The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Something for everyone

Episode Date: May 20, 2021

It's a Thursday potpourri like no other.  Everything from fears of inflation to worries about new clothing styles (seriously). There really is something for everyone its this collection of the stories missed in the past week.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Today it's Potpourri Thursday. Are you still trying to find ways to get into the world of crypto? Well, look no further. Bitbuy is Canada's number one platform for buying and selling Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Bitbuy has launched a brand new app and website with a new look, lower fees, and new coins. Bitbuy is your one-stop shop to get involved and super easy to use for beginners. Visit bitbuy.ca or download the Bitbuy app. Enter referral code podcast20 to get $20 free And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with The Bridge in Toronto. Once again, today we'll be in Toronto all this week, back in Stratford for most of next week.

It's getting busy as things change a little bit out there. I'm working on a documentary for later this summer on the CBC, which I'll tell you about more about it later on. But this is Thursday, and that means Potpourri Day. As you know, on Thursdays, I try to collect a lot of the stories that I've kind of seen, noticed over the past few days or weeks, but haven't got around to talking about. And they're kind of short snappers, if you will, but they're all interesting. And today we got a lot of them. I don't know, there must be 10 or 12 of them, so I'm going to have to move along to get

to them all. And they were of varying degrees of importance, but I think they all share one thing, they're interesting. Now, you will well recall that in north america the first city that went into the dive on covid and we tended to realize because of its experience just how serious this was going to be and what impact it would have on the life of a big city was new york city well they're going to teach us what the other side of this is like as well, we hope, in the sense of what's it like, how do you do the coming out of COVID. Yesterday was day one of the reopening of New York City. Now, it's going to take a while to judge just how well that is going, but what does it actually mean when they say New York is reopening?

Well, it's going to lift many capacity restrictions on businesses, starting just yesterday, in response to the clearly improving COVID conditions, not only across the United States, but especially in New York City, and the fact that vaccination rates are rising dramatically, it's a moment that state officials have billed as a major return to normalcy. So what does it mean? What are the details? Well, in New York City, most businesses, restaurants, stores, salons, and gyms will be able to return to 100% capacity, but only if they can still maintain six feet of distance between individuals or groups. The same is true for houses of worship. Vaccinated people will no longer have to wear masks indoors

or outdoors in most circumstances, but individual businesses are free to make stricter mask rules. This is the way the New York Times is looking at it. This is their kind of pricey of the situation. The May 19th reopening is not a full return to normal. In many cramped New York City restaurants, the requirement to maintain six feet of distance between tables could mean fewer customers than under the 75% capacity that had already been allowed. In New York, the indoor social gathering limit will be set at 250, and the outdoor limit will be set at 500. So they're pretty excited in New York City, and we're going to watch it carefully to see how it plays out. Because just like they were a model going into this, they may be the model coming out of it as well. The New Yorker has a fascinating piece this week

on horse racing. And the attention has been around horse racing for the last couple of weeks after the positive drug test of one of the horses in the Kentucky Derby. Now the New Yorker's piece isn't about that situation but it is about the horse racing business and whether or not it can survive. As the New Yorker says in a sport that's riddled with fatal breakdowns, drug abuses, and has been increasingly subsidized by slot machine-based gambling, the New Yorker examines whether the ancient sport of horse racing can even survive much longer in today's climate. Here's a direct quote from the magazine. Some racetracks adapted by building casinos on their grounds. Racinos, they call them.

And many went to state legislatures for help. Racing commissions and legislatures were often old friends. And in many states, a percentage of casino profits was directed to the tracks and the horse breeding industry. Things went differently in California. Native Americans have built 69 casinos in California, and the gaming lobby is often described as the state's most powerful. Horse racing subsidies did not come to pass. Racing is little cachet left in California.

