Back to back home and home games in the Canadian Football League often show which coaches are the best at their craft. In the back end of their last two home and home sets, the Saskatchewan Roughriders lost 31-2 to the lowly Winnipeg Blue Bombers and also 24-19, at home, to the equally inept Toronto Argonauts.
Special teams cost the Riders again over the weekend and they've now been sucked into biting on three fake punts in the last two weeks. To say someone other than Jim Daley is at fault for the bad return game would also be silly. We've watched Dominique Dorsey, Weston Dressler, Hugh Charles, Stu Foord, and Ryan Grice-Mullen all put up paltry numbers running back the football.As I type this week's article, I'm watching Alex Brink start at quarterback for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Is it possible that despite his obvious shortcomings as a human being that Mike Kelly was a better fit as head coach of the Bombers than Paul LaPolice? I liked LaPolice as an offensive co-ordinator for the Roughriders, but something is definitely goofy in Winnipeg.
Speaking of Winnipeg, a woman was shot and killed on Selkirk Avenue over the weekend. This is the same Selkirk Avenue where a man was lit on fire and, later, died. It's the same Selkirk Avenue that's part of the William Whyte neighborhood that is riddled with violent crime. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest Winnipeg would be a pretty safe city if you could subtract that north end area.
As an incentive to get students to strive to graduate from high school, how about making it mandatory to receive a high school diploma in order to be able to purchase alcohol or have a driver's license? Part of the argument on making young people wait until they are 18 or 19 in order to legally consume alcohol is based on responsibility. One could suggest if you can't secure a high school diploma, you may not be responsible enough to drink.
There hasn't been a whole lot of griping concerning gas prices, but the reality is that a general rule of thumb has been for every dollar in the price of oil, you can expect to see a similar price in cents at the pump for fuel. This is especially the case when the Canadian dollar is near par with its American counterpart. Keeping that thought in mind, the price of oil on Monday was about $81 a barrel. Therefore, I peg the price of gas should be no more than about $0.90 a litre at the very, very most. However, here we are at $1.03. Of further interest is that United States residents are paying, roughly, $0.74 a litre at the moment. That's a lot closer to where it should be if you keep in mind my easy calculating formula outlined at the beginning of this paragraph. Another interesting argument you hear from the gas companies is that when the price of oil comes down, gas has to wait a few days because it was purchased based on the higher price and it's already in the ground waiting to be used up. However, that same argument isn't used when prices spike. If oil goes up, there should be a three or four day wait because the gas was already purchased by the retailers at the less expensive price.
If Canadians were serious about getting gas prices lower, they would boycott one specific company and force them into lowering prices to incite a gas war. In today's world of social media, it would be easy to start a chain message saying consumers should boycott a particular gas company for one month to see if prices start to come down. However, we are far too polite and lazy to follow through on something like that.
I commented about the abandoned homes on Agricultural Avenue a few weeks ago and something that was omitted from my rambling is that something also needs to be done for people who rented these places at affordable prices. It's likely that the days of renting a somewhat decent apartment or home for about $500 a month are over. I find it incredible that more people don't live on the street with over inflated rent prices. Surely, there can be some form of rent control going forward as senior citizens on fixed incomes, who don't have any ability to work in order to bring in more money, are at the mercy of landlords who will now look to double the monthly rent. Some landlords (you know who you are) were/are gouging renters already by charging too much and not up-keeping the property.
Nice person mentions this week to Andy Lauer, Greg Litvanyi, Ben Johnstone, Dakota Odgers, and the person who found my keys at the Gallagher Centre last week who turned them into the kiosk instead of going out into the parking lot to check which truck unlocks when clicking the button and stealing it.
