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All kinds of topics for discussion this week dear diary so where would you like me to begin? 

How about dinner at Earls? Seems as if this chain of eateries set off an unexpected firestorm by eliminating Canadian beef in favour of something called humane beef from Kansas. 

I don’t know about you, but I figure that once that meat arrives in front of me, it’s dead. 

I have yet to see and hear of a Saskatchewan rancher treating cattle inhumanely, even if the subjects of their attention are destined for a short lifespan. Do I want to eat a steak from a contented steer? Or, do I want to eat a steak from a steer that was striving for something better? Maybe the overachieving steer might taste better. 

And, don’t get me started on antibiotics and steroids stuff. I would like to eat the meat from a cow or steer that was healthy at the time of its demise. It’s sorta like the old argument of whether or not you want your kid vaccinated, or take a chance. 

So Earls can serve a steak that came from a box stamped with a humane sticker, I just won’t be eating it. It’s kind of a pricey place anyway, isn’t it? 

Did you know that Christy Clark and Brad Wall get top ups on the salaries they earn as premiers? Yep, it seems their respective parties dish them up a few additional grand to make their lives a little easier. If we don’t watch out, these two will be making as much as regional health district bosses. 

Did you hear the good news? 

Saudia Arabia is needing to borrow some money, for the first time in a longtime. 

They needed to go to the money markets to get an additional $10 billion to finish up a $150 billion project they started a few years ago and didn’t have the money to pay for it. 

Haven’t they heard of P3s? That’s our version of the layaway plan for building stuff. 

I don’t know what it was that the Saudis were building, it might have been a bypass or maybe they wanted to twin a highway. They are also having to sell shares in their previously country-owned Aramco oil gobbler and drop subsidies on their retail gasoline sales. It seems the price of gas at the pumps in Riyadh is going up to about 30 cents per litre. What the hey? That’s their total price! Our gas retailers jump our price  by 30 cents a litre every six months just for laughs, so things can’t be that tough in SA. Of course they don’t take taxes from gasoline sales, or any other place either. 

But, I’m thinking they’re starting to feel a bit of an economic pinch and they don’t like it. This is their version of austerity.  

On other OPEC files, things are not good at all. Venezuela is out of money, electrical power and beer, among other things. It seems the last bastion of communism is having to cut off the electrical power for four hours a day. They have shortages in a lot of everyday goods, too.

Final note. The Saskatchewan Roughriders paid Maurice Price a few thousand bucks as a signing bonus after he came over to them from the Ottawa Twocolours, and then decided not to come over. Roughies lose a couple of draft picks plus the money. Maurice has since retired and gets to keep the bonus. Who took care of the details on that contract that turned into a non-contract?