Free Press Field Trips

This is our last visit of the year. I suppose it’s a good time to review the top 10 events that made us laugh, made us cry, and made us want to write letters to the editor.

Stop. Stop. Stop the madness. There is nothing that induces annoyance faster to my brain than having some bingo caller drone into my ear about old news, with the rationale that this is something the public needs to be exposed to at the end of year. So you may read on and not worry about being slammed with redundance. I won’t recycle old headlines you need to know, repeating stories you already know. I won’t ask you to support an artificial decision on which stories appear in my top 10 of what’s important. You don’t have to wonder if this writer/analyst/neighbour to Manitoba is going to say that the election of Wab Kinew is more important than the Conservative Party of Canada giving the appearance of withdrawing support for the war in Ukraine.

The price we pay at the pumps, which is now in the nieghbourhood of $1.20, will get sliced by 14 cents on Monday. It’s the fulfilment of Premier Wab Kinew’s promise to pause the provincial gas tax for two business quarters. No worries about yours truly prioritizing the war in the Middle East over the Kinew discount on my list of the top 10 stories of the year. I won’t be doing that.

We have a new scandal brewing. This paper’s newest columnist, Rochelle Squires, a former minister in the PC governments of Brian Pallister and Heather Stefanson is writing about corruption in the final days of the government she served. Stay tuned for details in this newspaper. And by the way, you don’t have to be concerned that I will place the possibility of PC scandal during their death-rattle days, over the story of Donald Trump going full-metal fascist and being rewarded with higher poll numbers. Is there an appetite for brown shirts and white supremacism in the United States of America?