Waffle House raises worker pay after strikes and pressure from labor organizers

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I just ran into the short-haired girl I was crazy in love with back in high school. She wore all black clothes, kind of looked like a guy, but used dark lipstick and dyed her hair different weird colours. She always looked like a scary, powerful woman and she loved to tease me, because I was shy back then.

She was standing there in the sun, and I liked her new look — blue-black hair, dressed in a black suit, hot-looking and powerful as ever! But after we started talking, she suggested we go catch up over a drink and lunch.

After eating and drinking a lot on my tab, she was a bit tipsy and confessed she already has a boyfriend she quite likes, because he doesn’t bow down to her.

To get even, I told her I had a girlfriend, “but that could change.” Then I paid the tab. She finally liked something about me!

School violence deplorable

Re: Student violence surges, MGEU says (Oct. 17)

It’s heartbreaking to read and hear stories of school staff being physically and emotionally abused. Students are increasingly coming to the classroom with very complex needs. Staff hours lost to this abuse are surely increasing.

Money and resources are always scarce when it comes to funding education. Stories of para-professionals having to accommodate and work with a plethora of classroom needs are not uncommon.

Winnipeg-based Buhler Versatile Inc. announced on Monday the completion of its acquisition of German construction machinery manufacturer Atlas Group.

The transaction was first announced in June and officially closed on Oct. 1, following the satisfaction of the required closing conditions. Financial terms of the deal will remain confidential, the company said in a news release. As part of the acquisition, more than 200 jobs at Atlas will be retained.

“The completion of this acquisition marks an important milestone for Buhler Versatile and our long-term growth strategy,” Zafer Ozbalaban, president of Buhler Versatile, said in the release. “Atlas brings an established European brand, valuable engineering expertise and a strong manufacturing heritage. Together, we have an opportunity to expand our capabilities, strengthen our international presence and build a more diversified equipment manufacturing business.”

The addition of Atlas broadens Buhler Versatile’s equipment portfolio beyond its agricultural equipment brand, expanding into construction and material handling equipment. It also strengthens the company’s European manufacturing presence, with Atlas continuing operations at its established locations, including Ganderkesee, Delmenhorst and Vechta in Germany, and Bradford, England.

Democracy is on the ropes everywhere in the world as politics have become extreme, divisive, virulent — just plain toxic.

It would seem like a reasonable, visceral decision not to participate, to not be contaminated or compromised by association. However, like education, where more education is the cure to a lack, a deficit in democratic politics calls for more, not less, political engagement.

In his 1919 poem The Second Coming, W. B. Yeats wrote, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;” as a description of social and political catastrophe and the failure of usual safeguards in the aftermath of the First World War. He ends the first stanza with: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”

I believe it’s an apt description of what’s going on today — not new but frightening, nonetheless.