It's been eons since Bing Crosby and Spencer Tracy were track regulars and horse owners. Even Alex Trebek, they managed to work a Canadian into this story. Even Alex Trebek, who loved horse racing, has left the building. Bloomberg has a piece. Banks always backed fossil fuel over green projects until this year. This is a very interesting turn in the world of big business. After pouring trillions into oil, gas, and coal since the Paris Agreement, banks are on pace in 2021 to commit more financing to climate-friendly projects. This move could be the beginning of the end of the financial institution's long-standing

support for oil and gas. Bloomberg data covering almost 140 financial service institutions worldwide shows at least $203 billion in bonds and loans to renewable projects and other climate-friendly ventures through the middle of this month, compared with $189 billion to businesses focused on hydrocarbons. We may well be at a tipping point, a powerful tipping point, says Tim Buckley, who is a clean energy investor who spent nearly two decades at Citigroup. Finance will only lead when the numbers make sense. BBC News, and this is, we saw yesterday how this had an impact,

has had an impact in Canada too, because they've discovered that, you remember when the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine first came out there there was all this discussion about um and advice that the vaccines have to be kept in deep cold storage um until they were used and then when when they came out of deep cold they only had five days which limited where you could move the vaccines to and how fast you had to get them into arms. Well, new studies have changed all that. The European Union's drug regulator, this comes from the BBC, has said that the Pfizer vaccine, and this is now being, as I said, agreed to in Canada, can now be stored at fridge temperature for much longer than previously recommended.

The announcement certainly welcomed news for developing areas and rural communities with lower vaccine uptakes. So how different is it going to be? Well, it had been five days. It's now up to a month. Remember when it first came out? We said it had to be in storage at minus 80

degrees Celsius. Now, in a fridge. So that's a big difference. And it is welcome news for those who are working on trying to move that vaccine around um nature magazine tweaking flight altitude could be a climate win you know when i got up this morning i was i am in you know our condo in Toronto, and I got on our little balcony,

and I was looking up at the sunrise, and there was a contrail in the sky. A jet had passed over Toronto. And you'll see that Toronto is a kind of midway point on some big, long flights, not to land but to pass over, especially those coming in from Europe and fly over either Montreal or Toronto or both, and they're heading to, could be Chicago, could be Los Angeles, could be any number of different places. Anyway, you could see the contrail up in the sky. And then it was funny because it was then only a few minutes later that I

ended up seeing this story. According to new research, preventing most of the damaging impact of aircraft vapor trails on climate would cost less than a billion dollars a year, and the net value of the benefit could be more than a thousand times that. Abating even 1% of this cheaply could therefore represent a trillion-dollar economic opportunity. Contrails account for roughly 2% of global warming because they cause cirrus clouds to trap outgoing infrared radiation. The flights responsible are typically within a thousand meters of trajectories that are much less damaging to the atmosphere. So planes rooted to higher or lower altitudes would burn less than 0.1 percent more fuel. The warming effect of the extra emissions is likely to be more than offset

by the reduction in vapor trail formation. So, you know, a tweak of a thousand meters either way might make the difference. A thousand meters, you know, roughly 3,000 feet. As we've talked before, most of these flights tend to be at altitudes of between the high 20s and the high 30s, thousands of feet. And we're talking about moving them 3,000 or 3,500 feet. Well, it would be either 3,000 or 4,000. There are not too many flying in that middle zone there of 3,500 or what have you. You understand what I'm trying to say as I blurt it out.

As I said, it's potpourri, so the stuff's all over the place in terms of its relative importance. The Washington Post has a piece, more indelible than ink. Tattoo businesses are flourishing again. That's the headline. Tattoo businesses are in the midst of a revival after the coronavirus recession and pandemic-fueled closures. Bookings and I don't know how we've managed to live without being able to get tattooed.

Bookings and revenue are surging as Americans look for expressive and therapeutic outlets in a year marked by isolation and loss. The public display of tattoos, says the Washington Post, particularly by women and individuals from higher socioeconomic classes, has woven in and out of social acceptance amid shifting cultural and religious values. Stiff professional etiquette that once frowned upon employees or job candidates with visible tattoos has eased in many workplaces. Today, the U.S. tattoo industry comprises of 25,000 businesses and more than 30,000 artists. So the tattooing business is back at it again.

You know, a couple of weeks ago on Instagram, it was on Mother's Day, I posted a picture of my mom and I together. I guess it was 15 years ago. She passed away a couple of years after the picture was taken. But I had surprised her. I had gone home. She was living in London, Ontario, and I had gone to see her, and I had had one of those tattoos that you can basically wipe off, but they look very real, and it said, I love mom or something like that. It was a big heart with mom written across the heart.

And so we were sitting there having tea or what have you, and my mother, we came to Canada in the 1950s, but she still was very British in a lot of her kind of ways. And I said, oh, I got something to show you. And I took off my shirt. I said, this is just how much I love you, Mom. The look on her face was, what? A tattoo?

