simply this: Clothes make the man. He of the nedtly-coiffed head and the smartly- tailored-for-today's-man-on-the-go-three-piece vested suit is superior and preferable to he of the unkempt mane and tieless torso. The multitudes will respect the former, and he shall rise to dizzying heights; the latter will be as loved as a pint of prune juice in. a Unemployment, thou shalt not allow the blasphemous blue demim to adorn thy person. This accompanied by the roar of thunder, the slash of lightning, and a hor- rifying vision of my lovely contract in flames. The score after the first skirmish: Haberdashers - I, Roger (bloodied champion of human rights) - 0. Aires, in 1971 seemed like a nice place to live and work, and there were certainly no signs then of mar- tial law that I could see. I asked Julio how come I haven't heard of the political problems before now and how long has it been going on? I guess I'm not likely to hear any formal report of the situation since, according to Julio, t. Gen. Jorge Rafael Widela. the current president of the republic has managed to supress the media on a nationwide scale since he took office in 1976. Foreign visitors are, apparently, escorted to the country's sea resorts, go- vernment buildings and industrial projects. And while the people are terrified of the military power and the prospect of being executed in the streets for whatever reason, he says the army is usually discreet enough to wait until tourists aren't around Visualizing military force at street level is difficult for most Canadians. Witnessing it and trying to put together a convincing description is probably more difficult, I recall trying to explain what I thought was happening in Havana in 1955, with armed soldiers around every corner and heavy artillery protecting President Juan Batista's government buildings. Once out of Cuba and back in the relatively sane political climate of Toronto, I had difficulty myself believing that it wasn't some nightmarish exaggeration on my mind's part You begin to doubt whether you really did see 12-or .1il,tg,"ihd, girls soliciting in the streets, or poverty-strie en people from about 10 years of age to over 70 working in cigar factories while a foreman paced them by reading stories from a comic book over a loud-speaker system Appafonlly, the greatest thrill for Juanita's chil- dren - outside of making snowballs - is to be able to ' or .Au " According to Hoille Terry James dysentery ward and he.wi11 go nowhere fast in the world of Big Business. Pardon me, but -hunk! Let's follow that line of reasoning for awhile. Ima- gine the following scene: Adolphe Hitler and Jesus Christ show up one night at your house, uninvited, for dinner. Adolphe is handsomely attired in a new $300 pinstripe wool-worsted suit, a pair of neat suede shoes, and an expensive tie with a tidy Windsor knot. Jesus, in contrast, sports only a simple cotton caftan, has dusty feet and open-toed sandals, and has (gasp -call the cops!) long hair and a beard: With me so far? If you adhere to Outwardshow‘s dictum - or- nament is everything, character nothing - Jesus will end up eating burgers at McDotald's and you‘ll have a dinner guest who admires your lampshades and seems ungrateful when you tell hirsyou don't like pork. much isit going to cost? Are tttereeasoutth accidents to really warrant it? . Havirigeiddeetmoacttootbuotyaetfiorityears,r firmly believe that a lot of accidents and injuries could he avoided by simply making the qltiidmn be, haveon thebus. Standing upintheaisles, wrestling over seats. sitting tour to a out with one passenger crowded in the aisle and loud chatter are not con- - ducive to a sate atmosphere. I am not blaming the bus driversfor this behaviour. They don't have eyes in the ty"ieofthti.rheadtt?dythtrdiefm"oridrs trainedontheroad. Perhapsitmmidhemoretothe point to hire or secure a volunteer parent who would be willing It? supervise the students to and from, school. Failing this it might be wise to just eiert some authority, let children know that it is a privilege to rideonthebusandmake them nra1ktoacltqotoneor two days if the message doesn't seem to be getting across. I realize that good behaviour alone may not prevent a serious accident and a possible fatality but it's a step in the right direction and its the one that should be taken first. ‘ . Can you conceive the idiotic situations the Ap- pearance ls Reality belief might spawn? To be con- (Continued on new 14) a play freely without the constant need for close paren- tal protection. "Children are killed in the street" Juanita told me, "a child's life means nothing to these . She plans to learn as mugh as possible about the Canadian way of life so she can return to Argentina and tell her friends how things could, be, _ I came away feeling guilty that I had been grumb- ling earlier about the various levels of government we presently have, and at the same time feeling lucky that they are no worse than they are. Sure, there are a lot of bad politicians, running around posing as protectors of the public interest. There are also a great many very competent in- dividuals who work ridiculously long hours, under fish-bowl surveillance, trying to improve the com- munity's standard of living We are inclined to take our good fortune and free- dom too much as our due and not enough as a privilege that can erode through public inattentiom It definitely is hard to visualize a dictatorship where your lifestyle - and possibly your life - is precariously dependent upon the daily whims of one individual There is a strong likelihood that Waterloo residents will get the chance to vote for representatives in at least the municipal and federal levels of government this year, We each owe it to the community to find out who are the best candidates for public office. If we dont our democratic system could deteriorate into something closer to the problems described by our Ar- gentinian visitors, '"krcki/oteudes count, Use it well: we've all got a lot to lose, As far as I'm.eoeteentdd it's just a bit of common " '