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If everyone is to blame, then who will lead us out of the mess?

This week's Hammertime looks at the blame game within politics and the election.

It has been a really long federal election campaign, and I don’t know about you, but I am getting sick and tired of those glitzy and expensive national TV, radio, and all sorts of other media advertisements and head-to-head forums that spend most of the time exchanging cheap shots, making excuses and blaming the other party leaders for the current political state of our great nation.

Shoulda-coulda-woulda done it this way, he’s not ready, she did this and all the rest of the finger pointing and fluff kind of reminds us of a bunch of kids trying to hog the best seats in the lunch room, tossing sand at each other in the playground, or choosing up sides for a political pick-up game played in French and English. There have been all kinds of promises, as always, to spend lots of our hard-earned tax dollars on all sorts of projects that the former party in power failed to complete, but have we really yet to see any sort of an honest and upfront practical plan of hard-nosed facts and figures that will lead us out of the so-called economic crunch and into a long and bright future for all of us, young and old, and not just for the rich and famous?

What happened in the past up on Parliament Hill in Ottawa is now history, some great, some tragic, some really messy, but let’s get on with the vital task of leading this super nation in the right direction, run with it, and please make sure that all of the party candidates and staff are on the right page. As always, it will be up to us, the many millions of faithful and often frustrated taxpayers, who will have to hope that we have made the right choice of our next leaders on Monday, Oct. 19, after which we will then have to live with it for the next four years. Whatever the case, please get out and enjoy your right of freedom and choice.

How much fun was it to eat in the 50s?

For those of us who were born in the early days of rock and roll, drive-in movies, fender skirts, nickel a song juke boxes and absolutely no computers or baby seats in cars, we can now sit down to our meals at all hours of the night and day, often by ourselves, then maybe chuckle a little while looking back at our early days around the dinner table in our little homes on the prairies. I vividly recall that we were not allowed to be fussy or picky, simply because if we didn’t eat what was put in front of us, there was no other choice but to go hungry, be sent to our room, and miss dessert. I am sure so many of you will remember when…

*Pasta had not been invented. It was then called macaroni or spaghetti.

*Curry was a surname, and a take-away was a mathematical problem.

*Pizza? That sounds like a leaning tower somewhere far away, and bananas and oranges usually only appeared around Christmas time!

*All chips were plain, rice was a milk pudding, and never, ever, a part of our dinner!

*A Big Mac was what we wore when it was raining, and brown bread was something only poor people ate.

*Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking, and tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves that were never green.

*Cubed sugar was regarded as a delicacy, chickens didn’t have fingers, and none of us had ever heard of yogurt.

*Healthy food consisted of anything that was edible, cooking outside was called camping, and seaweed was not a recognized food.

*’Kebab’ was not even a word, never mind a food; and prunes were totally medicinal.

*Surprisingly muesli was readily available and it was called ‘cattle feed’; and pineapples came in as chunks in a tin, and we only ever saw a real one in a picture from Hawaii!

*Water came out of a tap, we drank it from the outside hose, and if someone would have suggested that we could bottle in and charge more for it than gasoline, they would have been the laughing stock of the neighbourhood.

*About the only thing that we never ever had on at our dinner table in the 50s was our elbows or hats.

A few little quickies.

*A hang-over is where the brew of the night meets the cold of the day.

*Cold cash is something no one can ever keep long enough to warm up.

*Mother: ‘Your boyfriend stayed very late last night didn’t he? Daughter: ‘Yes mother, did the noise disturb you?’ ‘No, but the periods of silence sure did!’

*The tragedy of the mama flea is that she knows for certain that all of her little children are eventually going to the dogs.

Why not plug in the earphones and rake your leaves, let the kids roll in the piles, and then relax, and have a great week, all of you.