Early signal that Canada’s Q4 GDP will be disappointing?

October vehicle sales were down 0.3%, not a huge amount but it still amounts to a continuation of a trend that began emerging in September. Canada’s economy has stalled – in fact aside for Quebec, vehicle sales were off in every province with Alberta the winner at -8%.

One question not addressed here, is the change in VAT tax in certain provinces, which may have accelerated vehicle purchase in the summer of 2010 to take advantage of the lower tax level.

Although the figures are not seasonally adjusted, in 2007, 2008 and 2009, vehicle sales actually rose in the closing months of the year (it makes sense as dealers try to unload “previous years’ model”). Anyway, September was flat and October was down slightly (against trend).

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable. A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins. Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce. The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter. Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality. Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs). Second: 20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality. The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process

Spray painting Taylor Swift G650 aircraft (updated)

First, a bit of paint will not harm anyone. These climate activities are going to learn two things in the next few days: (1) Trespassing at an airport is a felony almost anywhere in the world. That means criminal prosecution. (2) removing paint from an aircraft is expensive. So these climate activists are about to find out the reach of the British criminal system and it will not be pleasant, the UK has very strict laws about that, I would be surprised if cleaning the aircraft of all the paint will cost less than $100,000. I am sure that when they planned (premeditation) this little show they had a very valid logic to doing this. Tonight, they are probably realizing the depth of their troubles. I understand that in the UK it's a minimum one-year jail sentence. Also, good luck travelling with a criminal trespass charge against you. I am relatively certain that the airline industry will slap them with no-fly status. Update; It seems that what they threw on the airc

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment. It was the right decision at the time. The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape. It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm. So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced. Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki

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