Say fritter and my friend’s eyes light up. He discovered grouper fritters when down in the deep south of the United States and has since become an aficionado of the many varieties of deep-fried battered delights. Done with a decent batter covering a morsel of meat or vegetable, maybe enhanced with a little sauce, and chased with a cold beer, I can eat a few fritters until my conscience nags me about gaining weight.
What we need in North Bay, he exclaimed after sampling a fritter on the way home from Toronto, is a restaurant that specializes in fritters. Do you think we have the demographics for a Fritters restaurant I asked.
Well of course we do, he said. Sure, we have many pizza places, a couple of sushi bars, a Taco place, an Indian restaurant, Chinese takeouts, a Lebanese place, a couple of Thai eateries, many, many coffee shops, three roadhouses, and some local restaurants that serve home-style meals just like mother tried to cook them. There are lots of demographics he said.
Yeah, but fritters? I asked. He reminded me that veggies tempura are really Japanese fritters.
Confidentially, he whispered, my source at City Hall tells me that the consultant who is looking at improving the economic situation, is going to change the logo from “just south enough to be perfect” to “The Gourmet Capital of Northeastern Ontario”. He says we might even get a Michelin Star as the first city to be awarded the new Collective Star.
This caused me to raise my left eyebrow, to which he replied: We’ll have Beignets for the Francophones; Tikiya for the Hindi people; Buñuelos for the Mexicans who have a visa; Luqaimat or Mshat for folks from the middle east; 餡餅 for the Chinese people, and ‘fritters y’all’ for the Americans.
My friend continued with his what was quickly becoming a diatribe about pieces of food dipped in batter and deep-fried that seemed to be a staple in every country in the world. However, it was his using the words ‘consultant’ and ’frittered’ that side-tracked me. Pierre had just said that Justin was frittering away our tax dollars using too many consultants.
Polly claimed that the Liberals had increased the number of federal civil employees by a factor of almost 2 since 2015 (but his math is sometimes skewed) and the number of consultant contracts by even more. Then throwing salt on the wound, Polly mentioned ArrivCAN. Adding a shake of red-hot pepper on this festering wound, Polly questioned that if the Ministers and Deputies did not know what was going on with the myriad of things undone or mishandled, who the hell was running the joint? Justin himself?
This exchange touched a nerve with Blair who was in charge of ArrivCAN back then, and who is now in charge of the DND, tried to dig himself out of a hole by saying he had just ordered millions of dollars worth of artillery shells from Hungary to be shipped to Ukraine. We do not make our own anymore since we had thousands of rounds stored for use – improperly it was revealed - and are now useless and dangerous.
Then some anonymous General let it slip that DND had not spent a few billions of dollars allocated to them because . . . Is anyone in charge?
My friend said I should really try a banana fritter.
Not to be distracted by food, I was thinking about our own PP, Don, and his latest comments about City Hall and how they too might be frittering. Don gets hung up on budgeting because the council, abetted by staff, does a comparison with last year’s budget instead of the actual figures. Don, an accountant himself, knows darn well they have the actual figures within about 10 days after year-end (the magic of accrual accounting), but things become stalled as they try to reduce the levy by using reserves.
Away back in time when we had a Taxpayers Association, somebody leaked to Don that staff were instructed to never again bring in a capital project over budget. The CEO, who had apparently been hassled by council about over-expenditures, laid down the law. Magically, (actually it was simply a matter of over-levying for projects) there were no more overruns, and the ‘surpluses’ were tucked away in a ‘Reserve’. This has bothered DR like a puppy worrying a slipper to death.
The truth is, Don, most of us simply don’t care enough about the various levels of government frittering away our taxes to do anything about it. Say ‘frittering’ and like my friend, they will think of trying an apple fritter.
I wonder how long it will take Tims to thin their donut batter and start selling fritters. Just asking.
