Post-Covid rants

Walking with the dogs

Yesterday, being bright and dry, we went for a good walk with the dogs through Thetford Forest before returning for Sunday lunch at the Plough. We enjoyed their Nut Roast so much last week we repeated the experience - though following Lucy's generosity in remotely treating us, this time without telling people we were there.

I feel insulted by proxy. Nobody wants my old car. Even in a time of used-car shortage following big restrictions and delays in the new car market, my beautiful blue delight lies rusting in a used car lot at Stradishall.  As related in a former blog, we traded the Jaguar in for a Tiguan when I came out of hospital in November, over two months ago. I thought then the trade-in price was a fair offer, so leapt at it without quibbling, even though I could not drive the Tiguan at that time. It looks like I was right to do so. 

My old car lies languishing

Hitting the news this week is the exorbitant rise in energy prices. Our own electricity bill used to be charged quarterly at about £350 per quarter. Now they have revised it to a monthly bill, running at approximately £250 per month. The energy companies are treating us like vagrants huddled in doorways, suggesting ludicrous strategies such as buying extra jumpers, doing star jumps, or cuddling one's pets for warmth. This all comes down to a lack of strategy by our enfeebled government. Boris was so determined to come out of COP26 well he has sacrificed the basic requirement of any civilisation on the altar of green wokery. We do not huddle under animal skins in cave mouths; we do not collect wood from the forest to burn in our hearths; we are a supposedly advanced civilisation, in which food, shelter and warmth should be guaranteed for all. Yet the headlines are filled with stories of people shivering in order to feed themselves or care for their children. In the name of a green agenda, we are disadvantaging young families now so they will possibly avoid climate change in 50 years' time. It is madness. We should be working towards independence of energy, under a national energy program, concerned with present day necessity, not some theoretical doomsday in the indefinite future, with increasing use of nuclear, gas, oil and coal in a balanced and proportionate way. 

While in a ranting mood, I might add I do not blame Boris for attending an outdoor party with wine and nibbles. What I do blame him and the whole governmental machine for is introducing such vicious, anti-sensical rules in the first place. The far bigger error was to bar people from visiting their sick or dying relatives, or attending funerals, or closing schools. No evidence was ever produced to support the ludicrous claims for total isolation, and certainly none for not meeting outdoors or being allowed to go for country walks. For that, they should be punished and driven out of office. What a shame we can only attack them for having drinks together, rather than for the reason it was banned.