“Hey Mabel, good job we don’t have language police in Ontario like they do in Quebec,” said George McKenzie the other morning as he pointed to the lunch special of quiche on Mabel’s menu board. “You might get charged with abusing the language.”

“Ontario has no desire to look ridiculous around the world,” said Cliff Murray. “I mean I read that the story about the Quebec language officer who told a restaurant they couldn’t have the word pasta on the menu was published in 60 countries about the world.”

“Yeah and some of the national-ists thought it was a plot on the part of English Canada to make them look stupid,” said Molly Whiteside as she poured a round of coffee.

“The separatists don’t give themselves enough credit,” said Dave Winston. “They can look stupid without any help.”

“Can you imagine if it was the other way around?” wondered Mabel. “Imagine the reaction in Quebec if some government official came along and told me I couldn’t have the word poutine on the menu.”

“Let’s leave it as poutine,” said Dave. “Somehow I think if you could only use English and had to call it ‘a greasy mess of gravy on top of cheese curds on top of French fries’ you wouldn’t sell a lot.”

“It seems to be the French who are the most obsessed about keeping their language pure,” said Cliff. “I mean in France they’ve fought for years to keep words like hotdog from slipping into the language. Meanwhile we seem to take words from all over the world and add them to our English vocabulary.”

“Well if having pasta on your menu is going to get you in trouble in Quebec, imagine what it’s going to be like if this Mediterranean diet catches on,” said Molly.

“Actually, I’m not sure pasta is included in the Mediterranean diet, said Cliff. “From what I read it’s plenty of fruits and vegetables, nuts, fish, a little red wine and lots and lots of olive oil.”

“That’s not a diet, that’s a punishment!” said George.

“Thanks God for the wine,” said Dave. “Enough of that and you might be able to swallow the rest.”

“Doctors say it’s supposed to make you live longer,” said Cliff.

“Who wants to,” said George. “If I had to eat that, I’d sooner kill myself by overdosing on poutine.”

“Economically this doesn’t seem to make sense,” said Molly. “I mean the Mediterranean diet comes from places like Greece and Italy. Both of them have economies in trouble. Both of them have people who think they should work as little as possible, pay as little tax as possible and still have the government give them as much as possible. Seems to me the last thing they can afford is for those people to live longer.”

“I notice there was nothing about red meat in there,” said George.

“Yeah, seems every one of these miracle diets they come up with is all about getting rid of meat,” said Dave. “I think the PETA people are bribing somebody.”

“Or the environmentalists,” said George. “I’m constantly reminded my cattle are destroying the planet because they fart.”

“On the other hand, we’re to blame for destroying the habitat of the bobolinks because we cut our hay fields before their eggs hatch when the hay is still edible ,” said Cliff.

“Yeah, but if we didn’t have cattle and sheep, we wouldn’t have hayfields and pastures to give a home to the bobolinks in the first place,” said George.

“I don’t think there’d be much habitat for bobolinks if we all turned vegetarian and only grew soybeans for tofu,” said Dave.

“Yeah well if they bring in this Mediterranean diet and people only eat fish, let’s see how many bobolinks nest on the water,” said George.◊

“Hey Mabel, good job we don’t have language police in Ontario like they do in Quebec,” said George McKenzie the other morning as he pointed to the lunch special of quiche on Mabel’s menu board. “You might get charged with abusing the language.”

“Should I be getting genetic testing on this?” said Dave Winston the other day as he lifted the bun on his hamburger and prodded the patty below. “I’m not a big fan of horse meat.”

“Will you be quiet!” hissed Molly Whiteside as she brought him Ketch-up for his french fries. “I can pract-ically see customers getting up and leaving just from overhearing you.”

“It’s another good reason not to import any meat from Europe,” said George McKenzie. “Let them keep their horsemeat to themselves.”

“It’s getting to be quite a scandal over there,” said Cliff Murray. I was reading that they’ve even had traces of horse turning up in school dinners and hospital meals.”

“The one that made me chuckle the most was that a restaurant chain called the Beefeater Grill found out it had been serving horse,” said Molly.

“I guess there’s nothing really wrong with horse meat,” said Cliff. “Lots of people over there have been eating horses for centuries.”

“To listen to some of the panic you’d think it was the BSE outbreak all over again,” said Dave. “It’s like people are going to get sick from the horse meat or something.”

“Hey, some of those horse lovers over in England might actually make themselves sick if they think they’ve been eating Black Beauty,” said Cliff. “People can talk themselves into eating cattle, sheep and pigs but horses are somehow a higher form of life.”

“It’s been a hard time for the idealists lately,” said Dave. “How many city cat owners are looking at their kitties differently after that story came out about just how many birds and mice cats kill?”

“Yeah, what was it, something like one to four billion birds and 20 billion mice?” said Molly.

“If cats kill that many birds maybe they’ll stop worrying about a few bobolinks in my hay fields,” said George.

“More likely they’ll come down even harder on you to make up for the damage the cats are doing,” said Dave.

“What do they expect?” wondered Molly. “The reason people domesticated cats in the first place was to keep mice out of their houses.”