By God, a tattoo. It was very funny. Anyway. Anyway. The Atlantic has a headline about Kamala Harris. Has Kamala Harris learned about being vice president, and what has she learned? The article details what Vice President Harris has learned about the possibilities and limitations of the vice presidential role. She takes her unique place in history as the first female and the first black vice president. Harris is the

keynote speaker at Business Council in the United States, and that is today she's speaking. The article, this is what the article states. I'll just read directly from it. A couple of sentences here. Everyone expects Harris to run for the president one day, but her job requires her to avoid even the appearance of preparing for her political future. She's already made history and might make more of it. She's working with a man who, after his own time as vice president, is determined to be the boss, but might also become the first president in decades not to seek a second term. She feels the burden on her as the first woman and first president, or first person of color to

be vice president, but she's determined that her time in office will be about more than those facts. Well, she is a very determined person, and I'm sure that's exactly what she's thinking. And in terms of Joe Biden, you know, I wouldn't bet on this, you know, one-term presidency. Now, age is a factor, health is a factor, and obviously those will be determining factors. But once you've been in the president's chair, as we know from certain recent examples, it's awfully hard to give that up,

especially if you're popular, recent examples, it's awfully hard to give that up. Especially if you're popular as opposed to not being popular. COVID's next challenge. This is in the Wall Street Journal. And this is a big deal. This is a big deal for the world, for all of us. The challenge is the growing divide between rich and poor economies. COVID-19 is reopening a rift between economies in the world's richest and poorest nations, driven by growth rates that are moving firmly in opposite directions. The International

Monetary Fund, which calls the dynamic the Great Divergence, warns that many developing countries outside the advanced economies and China could languish for years. The World Bank estimates that up to 150 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty as a result of the COVID crunch. The pandemic has led 34 million people to the brink of famine, according to the World Food Program, a record 35% rise in a single year. This has become the inequality virus, said the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations. The diverging world we're hurtling towards is a catastrophe. Let me read that last part again. The diverging world between rich and poor, it's existed all our lives,

but it has multiplied considerably in the last year. The diverging world we're hurtling towards is a catastrophe. We've been warned. Okay. Here's another COVID story from ABC News. Australia's COVID-19 international border closure debate rages on as government pins the focus on jobs. So this happening down under in Australia. Senior government ministers are standing by the international border closures. This is a story close to our hearts, right?

Amid criticism from some backbenchers that Australia could soon become a hermit nation, signaling the importance of perception in how countries continue to move through COVID. Tens of thousands of Australians are still trying to get home and backlog is growing due to the weekly cap on arrivals. A number of those people are stranded in India and dozens were kicked off a repatriation flight bound for Darwin, Australia, last weekend after testing positive for coronavirus. The opposition leader in Australia is arguing that there were measures the government could address right now to get the border open sooner. We've got to get the vaccine rollout right. They're way, way, way behind us. You know, for all those who are complaining about the rollout in Canada,

take a look at Australia. Take a look at New Zealand. They're not focused on vaccine the same way we have been. And obviously, they did a very good job on limiting the number of cases they had in both those countries, helped by the fact they're island nations, you know, sort of out of the major pathways around the world. But nevertheless, they're way back on vaccines. The opposition leader says we've got to get the vaccine rolled out right and we've got to get quarantine right before we can open up the economy.

And we do need to open up the economy because the rest of the world is opening up right now. Well, many parts of the rest of the world, not all of us yet. Hey, at least you can golf in Australia. I don't think this will come as a surprise to anybody, but it feeds into that same narrative of the issue about rich and poor. The Wall Street Journal has a piece on the pandemic has hit less educated workers hardest. A new survey says.

The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic was concentrated among minorities, women, and workers who hadn't finished high school, speaking to the need of skilling for those hit hardest. Among adults with less than a high school diploma, 45% reported doing at least okay financially, down from 54% in 2019. Among those with a bachelor's degree or higher, the percentage rose to 89% from 88%. The U.S. Federal Treasury said in its annual survey of household economics and decision-making, which polls more than 11,000 individuals.

People who retained their jobs during the pandemic generally had stable or improving finances in 2020. That's interesting. Okay, moving on. A couple more then we'll take uh our little music break that's what i call it now uh the economist green and renewable assets are on a sharp rise as investors of all stripes are getting on board. The renewable, the green train. The economist says green assets are on a tear. The enthusiasm reflects two trends. For a start, many clean energy firms are now more viable. The prices of some technologies have fallen dramatically, making them competitive with fossil fuel firms. The green hype has also been fueled by financial fads.

