Time to second mortgage the house, or the like: the new Senators jerseys are hitting the street and buying a pair doesn’t come cheap. Fancy never does. I recollect paying less for a semester’s tuition at Carleton. But I was struck less by the cost ( I mean isn’t fancy worth it?) than by the casual mystery in the presentation. Why are the Senators represented by the Roman soldier? A warrior, it is addressed by the design team, who is grittier and more determined than the predecessor. One more representative of the new team which, it is clearly noted, is supposedly on the verge of winning, of accomplishing something. So how does a Senator convert to the ranks of the Praetorian Guard? Or, more to the point, why?

Not too much of a stretch to the Forum on the Rideau. Elect a few folks to manage the budget, sometimes the fancy of senators, and you end up with the whole crew guarding their favourite pork, to invoke an equivalent prevalent in a tired republic to the south. So while we thought the councillors were making sure the police and firemen were paid, that human waste still rolled downhill, and that the occasional bus ran on time, or what we might refer to as a basic city services, it turns out that the real agenda was the defense of social services, city transportation strategies to take us into the next ice age, and of course a plan to defeat the mother of all municipal insurgents, trans-fats. As you might have guessed, yes the latter items tend to drive up taxes.

Nope, fancy is never cheap. And…stuff…adds up. Perhaps the toilet tissue question is lost on this covey that actually claim they are going to try something new like hire city staffers based on their competence rather than a profile. What imagination, but I digress…the toilet tissue option: there are three ways to manage the process of preparing the tissue and getting the job done. You can fold the tissue in the palm of your hand. Or, you can roll it repeatedly about the spread of your extended fingers, or you can give the roll a godawful rip and just mash the whole mess into your hand. Needless to expound, but even a casual evaluation of these three methods shows a marked tendency to waste as you translate from folder, to roller, to masher.
So, from Senatorial folder to Praetorian masher. Ante up in the tax game.