“Yeah, but these people have been trying to persuade their cats they should become civilized and eat vegetarian,” said George. “Think about their disappointment at the moral deficiencies of their cats.”

“I bet there are people in New York that would be happy to see some hungry cats right now,” said Cliff. “I was reading that extermin-ators down there are run off their feet with calls from schools and busi-nesses, and even from luxury apart-ment buildings that have been invaded by rats that were driven out of the sewers and subway tunnels by the flooding of Hurricane Sandy.”

“Hey, I don’t blame the rats,” said Dave. “After you’ve had a taste of living in Donald Trump’s apartment who’d choose to go back to living in a sewer.”

“I might if Donald Trump was home,” said Molly.

“With a guy like that the rats might feel right at home,” said Dave.

“Well I like the way they have of getting pests in Iran,” said Cliff. “I read where Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can’t run for re-election so he said he was ready to be the first human sent into orbit by Iran’s space program.”

“He shouldn’t need a lot of training,” said Dave. “He’s already was a bit of a space cadet.”

“Yeah, but it might be a step backward,” said Molly. “Most countries start with something more intelligent, like monkeys.”

“Makes you think maybe Canada should start a space program,” said George. “I can think of a few politicians I’d like to ship into space –  and I don’t even care if we get them back.”◊

“Should I be getting genetic testing on this?” said Dave Winston the other day as he lifted the bun on his hamburger and prodded the patty below. “I’m not a big fan of horse meat.”

Human nature is one of the most fascinating topics on earth – or maddening if you must deal with the ramifications of its inconsistencies.

Recently Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund warned world governments that they must stick to their guns in imposing regulations on financial institutions to keep them from making risky investments. Governments have been under pressure from these big banks and investment houses to back away from plans to protect the banks from themselves. “We don’t need regula-tion” say the bankers who only four years ago had to be rescued by multi-billion dollar aid packages by govern-ments. The banks, of course, are now also smugly knocking governments for their debt, much of which is due to bailing out banks that were so big they’d have taken down the entire world economy if they’d collapsed.

Then recently a banker, writing a guest column in The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business section, fought back against suggestions from Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of Canada that lending institutions had a duty help prevent ordinary Canadians from getting into debt over their heads by not lending money to people already in debt. He argued that bankers’ only duty is to maximize profits for shareholders. If governments want to prevent people from having too much debt they should do it by regulations on the amount banks can lend, he said.

Traditionally, businessmen think governments waste money, and yet I’ve known many businesses that have two prices for their services: one for ordinary customers and a higher one for government agencies.

Businessmen decry subsidies to others but are ready to take them for themselves. When the federal government recently renewed a $250 million fund to encourage innovation in the auto industry, the president of one parts-making company said it was “a good start” but a lot more subsidy was needed if we want to keep the auto industry in Ontario.

But you don’t have to look as far as the world of banking or car making to see contradictory thinking. With the high price for crops, conser-vation practices like wind-breaks and buffer strips along streams and ditches have suffered as farmers tried to press every acre into production. But wait a minute – if there’s so much money to be made in that little extra land being cultivated, shouldn’t farmers have been making more profit than ever off the land they already cultivate? If so, with more money in their pocket shouldn’t now be the time they could be generous and take the long-term view?

At one meeting recently, I’d begun to think farmers were coming to accept climate change as a reality. These were livestock producers who had to deal with a shortage of hay because of last year’s drought and were talking about changing the way they farmed in future to deal with the changing climate.

But a couple of weeks later at a meeting of cash croppers, a speaker brought there to talk about market forces cast doubt on climate change and immediately had a chorus of those who agreed. These were farmers who were worried last summer if they would get a crop but rains arrived and, miraculously, they had record yields, and all was forgotten. I couldn’t help wonder what the attitude to climate change would be among apple growers who lost their crop.

And speaking about that markets expert, farmers repeatedly say they think regulations should be “science based” but then they accept the word of a markets expert over climate change scientists.

It’s human nature to ignore the contradictions in our own behaviour.◊

Human nature is one of the most fascinating topics on earth – or maddening if you must deal with the ramifications of its inconsistencies.

“I’m glad I haven’t got a contract to sell pigs to Maple Leaf anymore,” said Dave Winston at the coffee session the other morning.

“You mean because of the divorce?” asked Cliff Murray.

“Are you getting divorced?” asked Molly Whiteside as she filled the coffee cups.

“No, not me,” said Dave. “Michael McCain!”

“I thought maybe your wife had finally got smart,” said Molly.

“So what’s Michael McCain getting a divorce to do with hog contracts?” wondered George McKenzie.

“The judge ordered Michael to pay his ex-wife $175,000 a month in support payments,” said Dave. “Those rich guys usually figure somebody else should pick up the tab for their expenses so if I was still shipping pigs to Maple Leaf I figure Michael would think I should share his pain.”

“That should keep her in Wonder Bread,” said Mabel from over behind the counter.

“How do you manage to spend $175,000 a month?” wondered Molly.

“Apparently very easily,” said Dave.

