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By Chuck Poulsen
I’m always looking for something useful that the Eco-police can do. Something that benefits, rather than annoys, the rest of us.
Our Eco-police friends could take on the entire manufacturing industry in Canada for pricing replacement parts so absurdly high that the consumer throws the item away and buys a new one. It’s a refined version of planned obsolescence.
Examples:
Two years ago, we bought a Dirt Devil “cyclonic” vacuum cleaner. It was cheap, about $90, but considering how much stuff it sucks up in one pass through the house, the Dirt Devil is the best vac I’ve had.
It needed a new hepa filer. Hepa schmepa – the filter is a three by three-inch piece of corrugated paper.
The cost to replace this part locally ranges from $40 to $47. That part comes with a plastic sleeve the filter fits into, although the sleeve will never wear out.
The machine could probably use a new spinning brush. I can only imagine how much that would cost.
So even though the vac is working fine, I’ll throw it out and buy a new one. I can hear the Eco-police gasping in horror.
“Gasp, that’s horrible,” they are saying.
Good. Start paying attention to this problem, Eco-police.
I bought a new laptop last week. The old one, less than three years old, needed a new mother board.
“You mother,” I said, or something like that.
A new mother board costs $500 to $600. My new laptop cost $600. Buying a new one is what is called a “no brainer.” The old ones goes to recycling, although recycling costs money and wastes energy too.
A cheap table fan can be had for less than $20 and will last one summer before its starts making noises. I bought two good ones for $40 each and they lasted two summers before keeping us up at night with odd grinding and squeaking sounds. Even the good ones don’t allow for a means of oiling them. The city might devote a large area of the dump just for the fans, humidifiers, toasters, blenders, juice squeezers and electric knives that are made to wear out as fast as one can say Wal-Mart.
Starting in the ‘50s, my mother had the same Hoover vacuum cleaner for 25 years. We could have quality products again if the Eco-police would attack manufacturers with the same zeal they used to take on the evil makers of Weed ‘N Feed.
As reported here before, the second most expensive liquid bought by the average person is printer ink. Only perfume costs more.
A new package of black and coloured ink can cost half as much as the printer.
A friend told me that he went to the store to buy another package of ink for his inexpensive printer. Then he a saw a deal on a new printer that included a second package of ink for free. His existing printer was working fine but after doing the math, he threw it out and bought the new one with the extra ink cartridges.
Something has gone wrong here.
Go get ‘em, Eco-police.
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A 27-year-old snowboarder from the Lower Mainland died after striking a tree at Big White March 6. The skier was not wearing a helmet.
Resort spokesman Michael J. Ballingall admitted at the time he had no specific information about how it happened.
That said, Ballingall made a curious comment: “If you are going fast enough, the helmet wouldn’t do anything for you.”
Ballingall, who is not now, nor has he ever has been, a pathologist educated to find the cause of death, thus sets the downhill speed record for covering the company’s butt.
Skiers don’t wear helmets because they don’t like the way the helmets makes them look. Cyclists, who must wear helmets, aren’t as vain as skiers.
Should Big White have a rule requiring helmets?
Of course. It would take the pressure off everyone who wants to “look good” on the slopes – and save some lives.
Go get ‘em, Michael J.
Chuck Poulsen is a retired journalist, but can’t seem to stop writing. You can contact him directly at needlepoint@shaw.ca. His column appears Wednesdays.
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Every time I read your column I wonder how your brain works, sometimes it’s thought out and collected, other times its scattered nonsense. You often hit the nail on the head on issues but then in the same paragraph say something so off base one would wonder if your joking (usually you’re not) because of the ignorance or stupidity that would be necessary to make such statements.
Today’s article was bang on about the economics of many things we buy, it is seldom cheaper to fix (if possible) than to just buy new. But then you go on to skiers and helmets. I’m a skier and I do wear a helmet but it is my right as a free person (free is debatable I know) to chose, it should also be a cyclists choice, or a motorcyclists for that matter. It is much less about style than comfort. Yes there are some that is is about style but if you actually have seen the masses up at big white its usually only the young and a select group of adults who care about style. The rest couldn’t give a rip what they look like, they are just trying to stay warm. As a skier/boarder that gets up to the mountain in excess of 25 times a year I can easily say it’s a good 80% of young people wearing helmets (which by the way is actually part of their style) and probably 50% of adults. Those if they are close to accurate, (Admittedly pulling those number out of the air.) they are pretty good.
I’ve always worn my helmet, it is obviously safer and it gives you a sense of security (although it can easily be a false one). Which leads me to your statement of Michael J. No he is not pathologist educated to find the cause of death; which by the way is a specialist dealing with disease, perhaps your thinking of a coroner in this case, unless your being oh so witty by using a disease comment to describe people who don’t ware helmets, but I don’t think you are that smart.
It does not take a “pathologist” as you say to figure out that if your going in excess of 100kph (which one can easily manage on some runs) and your head hits a tree, you are probably going to die, helmet or not; unless it was a full face motorcycle helmet, only the top of your head in a cyclists case, sides and back in most others are protected. Your face is totally unprotected.
Every year they make new laws to control the masses, continually edging ever so slowly towards total control, strait out of a fiction novel. Our parents survived as well as their parents without all these super controlling laws, how will we ever survive without the government making sure we do?
Please continue discussion on the forum: link