Retail investing has surged, and hunters seem excited about new clean technologies. Among the 20 most popular companies on Robin Hood, that's an app for retail investors, among those 20 are Tesla and Plug Power, a firm that makes hydrogen fuel cells. Lots of clean energy firms. Feature on Wall Street Bets,

an online forum where investors share tips. That's interesting. Now, what's changed in a year a lot of things that's one of them now we have talked about this a number of times in the past couple of months gonna do this and then take our little music break. We've talked about the fear of inflation, right? And the impact it could have. And for those of us, you know, a lot of young people have never lived in an era of inflation. Many of us have. We remember the

70s and the early 80s when inflation roared, roared, which impacted everything. Settlements on salary disputes went way up, but so did inflation. And so did interest rates. And there were days in those early 80s where you couldn't get a mortgage for under 10, 12, 14, sometimes higher percent. Try to imagine that with your mortgage today at a couple of percentage points. Try multiplying that five or six times. So in the Hill, in the United States,

the paper, the periodical, the Hill, rising prices are putting increasing pressure on President Biden and the Federal Reserve to prevent inflation from derailing the recovery from the COVID recession. Here's the mixture. A surge of consumer demand unleashed by government stimulus, improving vaccinations, and fewer pandemic restrictions is putting a strain on global supply chains. manufacturers and other hard-hit industries are struggling to get back up and running after a year of lockdown measures causing supply shortages and raising costs all of that is pressure on the inflation we got to watch that you see that come up you see different people including the finance minister in this country, being

asked about, are you worried about inflation? Oh, we have things under control. Things may go up a little bit, but hey, when it starts going up, you've really got to be on top of So will inflation become the word of 2022? Now that we're hopefully pushing pandemic out of the vocabulary, at least at the front line of the vocabulary, what's going to be the word next year and how are we going to deal with it? Okay. Okay. I got a couple of lighter stories to tell you right after we listen to this. Peter Mansbridge back with you again here on the bridge,

the Thursday potpourri edition. Glad to have you with us. We've been sorting, running through some of the stories that didn't quite make it over the last little while. And here's a couple more. This is a classic first world problem story. Axios has it under the headline. Consumers and retailers alike are still trying to figure out what Americans will want to wear

as they head back out into the world after a year at home in sweatpants. Actually, now that the weather's turned, I don't wear sweatpants anymore. But I sure wore them for, well, since basically last September. But I'm back in shorts and a t-shirt now. And man, oh man, the first thing you realize when you put on those shorts and you just wear a T-shirt and you haven't been doing the appropriate amount of exercise in the last six or eight months is you better start exercising now.

Yesterday, I had to go over to the CBC building, which I haven't done in a year, at least a year. And it's like ghost town in there, as it is in many offices, right? People are working from home. So it's like eerie. It's like a bad movie. And the elevators are all screwed up. And, you know, you can only get on certain places, and you can't get off in certain places anyway.

At one point, to try and get to the area we're going to use to do some interviews, I had to ignore the elevators and use the stairs. And it was up and down, up and down, and those crossover floor things where some doors don't open and you're just kind of trapped in the stairwell. Anyway, by the time I got out of there, I was breathing real hard.

Further evidence, better get back in shape. That's the problem with not being able to play golf, because golf gives you all that walking. It's not about the game. It's about the walking. It's not about the game. It's about the walking. It's about staying in shape. Okay. Let's get back to what we're going to wear

because that's really important. The choices people make about, this is from Axios, the choices people make about their post-pandemic wardrobes will help define what, exactly, our new normal is. They'll indicate how both work and socializing have changed and will tell the story of how people express themselves in the aftermath of a year of massive transformation. Businesses have been extraordinarily cautious about their inventory and are now trying to pin down the post-pandemic market

at a time when they can't afford much experimentation. We just didn't know what was going to happen, Lisa Bob of Squash Blossom, a woman's clothing boutique in Georgia, told Axios. Was there going to be another wave? Were people going to be gathering for events or opting for smaller outings where they'd be more casually dressed? Now, these are really the concerns that we should have. Hey, listen, I know the clothing business. They're making big gambles every year as to what people are going to want to wear.