“Well there were the private schools for the kids, of course, and her personal entertainment expense of $5,500 a month and $2,600 for her yoga instructor and ‘basic’ household expenses of $12,000 a month,” said Cliff.

“Don’t forget the three-man crew on the yacht,” said Dave. “It’s nice to know I had a small part in supporting all that for so many years.”

“It’s no wonder F. Scott Fitzgerald said the rich are different than the rest of us,” said Mabel.

“I think they get so rich because they save their money for ‘essential’ things like yoga instructors,” said Molly. “Did you see that guy who was head of the air ambulance service, who was getting paid over a million dollars, still claimed $1.50 for a coffee or a cookie on his expense account.”

“Hey, maybe I could claim my bills here are a farm expense,” said George. “Call it a business consultation.”

“Jeez, I’d hope you wouldn’t think there was any good advice you could get from these losers,” said Molly.

“I want to get more than a free coffee and cookie,” said Cliff. “I thought maybe I’d like to take a trip to China and have the federal government pick up my expenses, like they did on that trade mission for 30 of the country’s top CEOs last year.”

“You mean these guys went to China to drum up business for their companies and the government picked up the tab?” asked Mabel.

“You suppose Michael McCain was one of them?” wondered Dave.

“And how many of those guys do you suppose complain about how the government wastes money,” said George

“Or pays accountants a small fortune to avoid taxes,” said Molly.

“Hey, even Prince Charles tried to get away with that one,” said Cliff. “I read that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs claims he was avoiding taxes.”

“Pretty nervy when you get mill-ions from the taxpayers so you can live a lavish lifestyle,” said Molly.

“Oh, he’s got his own income as well,” said Cliff. “He’s got this estate, the Duchy of Cornwall, that earns $28 million a year.”

“Holy mackerel, where does all that come from?” asked Mabel.

“He’s got over 125,000 acres,” said Cliff. “The whole place is worth $1.1 billion.”

“It’s worth $1.1 billion and it only earns $28 million a year? If Prince Charlie’s that bad with money I guess we can be glad kings really don’t run countries anymore,” said George. “Let him concentrate on spending money. He’s good at it.”◊

“I’m glad I haven’t got a contract to sell pigs to Maple Leaf anymore,” said Dave Winston at the coffee session the other morning.

“You mean because of the divorce?” asked Cliff Murray.

“Are you getting divorced?” asked Molly Whiteside as she filled the coffee cups.

“No, not me,” said Dave. “Michael McCain!”

“I thought maybe your wife had finally got smart,” said Molly.

“So what’s Michael McCain getting a divorce to do with hog contracts?” wondered George McKenzie.

“The judge ordered Michael to pay his ex-wife $175,000 a month in support payments,” said Dave. “Those rich guys usually figure somebody else should pick up the tab for their expenses so if I was still shipping pigs to Maple Leaf I figure Michael would think I should share his pain.”

“That should keep her in Wonder Bread,” said Mabel from over behind the counter.

“How do you manage to spend $175,000 a month?” wondered Molly.

“Apparently very easily,” said Dave.

“Well there were the private schools for the kids, of course, and her personal entertainment expense of $5,500 a month and $2,600 for her yoga instructor and ‘basic’ household expenses of $12,000 a month,” said Cliff.

“Don’t forget the three-man crew on the yacht,” said Dave. “It’s nice to know I had a small part in supporting all that for so many years.”

“It’s no wonder F. Scott Fitzgerald said the rich are different than the rest of us,” said Mabel.

“I think they get so rich because they save their money for ‘essential’ things like yoga instructors,” said Molly. “Did you see that guy who was head of the air ambulance service, who was getting paid over a million dollars, still claimed $1.50 for a coffee or a cookie on his expense account.”

“Hey, maybe I could claim my bills here are a farm expense,” said George. “Call it a business consultation.”

“Jeez, I’d hope you wouldn’t think there was any good advice you could get from these losers,” said Molly.

“I want to get more than a free coffee and cookie,” said Cliff. “I thought maybe I’d like to take a trip to China and have the federal government pick up my expenses, like they did on that trade mission for 30 of the country’s top CEOs last year.”

“You mean these guys went to China to drum up business for their companies and the government picked up the tab?” asked Mabel.

“You suppose Michael McCain was one of them?” wondered Dave.

“And how many of those guys do you suppose complain about how the government wastes money,” said George

“Or pays accountants a small fortune to avoid taxes,” said Molly.

“Hey, even Prince Charles tried to get away with that one,” said Cliff. “I read that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs claims he was avoiding taxes.”

“Pretty nervy when you get mill-ions from the taxpayers so you can live a lavish lifestyle,” said Molly.

“Oh, he’s got his own income as well,” said Cliff. “He’s got this estate, the Duchy of Cornwall, that earns $28 million a year.”

“Holy mackerel, where does all that come from?” asked Mabel.

“He’s got over 125,000 acres,” said Cliff. “The whole place is worth $1.1 billion.”

“It’s worth $1.1 billion and it only earns $28 million a year? If Prince Charlie’s that bad with money I guess we can be glad kings really don’t run countries anymore,” said George. “Let him concentrate on spending money. He’s good at it.”◊