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I hope you‘ll take time to read this letter, as it may save millions of dollars every year. And, Mr. Clark. I know you‘re concerned about saving money. That‘s why you fired all those selfâ€"serving civil servants, and that‘s why you didn‘t take Mr.Trudeau‘s limo. when he offered it to you. I think it‘s terrific you decided inâ€" stead to keep driving your 1963 Chev Impala with three hubcaps and a hole in the floorboards. Anyway, I work for a newspaper and I have an idea that will save a lot of money. What you have to do, Joe, is cut down your mailing list. The Prime Minister of Canada Joseph (Joe) Clark 24 Sussex Drive Ottawa, Ontario. You see, every day I get a lot of mail from the federal and provincial governments. Neat stuff like, But it was not to be. With complete disregard for my feelings about the sacredness, the almost holiness. of weekends, she dragged me down into the underâ€" world, on a perfect day for playing golf. pointed. and Dear Prime Minister Clark: I thought I might be able to stall her until the Wedâ€" nesday evening before. when we could lug a few things out of the jungle that lies below, and leave the rest to rot. as it has been doing for 15 years It caused a lot of deep thinking in our town. What constitutes household junk? Some chaps I know sat there, pretending to watch TV,. while their dark and secret minds conjured visions of chloroforming the old woman,. putting her in a green garbage bag. and sticking her out by the curb on Thursday I‘m happy to say that nothing of the sort occurred to me (it says here). But the notice did draw a deep and anguished groan, right from the heels I knew what was coming. But nemesis is unavoidable. It came last week in the form of an ad, in the local paper stating that the town trucks would pick up household junk on the folâ€" lowing Thursday. That may seem a little expensive. but it takes a mighty lot of subterfuges to get through 15 years. My wife‘s been talking about cleaning up our baseâ€" ment for approximately 15 years. I have avoided it by resorting to a number of subterfuges that I will gladly send you on receipt of a certified cheque for five bucks. One Of the best ways I know to knock the mortar out from between the bricks of your marriageâ€"to unâ€" cement thingsâ€"is to join your spouse in cleaning up the basement/attic. Take your pick. One‘s as bad as the other. While the guys are sitting around the office reading Dale Carnegie‘s advice on "How to Win Friends and Influence People,‘" an aggressive Ms. on the West Coast has written a book advocating the exploitation of office gossip as an important manoeuvre in *"The Ambitious Woman‘s Guide to a Successful Career." Margaret Higginson of New York and a male defecâ€" tor, Thomas Quick collaborated in writing the book, which outlines several attitudes women should adopt if they are to grab power. These people are no longer content that women should be viewed as equals in the business arena; they are bent on training an entire continent of female commandos. In a recent twoâ€"hour lecture at the University of British Columbia they told a large group of women Since women first crashed the gates of the execuâ€" tive business world there has been a noticeable eroâ€" sion of a lot of those enjoyable office activities that partially compensate for low wages. It‘s bad enough trying to convince the big boss that I am as valuable an asset to the company as some cute number who fits his dream of the ideal neighbour on a desert island; but when they start using devious, subâ€" versive tactics, that is going too far. By Geooff Hoile Howard Elliott I was out in the main cellar, where we normally shovel a path from the bottom of the steps to the furâ€" nace,. the washer and dryer. It was full of wet cardâ€" board boxes. pieces of linoleum, ancient lamps withâ€" out shades. ancient shades without lamps. mildewed purses and gunny sacks and jackets, warped curtain rods. ski poles without handles. skis with the harness missing, various pieces of torn plastic. great heaps of old sheets, kept for dusting rags. and similar fascinatâ€" ing items. I have just lifted an anonymous box of dirt from when the furnace was cleaned out. The bottom has The problem is, Joe, that our office received four of them. If I heated my house with wood, I could make good use nf the little devils. I‘m sure they give off a lot of heat. And I get a lot of speeches made by people in goâ€" vernment. Not to long ago, I got a few copies of a speech made by an exâ€"minister in that OTHER goâ€" vernment. It was a good speech indeed, but the guy made it in Alberta. P She hollers: "Bill, I think there‘s enough green here to touch up the woodwork _ *‘101 Delicious Ways to Use Ontario Grown White Onions‘‘ and ‘"Report of the Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry, Apâ€" proaches, Conclusions and Recommendations â€" Voâ€" lume 1"". Volume 1, Joe, was 497 pages long. Rather longâ€"winded, wouldn‘t you say? â€" Then there was the lovely booklet on ‘*The Billâ€" payers Guide To Furnace Servicing"‘, from Energy, Mines and Resources. It‘s an interesting little book, and I enjoyed reading it. 4 â€" We were in two different rooms, she in the place where the oil tank is. and the Christmas tree stands, and the paint pots, all with a little in them, and the old drum and cymbals set. and son Hugh‘s pots and pans and dishes, from the time he was batching. and a lot of interesting artifacts like that. It‘s not the grubbing through spiderwebs and other assorted dirt that I mind. First