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Stackhouse Soapbox - Question security costs for 'Royals'

I don’t understand why we have to pay for security detail for Harry and Meghan for their time in Canada if they’ve abdicated their responsibilities as Royals.
Stackhouse

I don’t understand why we have to pay for security detail for Harry and Meghan for their time in Canada if they’ve abdicated their responsibilities as Royals. I’m actually not a fan of paying for them as Royals, quite frankly, but can you explain why taxpayers should be on the hook for them if they are leaving their post?

Which brings me to an old topic I’ve griped about for years, but it bears worth repeating when it comes to paying taxes. If you can’t afford your vehicle, you downsize. If you can’t afford your house, you downsize. If you can’t afford to eat out once a week, you cut back to outings as often as you can afford instead.  But, when it comes to how government runs, we don’t ever cut back.

Governments just keep jacking up taxes and taking more and more money from the citizens. At some point, there has to be a breaking point and I can’t believe we haven’t reached it.  

New York has 27 congressional districts for 8.6 million people.  Saskatchewan has 61 seats of provincial MLAs for 1.2 million people.  Do you think we’ve got a bit of waste right there? We need new, innovative, and radical thinking when it comes to the dispersal of our tax dollars.  Sure, some things should be viewed as a necessity. But, we’ve somehow reached the point where non-essential services have become essential in the name of political correctness or because we want to feel better about ourselves for helping the less fortunate.

I don’t know how to go about it advocating for such a thing, but what Canada really needs is a tax audit from the top down (federal, provincial, and municipal) and then we need to decide on an amount of money that is fair for people to pay and whatever we can’t afford then private citizens should be on their own to figure things out. I should add that a big part of the reason why people can’t afford various things is because they are paying too much tax! Reduce that amount and you may be surprised to learn what is affordable after all.

Unifor has cranked up their blockades on Monday, disrupting things at a gas bar and card lock near Weyburn.  If they come to Yorkton, I am going to go to Co-op for as many reasons as I can possibly think of. I’m all for employees being treated fairly but I’m not going to support this union under any circumstances. Keep in mind each employee pays between $1500-$2500 a year in union dues. If you socked that away into a retirement plan, you’d be quite well off if you had a decent career working for FCL. Problem solved.

I saw an advertisement on the weekend for a fast food restaurant promoting their new non-meat meatballs. Yes, you got that right. Non-meat meatballs. I’m not a vegetarian so I have difficulty wrapping my head around that, but why do people want fake meat in the first place? I look at myself, for example. I don’t like eggs, so I don’t eat them. If someone was to prepare a non-egg egg for me, the chances are quite good I still won’t like them. If it’s not meat, don’t say it’s ‘beyond meat’ or some other silly label. Call them veggyballs or something.

The plane crash that killed Canadians that was shot down ‘accidentally’ by Iran last week is not Donald Trump’s fault.  It’s the fault of the people who fired a rocket at the plane. End of story.

Major League Baseball has fined the Houston Astros $5-million, they’ve taken away their top draft picks for two years, and both the Manager and General Manager were suspended for a year before their owner fired them both in conjunction for a sophisticated video sign stealing scheme that helped them win the 2017 World Series. The Boston Red Sox are also accused, for a second time in as many years, of sign stealing and using video technology to do so. The Red Sox, for being repeat offenders, should be punished even more severely than the Astros.

There is an easy way to fix all of this - reduce the amount of video technology that is allowed in the clubhouse and dugout. Ultimately, it was the players who cheated but none of them have been punished. One of them, Carlos Beltran, begins his first season as the manager of the New York Mets this year. Houston’s bench coach in 2017, Alex Cora, has been Boston’s manager since 2018. I suspect Cora gets the Pete Rose exile sooner rather than later.

The NHL All-Star Weekend is a waste of time and the league would best be served just closing the doors for 3-4 days and giving everyone a long weekend.

Nice person mentions:  Russell Cone, Rory McGouran, Crystal Prior, Curtis Stepp, Terri-Lynn Schwitzer, and Doug Johnson.