Sunday musings

So the worlds women's curling championship are on today. If you have had the opportunity to follow the game you might be both surprised and disappointed at the lack of audiences in those games being held in Denmark. Every time they show a shot of the stands it seems the seats are half full and the ice rink itself seems tiny in comparison to those in Canada. Crowds of 5,000 plus are not uncommon there and today the crowd numbers in the hundreds and many seem to be curlers from the event itself.
The finalists are Sweden and Canada with the Canadian team being from a town called Kroneau (near Regina) Saskatchewan.
Sweden wins it with a steal of 2 in the final end.
Canada ends up with silver.
Well, as is said in Saskatchewan, there is always next year!
So Canada is now starting a 35 day sprint to a Federal election. There are 2 main parties, one called the Conservatives that presently are in power. The other is the Liberal which for years was the natural ruling party of the country.
There are 3 fringe parties as well .
One is the left wing NDP which to many resembles a tiny little yappy dog nipping at your heels. The other is the Bloc Quebecois which is a regional party from the province of Quebec (which has a disproportionate number of representatives not based on representation by population as is the rest of Canada- this cruel error was done in the formation of the country) whose main goal is to hold the rest of Canada hostage to the financial demands of that region. In fact the rest of Canada subsidizes that region by billions of dollars each year to support education,day care, infrastructure projects among others that are not available in the rest of the country. The third are the Greens and while they have no representation in the parliament divert votes from the other 2 national parties like the NDP do. In fact pundits argue that these 3 parties are the reason behind a lack of majority government for the last 7 years. The Conservatives are running on a platform of who is best to manage the Canadian economy in these fragile times while the Liberals are not offering alternatives at this point but running against what they call the arrogance and deceit of the Conservatives. At this early stage no one topic has emerged to be the hot one to excite the voters. That should emerge in the next week or so I believe.
I had an interesting conversation with a senior citizen this week who observed that the solution to high prices etc. would be to cut wages and prices back to those of 20 years ago. Sounds simple enough, but would it work?
No, no way because it assumes that the rest of the world would go along with this. Would emerging nations slash their standard of living back 20 years? Would oil exporting countries reduce the cost of oil? Just a couple of examples of why this is a wish of fantasy and not a cold look at reality. Only affluent societies can yearn for those times, the others are too busy catching up to want to go back to the "good old days".
We live in the moment at all times and must adjust, adapt and survive to the moment. The best do and prosper, the ones who cannot do so will and do fall behind.
Brutal but true.
On the topic of 20 years ago, now in hindsight, are there things that you wished you had done different? Or had pursued instead of walking away from? Sometimes when one has a quiet reflective moment, do you wish so? Yet if you are honest, you would not be the person that you are today if you had not followed the path you did.
But, the possibilities........
Have a great week and take care out there,

Flatlander52