Luxury market seen as growing in 2022 despite inflation, war

A Winnipeg Uber driver has been permanently banned from the platform after police charged the man for allegedly sexually assaulting a passenger last month.

A woman reported that she used the ride service on Sept. 27 and the 27-year-old driver sexually assaulted her once the vehicle reached its destination in the Weston neighbourhood, the Winnipeg Police Service said in a news release.

Police said the woman was able to escape and get to safe place. The driver was arrested on Sept. 28 at an apartment complex on Kennedy Street. He was later released with conditions.

An Uber spokesperson said the driver is permanently banned, and the company is assisting police with the investigation.

For years, the Manitoba Association of Crown Attorneys (“MACA”) has been engaged in a dispute with the Manitoba government over the workload of its lawyers. That dispute is expected to come to a head at the end of November, when two weeks of grievance hearings are scheduled.

We remain hopeful that we can reach an agreement with our employer. But if we cannot, our union’s lawyers are prepared to make our case. As those hearings approach, we want to explain how we got here, what is at stake, and why this dispute matters beyond the working conditions of our members.

These problems are longstanding and predate the election of Manitoba’s current government. Our concern with the current government is not that it created these problems, but that it is now responsible for addressing them.

Despite the evidence before it, the government has not meaningfully addressed the workload concerns we have raised throughout its time in office.

Time stops for no one. It keeps ticking away like a perpetual motion machine erasing our youth. Aging is entropy inevitably moving us into a state of disorder.

We wake up one morning and say, “What happened?” Our friends ask us: “Are you living the dream?” Retirement is supposed to be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Except it often doesn’t feel like that.

Suddenly, we are contending with hip and knee replacements, angioplasty or by-pass surgery, chemotherapy and cancer surgery, cataract surgery, emergency visits to the hospital, not to mention cognitive and physical decline associated with degenerative illnesses.

And then there are the numerous medications we are required to take to help us cope with these various medical disorders, all of which have side effects. To counter these side effects, we need to take a different set of medications. We live a life of neverending alarms going off telling us which meds we need to take and when.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I’m an emotional mess. My lesbian girlfriend and I broke up in August, and now I hold the lease on the apartment we shared. It’s a great big old place with two spacious balconies.

I just got new roommates — two younger friends who really love it here — but secretly I’m still feeling lonely. Every minute of living here reminds me of my girlfriend because we decorated the place together and hung out on the balconies to sunbathe in the summer.

Would it help to move out of my beloved old block with its memory triggers? Maybe, but what if I died of loneliness in a new place? I need people around me, and no one but my ex-girlfriend has really been the right person. Please help. I feel sick about this.

— Love-Nest Sadness, Winnipeg