You know, they set the agenda themselves sometimes, you know, like in men's clothes. Well, will it be a three-button suit or a two-button suit this year? Well, it was three-button last year, so let's go two-button so people will buy new suits. For women, will skirts be a little shorter this year or a little longer?

Well, last year they were long. Let's make them shorter so people will buy. It's all cyclical, you know. Look at clothing for the last hundred years. You can actually watch the pattern change and how it swings back and forth. Now, I'm oversimplifying things, but that's the way it's always seemed to me.

You know, I'm in Toronto, but my heart is in Stratford, right? That's where I live. And what's the most famous thing about Stratford? No, it's not the festival. The most famous thing about Stratford. No, it's not the festival. The most famous thing about Stratford is Justin Bieber. He's known all over the world. He's the king of pop music.

And that's not just me saying that. Bloomberg News has done the research. Justin Bieber is the king of Instagram and therefore the king of pop music. Listen to these statistics for our favorite son of Stratford. His new album Justice is a huge hit onify where fans listen to his songs more than 500 million times last month the song peaches was so popular that the two artists joining on the track give on and daniel caesar were the second and fifth most listened to acts on Spotify last month as well. Bieber also sold more than 336,000 copies of the album in the United States, the fourth most of any act,

and generated more than 179 million views on YouTube, which was top 20. But nowhere is Bieber more popular than on Instagram, Facebook's photo-sharing app, which is used by a billion people every month. Bieber was the most popular musician on Instagram in April for the fifth time in six months. And that dominance explains why he's the top act in Bloomberg's Pop Star Power Rankings

for the second month in a row. I don't know Justin, even though he lives in, or he doesn't live there anymore, but he comes back a lot to our little city of Stratford. And he has family and friends there. And I've told you stories about that in the past. But, you know, he was your classic childhood pop music icon who everybody said, eh, when he's 14 or 15, he'll disappear. Well, Justin's in his 20s now, and he's bigger than he ever was. And he's the kind of guy when you look at him, and he's innovative. Is he a bit wild? Oh, yeah. We know that.

But he's not stupid. He's smart, and he knows how to adapt, and he knows how to adapt with his music. And he's doing just that and he's staying on top so good for justin you know i hope his life is um is good and that he's changed some of those teenage ways about him but i'll tell you you don't get to that position in a fluke you get to that position by working hard, and that's what Justin's done. Last story of today. We'll make you want to change your diet.

It's about a 111-year-old Australian. Associated Press writes about him. Australia's oldest ever man has included eating chicken brains among his secrets to living he turned 111 a day older than world war one veteran jack lockett was when he died in 2002 kruger told australian broadcasting in an interview at his nursing home in the rural Queensland state town of Roma, days before the milestone that a weekly poultry delicacy had contributed to his longevity. Chicken brains.

You know, chickens have a head. And in there, there's a brain. And they're delicious little things. There's only one little bite, but they're delicious. Kruger's 74-year-old son, Greg, credits his father's simple chicken brain eating to his long life. Nursing home manager, Melanie Calvert said Kruger, who's writing his autobiography, is 111. He's writing his autobiography.

That's going to be a long book. She says he's probably one of the sharpest brains here. His memory is amazing for a 111-year-old. The oldest ever verified Australian was Christina Cook, who died in 2002, age 114 years, 148 days. So the old chicken brain eating Kruger is going to have to last a couple more years yet to hold that record.

And as long as they can keep feeding him chicken brains, apparently, he'll do just that. There you go. The Thursday potpourri. And man, if there wasn't something in there for you, I don't know what I can do. Tomorrow, it's the weekend special.

Your chance to have a few things to say. There have been lots of letters again this week. Some of them I can even read on the air. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Don't be shy. Send along a note today, and I'll try and get to it tomorrow. Later today, the final edition of Good Talk with Chantelle Iber and Bruce Anderson

before we take a hiatus that may last a number of weeks, maybe a month or two, and then we'll be back at it as soon as it's clear to us when the election's going to take place. So good talk on this afternoon on SiriusXM Canada Talks, Channel 167, 5 p.m. Eastern Time. And you can access that free, but you've got to subscribe for the free edition by going to SiriusXM.ca slash Peter Mansbridge. You'll find it there. Alrighty.

That's it. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Big hockey game tonight. And you will be able to tell by my mood tomorrow just what happened in that game that's the bridge for this day thanks for listening so much and we'll talk to you again in 24 hours.