The weather this week has been unusually warm. It has cooled off in the last part of the week but before that it was making you think spring was just around the corner. Longer days, more sunlight, can spring be very far away? It will be February by the time you get to read this. It is a short month with only 28 days and soon the race to spring is on.
The North Battleford paper has had a phone call from Wesley Laycock. He doesn’t think my assertion of gaining a minute a day in the morning and one at night is accurate. I got that figure on the tube from a weatherman in Calgary. I assumed it was right. Wesley Laycock said I am not. He said after Dec. 21, for the first 10 days the days don’t change. Then sometimes they go two or three minutes at a time. You cannot argue with him as he has the records to prove it. He says he has written it down every day for years. I always thought the Earth turned and revolved around the sun in a set pattern. I don’t know, I just record the hoar frost just like my grandmother Ida Hult used to. All I know is I really enjoy the bright sun and longer days.
On the home front, the tandem truck has been declared finished. All the fluid levels have been checked and added to if need be. The motor starts and runs nicely. Putting a combine motor in the truck turned out to be more work than we thought. Putting the motor in was not the problem, getting everything to work took extra time. The unexpected trouble with the hydraulic pump for the hoist was cured by robbing the pump off another old truck and putting that pump on. The other farm truck, the F9000, has been towed up to the shop, it has been plugged in and a battery charger on overnight. It has been started and it runs, but will not make air. I know it is just ice in the lines and come Monday I will have to show the South African where to put the gas line antifreeze to get it going. An unknown problem in South Africa, I am sure.
In the labour market, more and more layoffs. We also hear about them quickly now because the media is right on them like a hungry dog on a juicy bone. Around here almost every day you hear of this person or that person being laid off. It is disheartening. It doesn’t matter if it is a single parent or a family with a mortgage, there is no mercy shown or quarter given. Good people are losing their jobs with no fault of their own. The suits from above, give the orders and another family is without income.
I have said in another column in my 70 years on this Earth that I have seen this scenario before and more than once. The oil goes down, companies cut back. When the oil companies quit drilling new wells that affects a lot of people. The landmen are not working, the seismic crews are not working, surveyors are not working, the guys building leases have no work. The crews that set the tanks up and all the plumbing have no work. No need for gravel or the guys hauling it. The oil companies start to close down any wells that produce more water than oil or ones that need a service job. Flush-byes and service rigs have no work. Less wells running, means less pumpers have work. Soon the truckers get cut back or laid off. I have seen it all before and it is just a downward spiral of misery. Soon, because the oil companies will not be able to maintain production with less wells and less people, they will even make less money and they will be wanting more cutbacks. When are the suits going to realize fancy offices and fancy suits do not produce anything. To have wealth, you must produce something. To produce wealth it takes good working people, not more suits.
Not to be left out in this era of employment stupidity, Burger King from the United States has bought out Timmy’s and they have announced that they are laying off 350 people mostly at headquarters and distribution sites. Why do that? Timmy’s is making good money. There is a lineup every day to get into the place. The people who built the business have done a good job. No other restaurant chain has expanded with more stores. Now you reward these people with taking their jobs? This is nothing but mean spirited and short sighted and stupid. I have seen enough of foreign companies taking over Canadian companies and then destroying the business.
As a side note the big self-important suits at Target stores decided to give out scholarships to students going to universities as a good will gesture. When the students went to cash the cheques, they bounced. Isn’t that a kick in the pants with a frozen boot? I’ll bet the big suits’ cheques never bounced.
Also on the job cut rampage is CIBC who announced they will be cutting 500 jobs this year. The bank made $3.2 billion in profit last year. That’s $3.2 billion and they never grew a bushel of wheat, never pumped a gallon of oil, never produced anything, but shuffle some money around. $3.2 billion, no, I don’t think they are hurting. Not to be outdone Scotia Bank announced they would be cutting 1,500 jobs over this year, two-thirds in Canada. Are they suffering with a profit of $6.7 billion in 2013? Why add to the misery?
This column is so depressing it needs two jokes of the week.
From Marcella Pederson. A young couple got married and after coming home from the honeymoon the young bride phoned her mother in tears. All her husband would talk about was four letter words. The mother was astounded that her new son-in-law would treat her daughter like that. “Yes” said the daughter “all he talks about are wash, iron, bake and dust.”
From taxi driver Sandra: Two old guys are discussing how the one went to the doctor to see if he had Altimers. The guy who went to the doctor said, “The doctor told me there was three clues if you have Altimers. One was if you don’t remember things and I couldn‘t remember what the other two were.”
Yup, I know the feeling.
