Opinion

Being a rather long-in-the-tooth reporter of things agricultural on the Canadian Prairies – some three decades now – there have of course been some constants to what makes news.

Recently, Google announced its Stadia platform. It is a way for people to play games, with most of the processing happening off site on different hardware, and streaming the games to the end user.

Every small town has got their own little nuances and niches, or sayings and experiences that make them unique to that specific area.

Consider your friends for moment. If you live in rural Saskatchewan — especially on the farms — they may be your neighbours. But your neighbours will be much further apart than your parents’ neighbours and certainly your grandparents’ neighbours.

Starting Oct. 1, minimum wage earners in Saskatchewan will be taking home some extra coin. The province has said the minimum wage will increase to $11.32 an hour, up 26 cents. It is currently $11.06 an hour.

The impact of government interference in agriculture markets is most certainly in full swing again. With China flexing its political muscles by using trade as a chip in the game, counter measures were naturally going to happen.

Can you imagine the federal Liberals emerging from this fall’s national election with more seats in Saskatchewan than they already have? Admittedly, it takes a fair bit of imagination. And it will take more than a little luck on the Liberals’ part.

Yorkton has an interesting downtown. It’s an odd observation to make after living in a city for ten years, given that you would normally notice that immediately, but I did realize that recently while walking around one day.

A nice little ‘bullpen’ session in the office a couple of Fridays ago brought up the long-time debate over the positives and negatives surrounding the closeness of the City of Saskatoon to the Town of Outlook.

We know the procedure at airport security: grab a bin, take out our laptops and iPads, empty our pockets, send the bin down the conveyor belt and then retrieve our stuff at the other end.