• Why do we have to keep the Chinese pandas for 10 years and China only keeps Stephen Harper for one week? They’ve outmanoeuvred us again.

• I’m not surprised the pandas will leave Ontario after five years and then head west. Seems that’s been the trend of late.

• Happiness is getting back the money I left in the Riverbend CIBC bank machine. Many thanks to the wonderful lady who turned it in.

• Alberta building codes, cardboard condos plus careless cigarette smokers ... . Just what do you expect?

• If I were suspicious, I’d say the power companies engineered these high prices to force consumers to sign contracts that will eventually rake in more money for the power companies and cost more for the consumer.

• Only in Alberta do you get deregulation of electrical costs and you still get to pay for new power lines.

• Power providers are building new lines between Edmonton and Calgary and they want consumers to pay for it. That sounds like Daryl Katz’s arena proposal, doesn’t it?

• A new Alberta saying: “Ask not what our government can do for us, ask what it can do for corporate Canada.”

• If you want to stop paying natural gas delivery fees, head on down to the natural gas store and pick up the gas you need and see how that works for you. No one likes paying extra fees, but that’s reality if you want to turn up the thermostat and enjoy the warmth.

• Wildrose just lost my vote because of the way candidate John Oplanich is trying to get into office — by offering $25,000 worth of scholarships if he wins.

• Adele won an incredible six Grammy Awards. She showed us why, with a great performance, and she didn’t have to get half naked to do it. Wow, an award for real talent.

• Considering how depressingly flat the financial markets have been, placing a full-page liquor-store ad on the last page of The Journal’s business section may well have been a stroke of genius.

• When are we going to see “Big Ticket Event, Use Your Signal Lights” or “Fix Your Tail Lights” or “Dim Your High Beams” or “Peel Your Illegal Tint”?

• I’ll eat crow in front of the legislature if the premier will say the government is closely monitoring electricity rates to ensure Albertans are benefiting from deregulation.

• What concert did Amanda Ash attend? Chicago was amazing. The audience loved them.

• Environment Minister Peter Kent claims he listened to the 200,000 who said no to Brewster’s glacier walkway. What he heard was Brewster’s lobbyist in Ottawa. Shame.

• Alberta needs a provincial police force. Then we can fire the embarrassing RCMP.

• About the RCMP officer who was fined for sex with a co-worker: It’s high time that all discipline cases in the RCMP were adjudicated by civilians.

• You and only you are responsible for what you eat, not the government. Try fresh food, it is trans-fat free. If consumers didn’t buy unhealthy food, the food industry wouldn’t be making it.

• If the province charged a progressive tax on the rich, we wouldn’t have a deficit.

• The flat tax puts a terrible onus on low-income people. Get rid of it.

• Avenue, not ave; temperature, not temp; kilometre, not k; and restoring -ing to the appropriate words would make the evening TV news much less annoying and more enjoyable.

• Radio and TV people, whose business is the spoken word, should take a little care and stop saying “Feb-yew-ary” when they mean “Feb-ru-ary.”

• Want to know the best way to warm up your truck in the morning? Drive it. It’s right there in your owner’s manual.

• It appears that scientists have discovered proof of a tropical climate in the Arctic sometime in the past. So exactly who is to blame for that period of global warming? I didn’t even have a truck back then.

Email venting@edmontonjournal.com, phone 780-429-5196 or follow us at twitter.com/EJ_Venting. To read more vents, go to edmontonjournal.com or facebook.com/EJVenting.

Compiled by Philip Mail