Just when you think you're finding your way out of the woods, there's that damned Bitumen Bubble again.

This time, it's crude oil prices that are declining -- or, as they say in journalese, the official language of the Internet, "plummeting."

This is handy for conservatives once they're elected and want to cut the crap out of public services they promised to protect, but not so good in the lead-up to an election during the phase when conservative governments of all stripes go into a tax-and-spend-liberal-spree mode and shower dollars on electors.

It's one thing to let a couple of pieces of ill-considered and unpopular legislation die on the order paper.

Alberta Premier Jim Prentice did that yesterday with Bills 9 and 10, two bad ideas cooked up by the brainiacs in Alison Redford's inner circle to make the anti-public-service and financial services lobbies happy by attacking the retirement security of modestly paid working people in the name of sustainability.

Likewise, it's one thing to toss a bit of mindless but expensive symbolism over the side, which Prentice also did later yesterday when he mercifully pulled the plug on the Dave Hancock Government's brain-dead $15-million-plus notion of eliminating the "Wild Rose Country" slogan on Alberta automotive licence plates because of, well… you know who.

The threat of open warfare between Alberta's government and its largest union over the contract for unionized civil servants ended yesterday, after the ruling Progressive Conservative dynasty, nervously awaiting the coming of latest supposed saviour, appears to have sued for peace.

Pretty obviously, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees won, although, just as clearly, AUPE didn't achieve this victory entirely on its own.

What a difference a few days can make! One leaves the province with one premier in power, figuratively bellowing threats at the civil service, and returns less than a week later to find another one, whispering sweet nothings in the same public employees' ears!

Well, that's not quite fair. Whomever Alison Redford was bellowing threats at last week, it wasn't likely the Alberta civil service any more. In her mind, I suspect, she reckoned she'd already sorted them out. By the end of last week, the former premier had bigger fish to fry.