It’s that time again. To spare you the sinking feeling of watching me rant and rave over one issue, here are some bite-sized thoughts. Fortunately, I’ve seen more good ideas this week than bad. This bodes well.
Good Idea: Reginan Road Revitalization
Here’s something that probably sounds rhapsodic to anyone who likes to visit Queen City and diverge off any main road. The city of Regina plans to dedicate $10.6 million toward giving over 60 sections of residential roads in the city a much-needed facelift.
Although a couple of wards in the city won’t be getting any of those repairs, this decision is a step in the right direction. Far too many roads in far to many Prairie cities that aren’t arterial thoroughfares, have been allowed to fall into pockmarked dereliction.
Perhaps I’m biased because I drive a vehicle that's small, yet high enough from the road to be at that awful point where I feel every tiny bump or change in the terrain down to the bones with every single and joint under my tires.
But let’s face it; there are plenty of ruinous streets that feel, even in a vehicle with a comfortable suspension system, like you’re going over the surface of the moon. I’m almost as excited to hear about Estevan’s plans to do similarly for King Street this spring.
Good Idea: Crackdown on Distracted Driving
As the month of March begins, SGI and police in Saskatchewan have declared distracted driving as being in the “safety spotlight,” so to speak. If this has anyone pulling at their collar uncomfortably, good. This is completely necessary, as the message just ‘aint getting through to a majority of motorists, how dangerous their habits are.
I like to keep count of how many distracted drivers I spot from my apartment above street level, and the number of people flat-out not even looking at the road as they use their phones, while driving, is staggering. When the traffic is heavy outside my apartment, I lose count of distracted drivers.
I don’t know how many times I’ve been almost T-boned — here and in other cities — turning at intersections, because the person without the right of way wanted to take a quick peek at their phone, assuming “it didn’t count,” since they were going slowly, approaching an intersection.
The numbers say it all: in 2015 alone, distracted driving claimed 36 lives, injured 802 people and resulted in over 5,000 collisions.
If people being constantly told: “You can’t risk taking your attention from the road, even for a moment,” over, and over doesn’t help get the message through their thick skulls, maybe getting fined almost $300 will.
Bad Idea: Internet Outrage
Kellyanne Conway, one of President Trump’s main advisers, was photographed kneeling on a couch in the Oval Office the other day, seen toying with her phone while a number of important representatives from colleges and universities were in the same room. There you go. That’s it. That’s literally all there was to this absurd, ridiculous controversy.
That didn’t stop the masses from erupting into something only a notch short of outright mass-hysteria over a photo taken out of context.
A scary number of people — many of them Democrats grasping for whatever pot shots they can take at the new Republican administration, their own dignity be damned — have taken to their respective pulpits to moralize and condemn Conway for her “disrespect,” and even “racism,” given that many of the guests in the office were black.
I find it fascinating that so many people consider themselves so intuitive, claiming that she was up to something irreverent and frivolous, taking all the cues they used to create those intricate narratives about her from one photo!
Speaking of photos, in case it isn’t abundantly obvious yet, to the howling mob with their pitchforks out, Conway was kneeling on the couch to get at an angle at which she could take a photo of the room — packed wall to wall with important dignitaries — more easily. Of all the things you can criticize someone as bigoted and grandiloquent as Conway for, so many people decide to collectively blow a gasket over one photo.
