Tale guide

News update from the Old Country

News from the 'Old Country' October 2021

Looking back, I realised that I last posted news from the old country in September and at the time I thought I would only have to send you the next update at around Christmas.

But honestly, so much has happened in such a short time, that if we wait until December, it will all be old news and long gone.

You still want to know about the weather. (What is it with you South Africans?) Well, its just about as it was in September with, unlike what’s been happening or not happening on every other front, it remains the same, cloudy, wet and cold as usual, with offers of early snow.

The thing about the English is that news generally only lasts a few days and occasionally maybe a week, before it’s gone and forgotten, and we move on. The other thing is that the news here generally revolves around television personalities and television characters’ sex lives, not forgetting what’s up (or down) in the palace; occasionally interspersed with some stuff happening in the House of Commons or the Middle East.

We don’t hear much from the United States primarily because the English media really battles understanding what the old guy in the white house is trying say, let alone trying to do. And if the media battles with it, can you imagine how difficult it must be for Andy and Flo Capp?

Anyway, if most of the media is to be believed, some examples of dead news are, we haven’t heard anything more about Afghanistan since the Royal Airforce parked its aeroplanes back in the hanger.

The daily Covid briefing in the new multimillion-pound, American style, Press Briefing room at number 9 at which the Chief Medical Officer, the Prime Minister and some other fellow or chapess shared the daily number of infections and deaths with the nation and stressed the importance of obedience, is no more. It was abruptly brought to an end with not so much as a how-do-you-do, a while back.

Meantime, on the fourth page of the daily papers, it seems that Covid infections continue unabated at north of 30, 000 a day which kind of averages the same as twelve months back. But, reading between the lines, I think there could be a simple explanation for this dramatic, understated, change in direction.

To wit, shortly after the disappearance of the prime minister and his team from the public stage, our Chancellor of the Exchequer (Minister of Finance to those unfamiliar with our pomp and ceremony) announced that we’ve run out of money!

Well, that couldn’t really have been a surprise, given the billions that were spent on keeping the unemployed, half employed, providing additional support to the NHS to try and cope with the raging virus, and ensuring that a vaccine was developed, distributed and accumulated in reserve for the benefit of everyone in the country.

The result, of course, is that the Honourary Chancellor has deemed the virus panic over, canned the furlough subsistence, removed the additional universal credit allowance, and upped everyone’s tax, all of which he says, is required to recover the enormous outgoings of the past two years.

To compound the impact of the plan is the shortage of truck drivers, Gas and CO₂, the combination of which has pushed the cost of living through the ceiling.

As was expected, neither the unions nor the Labour party, nor most of the media seem to have worked out the necessity of bringing the handouts to an end, and they’ve been shouting and screaming like our unslaughtered turkeys at the apparent incompetence of the blue crowd ever since.

Undeterred by the criticism and abuse, Jolly Hocky Sticks and his team are suggesting that the historically entrenched pool of strong young men and women on the dole, need to get off their arses and find a job, of which there are thousands upon thousands as a direct result of throwing all the Europeans (not colour silly – people from the European continent!), off the island.

Of course, one of the pre-covid promises was that we will be ‘levelling up.’ i.e., bringing wealth and prosperity to the north so that the northern folk can be as empowered as those in the south. The financial constraints now imposed have kind of thrown that plan out the window.

But it is quite evident that all of this hullabaloo has taken the government’s eye off the ball, so to speak, because we have just discovered that we may have overlooked a rather important economically strategic risk (that’s been around for decades); namely that the entire island’s heat generation et al, is dependent on one primary supplier of gas in the form of public enemy number one, Russia, who is rumoured to have switched off the taps.

Moreover, we also have a massive shortage of heavy-duty vehicle drivers. The ones we had were posted home by Brexit; the ones we have, no longer like the terms of employment; the ones who wannabe, have to undergo an eighteen-month program to get a license and the outfit that issues the licenses, are largely on strike, working from home, and dealing with a 56,000-application backlog. The bottom line is miles of queues at the petrol pumps and empty shelves in the supermarkets as the nation goes straight into panic mode, buying up all the toilet rolls just like they did at the start of the pandemic!

But there is hope! It seems that there exists a massive reserve of natural shale gas lying underground near Blackpool and that by extracting it with high pressure water and chemicals, the UK can reduce its reliance on imported gas by 47 percent, not to mention all the jobs that would be created for those on the dole.

Apparently, back in 2014, the then energy minister, Matt Hancock (remember the chap who was filmed with his tongue down his assistant’s throat the other day) told the nation, “We need to extract the gas that's deep beneath the ground to improve our energy security and provide jobs and prosperity.”

Really! So, what happened china?

In the meantime, we are being warned of power shortages. I’m guessing they could take a lesson or two from Eskom on how to manage load shedding!

The Sudanese and Syrian refugees that were causing all sorts of commotion on the island by their channel crossing antics in rubber dinghies a few weeks ago, appear to have been forgotten and abandoned at sea, unless of course, they have a heavy-duty driving license, in which case, they could potentially crack it.

There is some really important good news on the horizon though. You may remember that with Brexit, England lost the right to export its sausages to Europe. News has it that after almost a year of intense negotiations on both sides of the channel, the EU is preparing to afford British sausages an exemption from its meat rules.

Wonderful to think that the average German family will be able to dig into bangers and mash again soon.

On a serious note, everyone has enormous respect and appreciation for the staff of the National Health Service. From where I’m sitting, while I support the motion, I can’t really attest to the service, one way or another, simply because I haven’t been able to actually see a doctor since we arrived, almost a year ago.

On the upside, my Googled medical knowledge has improved by leaps and bounds. Even the other day, I discovered that a regular dose of cannabis oil sorts out all kinds of ailments from sore knees to bouts of depression and has certainly helped me cope with the never-ending bombardment of senseless news.

On the odd occasion, I have been as high as a kite and even given karaoke a go in the local pub. Maybe even sign up for Britain’s got talent.

In amidst all of the panic, a lady called Emma Roberts from the village of Buckley in North Wales, recently penned this poem on a local Facebook group which caught my fancy:

I've plenty of fuel in me car.

I've plenty of fuel in me car,

I know I don't go very far,

But when rumours started that stocks had got low,

I jumped in me Mazda,

And sped down to Asda,

Just in case I had somewhere to go.

I took heed of the warning

Queued the whole morning,

Surrounded by others like me,

Who all work from home,

On a laptop or phone,

But may need to travel, you see?

When I'd filled up the tank,

I popped to the bank,

To check that me funds were sufficient,

Returned to the store,

For loo rolls and more,

After last time, I'd be more efficient.

I'm not being caught out,

No restrictions to flout,

I bought sixty-five bags of flour,

So, when there's no bread,

I'll make it instead,

And I've constructed a mighty bean tower.

Me freezer’s all stocked,

Me spending's been clocked,

But at least we'll be ok for food,

I'll not need to go out,

Of that, there's no doubt,

This time, I ain't being screwed.

I thought it all through,

It just wouldn't do,

'Cos if fuelling the tanks is no more,

No online shops, or Amazon drops,

No deliveries brought to me door.

So, me cupboards are crammed,

Me fridge freezer's rammed,

There's plenty of fuel in me car,

I'm alright Jack, I'm not gonna crack,

But you lot ain't gonna go far....

Until next time, “Bokke bo!”

Grateful thanks to Ann Phillips for her research support