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The Ruttle Report - Pitchforks Grabbed in Three.......Two...

Remember Andy Rooney? He was the cantankerous old guy who had a weekly feature on the long-running CBS news program ’60 Minutes’ in which he gave his opinions and thoughts on any topic that happened to tickle his fancy that week.

Remember Andy Rooney?

He was the cantankerous old guy who had a weekly feature on the long-running CBS news program ’60 Minutes’ in which he gave his opinions and thoughts on any topic that happened to tickle his fancy that week.  It really could be anything; a major news item making the rounds, a trend in popular culture, and one time he even managed to do a piece on batteries.  I’m dead serious, he did a whole piece on different battery sizes and why they bothered him.

This week, I guess you could say I’m channeling my inner Andy Rooney, except I’m not going to bore you with complaints about battery sizes.

No, I’m simply going to sound off on a few things that are making the rounds, whether it’s here at home, across the country, or elsewhere.

You’ve probably read one of these columns from me before, as I typically call it the “mixed bag” of my opinions and thoughts.

You don’t have to agree with them, though perhaps you may, and you may not even like them, or maybe you will, but they’re simply the things that I’m feeling right now…

So with the carbon tax taking effect, it turns out I’m getting back about $306 more than usual on my federal tax refund.  Gee, thanks Mr. Prime Minister!  Thanks for giving me back more of my own money to begin with!  Of course, the few extra hundred bucks looks great on paper until Canadians realize that it’ll be required when the price of gas and groceries skyrocket, thanks of course to…..the carbon tax.  It’s like a very frustrating, very condescending Merry-Go-Round.  “Oohh, isn’t it great that we’re giving you back more money?  But you better not spend it all, you’re going to need it when life itself starts to become even more expensive in the months ahead!”

We’re in that weather period where it’s the end of winter, but it’s still not quite spring.  There’s mud everywhere, puddles give your vehicle a nice splash of dirty water, and we’re all just hoping that things dry up quick.  It’s gross, and I hate it.

‘Captain Marvel’ is all the rage at the box office right now, and much of the hype around it is over the fact that it’s the first female-led Marvel movie.  At the risk of coming across like someone who doesn’t “get it”, who cares?  Remember when a movie could just be a movie, or a TV show could just be a TV show without all the societal commentary?  Or without telling us why a movie is supposedly such a “trendsetter”?  In other words, I miss the time when movies and television were supposed to be escapism from the everyday world.

I’ve come to terms with the sad fact that the SkyTrail walking bridge is going to be something from Outlook’s past because I fail to see any kind of future for it.  We failed to maintain it when we knew something was wrong with it, and we let too much time go by.  Now, the dollar figures are just far too high and there are other priorities that’ll take up at least the next 5-10 years.

I have a very real concern that the new swimming pool facility in Outlook is ultimately going to be a failure in the long run.  Now before you break out the pitchforks and come a-callin’ for my head, you have to know that I obviously want this pool to succeed, and I know that anyone with a vested interest in it certainly does too.  But in my view, there are simply too many obstacles in its way.  First off is the projected $200,000+ it’ll cost to run the pool each year.  As sure as I am that there are a lot of swimmers anxiously awaiting the opening of the pool, you can’t tell me that it’s going to generate anywhere near that kind of dollar amount within the approximate three-month time period that it’ll be open out of the year.  Outside of the finite dollar figures, there’s the argument of public appeal.  Exactly how many families book swimming lessons?  How many would commit to taking them in Outlook?  Or do they prefer swimming down at Lake Diefenbaker, or even on a sand bar down by the river, both of which are free?

Don’t get me wrong, I think the new pool looks absolutely incredible, and it’s something that’ll go down in the history books as a milestone infrastructure project for Outlook, but it’s the future that worries me; the sheer sustainability of such an impressive facility in a community that will now be on the hook from a financial perspective.

Sometimes I wonder if the money that’s been raised so far should’ve just been used to correct the whole ‘land sliding towards the river’ problem and completely fix the old swimming pool in the Outlook Regional Park.  At least in that scenario, you’re lending a helping hand to a struggling park by vastly improving a once-cherished amenity, and you’re also satisfying the whims of the many people who continue to ask to this day, “Why’s the new pool not in the park?”

At the end of the day, when it comes to the new pool, I guess you can just consider me someone who really, really, REALLY wants to be proven wrong with my views on it.  And believe me, Outlook’s coffers really want me to be proven wrong too!

Okay, you can break out the pitchforks now…

For this week, that’s been the Ruttle Report.