Three topics this week dear diary.
According to Insights West, a Canadian marketing and research operation, nurses and farmers are the most respected professionals in Canada.
In previous polls, I noticed, with chagrin, reporters were well down the ladder. Now, we don’t even compute. That’s probably because there are so few of us left. Taking up our spot on the broken rungs of the respect ladder are politicians, vehicle salespeople, lawyers, business executives, realtors and pollsters.
On the high end, just behind the nurses (92 per cent) and farmers (91) were veterinarians, scientists, doctors, teachers and architects. Dentists, police officers, artists and actors, along with athletes, military personnel and auto mechanics also weighed in on the positive side.
Since this was a Canadian poll, Donald Trump’s opinions regarding any profession at any given time, was not tabulated.
I’m a little concerned about these foreboding transformational changes that are coming down the pike for healthcare and education based on the fact our provincial government is now broke and bleeding cash.
Some pundits suggest Saskatchewan should follow the Alberta model for healthcare by forming just one super health region to cover the entire province. I don’t know exactly what it would look like here, but according to information received last week, the Alberta model is not super-duper. It seems they have gone through eight different CEOs for Alberta Health in the eight years it has been in existence. Apparently, there is no one there capable of being a Health Czar and what I’ve seen and read about Saskatchewan’s stumbling around with such things as Lean files and appointed boards, we don’t have one lurking in the background either.
I understand the likes of John Black, and his Lean team hit their first stumbling block when they learned they would have to deal with some unionized employees in Saskatchewan. It seems that was somewhat new to them and the sensei assembly line protocol. Apparently when you start pushing union people around, some have a tendency to push back if you can’t prove the merit of your process.
Finally, on Saturday we lost another legend when Muhammad Ali went down for the count.
For several years, former Mercury publisher Peter Ng and I would commiserate on a regular basis when we’d cross paths in this office on Saturday or Sunday mornings. We generally talked a lot of nonsense about harebrained ideas.
One Saturday we got stuck on the topic of big events … what constituted a big event and what could ever be bigger than Woodstock?
Needless to say, we both go back a few years. The Ngster came up with what we agreed, would be the top promotion and event of all time, or at least, what would have been top at THAT time.
“It would be a Muhammad Ali fight on Friday with a Beatles reunion on Saturday,” he proclaimed.
I could not disagree. That would have been any promoter’s dream … and nightmare.
“I think the guy just selling the T-shirts would become a millionaire in 72 hours,” I suggested.
“Where could you stage it?” Peter wondered out loud.
“Someplace where you could line up a whole lot of porta potties,” I added. Portable bathrooms were relatively new to the social scene in those days.
That showed though how huge Ali was. Now, he’s gone as are two of the Beatles. Portable toilets are still big though!
Keep dreaming your dreams dear diary.