job I ever had was cleaning out latrines. and I have no dignity when it comes to dirt. What gets me is the dialogue. I went. Down. That‘s when I began to envy those lucky devils who have converted their basements into rec rooms. If you have one of those, you don‘t unpack a box, remove the contents, and happily hurl the.conâ€" tainer down the cellar steps. You get rid of it in some seemly fashion. coldly said: "Let‘s go." Oh, I could have sneered, picked up my golf clubs, walked to the car, and driven off. I wish I had that kind of guts. But I knew I‘d come home to a living martyr and six months of sheer hell. What upsets me most is this business of spying on office gossip and trading the spicier stuff for a promoâ€" tion in the company. If we can‘t complain and swap juicy stories within the organization and feel free ‘of surveillance within the ranks, where‘s the fun in working? I don‘t mind some of this advice. It‘s hard to quarrel with the concept of women dressing superbly after a decade of styles dominated by baggy jeans and duffle coats. As for trying to get into the president‘s lunâ€" cheon entourage, 90 per cent of male junior execs have gone that route at one time or another. And sugâ€" gesting that women should learn to be vocal is like telling Jack Nicklaus he needs golf lessons. ©@ dress superbly and learn to be vocal, and @find out who confers with the president, whom he takes to lunch and get to know © get out to lunch with fellow workers at least three times a week and gossip if they want to gather the information neâ€" cessary to get ahead in the business . Â¥in ce o We 9 & » Prrsd Lev No\ ‘(..I'z wl Wl + 4 +94 a 4h e . r- ju e ~ we*., Â¥ “"’(.4 According to Hoile Bill Smiley She doesn‘t know it. but I‘m going to get up at five on Thursday. morning. sneak them out. and bury them among the junk. I simply couldn‘t stand héaring what a chump I was in those days Like marriage in general. we give a little here. take a little there, and both wind up furious and exhausted. When it was all over. there wasn‘t much left but a bagful of mould, green love letters. 30 years old And on it goes. We fight over every item, for senâ€" timental or practical reasons. I hate to see a perfectly good breadbox go out. even though it has no handle and doesn‘t match the kitchen. She gets upset when I want to discard the thirdâ€"last vacuum cleaner we had. because it has the propensity of being a great sprayâ€" painting weapon for painting fences, if we had a fence and she could find a bottle exactly the size of the one that is missing. She: "It has a hole in it and stinks of mould. And what about these old medals?" Old medals, my foot. They are precious. They are not exactly the V.C. and the D.S.O0. As a matter of fact, one is for joining up, another for getting across the ocean without being sunk, a third for staying alive on wartime rations, known as the Spam medal, and the fourth for getting home alive. But the grandboys like to play with them. So, Mr. PM, what you have to do is cut down the amount of paper leaving Ottawa via that superâ€"efâ€" ficient system, the mail. Perhaps you could talk to your pal Bill Davis about doing his share as well. Just think of how much paper you‘d save, and .how few times I‘d have to empty my garbage pail here at work. | Thanks for listening. PS â€" Remember when you won the election (how could we forget? )and you held your arms high in the air and made that big V for victory sign? And you shook your head back and forth? It was great stuff. I was just wondering, were you impersonating Riâ€" chard Nixon on a good day, or John Diefenbaker on a bad day? dropped out, and I am contemplating a oneâ€"foot mound of furnace excrement on the floor. Me: ‘"‘That‘s great. Shove itâ€"uhâ€"that‘s fine, dear." She, appearing round the door : ‘*You‘re not going to throw out that perfectly good chunk of linoleum! We might need it to patch the kitchen floor‘!" Me, alarmed: "Hey, you‘re not going to throw out that gunny sack? I had that in Normandy in ‘44!" What a colossal con. Surely you don‘t have to open other people‘s mail or bug their coffee sessions to get the power to make choices. Take my situation for exâ€" ample. My boss has a pretty good idea of what kind of performance is required of me to make him satisfied. I have a pretty good idea of how hard I have to work over countless hours of unpaid overtime to achieve that performance. I don‘t need power, I can make a choice. It‘s just a happy coincidence that I happen to agree with his point of view. Me, sotto voce: "Why don‘t you make a bikini out of it, you great seamstress, you? No offence to your home province, Joe, but do you think a speech made in Alberta is of much interest to a small weekly paper in Waterloo? (That‘s in Onâ€" tario.) The news story is so alarming, if it hadn‘t come over Canadian Press (CP) out of Vancouver I might have been inclined to write it off as a twisted joke inâ€" vented by the tortured mind of an outâ€"ofâ€"work columâ€" nist and written from the vantage point of a Hastings Street bar. Ms. Higginson is quoted as having concedâ€" ed that ‘‘power has become a dirty word," however she equates it with a form of freedom. Apparently she wants her convertees to be free to snpop at other peoâ€" ple‘s gossip sessions and even peek in the occasional incoming mail tray to get a boost up the ladder of corâ€" porate success. ‘"The most powerful people have the greatest number of options open to them. If you want to be able to make choices, you need power,‘‘ accordâ€" ing to the lady business consultant. w _