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PAGE 4 WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 14, 1983, WHITBY FREE PRESS whitby wa e Voice of the County Town Michael lan Burgess, Publisher - Managing Edito The only Whitby newspaper independently owned and operated by Whitby residents for Whitby residents. Put îrL blished every Wednesday by M.B.M. Publishing and Photography lic. Phone 6068-i 11 The Free Press Building, 111 Brock Street North, P.O. Box 206, Whitby, Ont. ROY COOPER Community Editor Second Class Mail Regist rat ion No. 53ri1 grand parade. As I looked at the excitement and sparkle in the eyes of the very young, it is most gratifying to see so many grandparents, moms, dads, sisters, brothers and other relatives who had taken the time and effort to make Whitby's Jaycees Santa Claus Parade ) such a success. I feel sure this is another example of so i may be the last adult in North America to know nothing about computers and until a few days ago, i figured that I could get through the remainder of my working years without them. Now I'm not sure. Last summer, my boat-designing buddy and ex- newspaper colleague,.Bruce Kirby, tried to seli me on word-processors. It wasn't Kirby's fault, I think, but I came away from his demonstration thinking that his machine was just a glorified Typewriter. He had another go at me about them over the telephone recently and I said, "Look, until they design one which will do a com- ment for you, at the push of one button, l'Il stick to the old Underwood." Two days later, in Ottawa, I began to change my mind. John Burke, one of our Ottawa correspondents, showed me a very small, light, portable machine that he'd bought for about the same price as a cheap elec- tric typewriter. As I understood him, this machine can store a couple of thousand words in its memory cir- cuits. In other words, if you were going out of town on an assignment, you could stuff some salient background facts into the thing before you left. Better than that, it has a telephone connection, so that if the home office were computerized, you could call up old scripts, oid stories, etc., whatever the office librarian had the foresight to store. In the field, you could punch a script into the thing on the spot, and when it was letter-perfect, have the machine print it out for you. If you had access to a telephone, you could also have the machine send the script to the office, so they'd know exactly what words they'd be getting before you microwaved or satellited the completed visual story. And you could store that day's script in the machine for ready reference on subsequent days. So what you have, in this modest machine, is at least a combination of the following: ad- dresses and phonle numbers, background material, a script file, a telegraph keyboard, and of course, a typewriter. It will run off batteries and also off a stan- dard electrical outlet. It's very quiet, of course, which means you could use it on an aircraft or in other public places where you couldn't very weli use a typewriter. You don't run the risk of losing notebooks, key scraps of paper, files, pens, and ail the other stuff that tends to go adrift while you're moving rapidly from one place to another. These things are not yet a substitute for brains, but I can see how they might be a great help to someone with 16 years to go to retirement and whose mind is increasingly absent. I'm begining to think I might not make it to65 without one. many people constantly striving to seek ways to n>ake Whitby a better place for citizens to live. Merry Christmas and Health and Happiness for the New Year. A Clown Sewage stink DearSir: Recently in the Free Press an editorial was written stating the ef- fect of the Pringle Creek Sewage Plant on Pringle's Creek, the Port Whitby Marina, the lake, and our drinking water. Mayor Bob Attersley even expressed in the Press that the new sewer and pumping station to be built "will correct the sad situation" of raw sewage which is being dumped into Pringle Creek. Unfortunately, what is not said is that the diversion line from the Pringle Creek Plate to the Pumping Station is not being constructed at this time and may not be built until 1991. The pollution and the stink of the sewage will of course continue until the diversion line is connected. Russ Wilde Por.tWhitby By. rec for Pei to ati col the the fill the cor 20 am bu for 196 Ca fou dia lop and file rela wit wit exp in t T has mo for and theý T year S LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Through the eyes of a clown... business people. They are CbîB Featîure Service Mainstream Canada Why business owners are seeing red -W. Roger Worh forced to deal with such Canadians will soon be government-oriented paper- ceiving their income tax work on a week-to-week rms in the mail, so it is basis. They have ta report rhaps an appropriate time federal and provincial govern- explain why people oper- ment sales taxes, Workers' ng small and medium-sized Compensation and unemploy- mpanies are so angry about ment insurance changes and number and complexity of dozens of other pieces of forms they are forced to paperwork, including infor- out for government. mation for that federal The issue is timely because governrnent monster called changes in the personal in- Statistics Canada. me tax form during the last In fact, most smaller firms years or so are but one ex- are spending 10 hours a week ple of the kind of paper- or more handhing the govern- rden entrepreneurs are rent's paperwork and red ced to contend with. Let's flash back to the 50's. At that time, Revenue The tragedy, aicourse, is nada was satisfied with a that the time could be better ir page tax form. Cana- spent operating the business, ns reported their income, aliowing the entrepreneur ta ped off a few deductions expand and create new jobs, J either paid the tax bill or or at least maintain present d for a refund, It was a employment levels. atively simple exercise. The hard fact is that Now, Canadians are faced governments are placing too h a 30 page form, together heavy a burden on business h a multicoloured booklet people who would rather hÙs- 'laining how easy it is to filI le new sales than spend hours his document. filling in forms. his once simple process become so complex thai Sa this year when you're re and more people are completing your tax return, ced to visit accountants give a little thought ta the en- tax preparation experts as trepreneurs plight. If you y attempt to save money. were in his or her shoes, you hankfully, this is a once-a- would be completing such r happening. forms virtually every week of buch is not the case for the year. Dear Sir: Lately there has been a great deal printed about Santa Claus parades. For me it has become a pleasure to visit, to talk, have fun and listen to people who still care and show such an in- terest in their Town of Whitby. From me I say "a tip of the hat" to the Whitby Jaycees and a Big Thank You for such a I .1 hm