It’s been a very long hot summer. The UK has declared a drought. This ‘Green and Pleasant Land’ is now Brown and kind of cruddy. There’s a water shortage, so there’s a hosepipe ban. There’s always a water shortage, and hosepipe bans are a regular summer thing, but nothing ever got too dire. But this year, it hasn’t rained that much.
There’s never truly been a water shortage in Britain. The Privately Owned Water Companies like to say it’s down to wasteful consumers watering their lawns and washing their cars. It was actually down to outdated pipes, burst water mains and chronic underinvestment in the network by the money hungry corporations. In the end, we were always saved by the reliably dismal British weather. But this year, it hasn’t rained enough.
So it’s hot, and we can’t use the garden sprinkler or fill the kiddie pool. That’s fine, we’re on a small island. Miles of Coastline. We can go to the beach. Except that more than 50 beaches are either closed or have ‘Do Not Swim’ advisories due to the Privately Owned Water Companies pumping raw sewage out next to them.
Surely the Government wouldn’t allow this? Oh, but they did. A bill was passed allowing sewage discharge due to storms overwhelming the system, however, the bill was amended, removing a requirement for sewage companies to “take all reasonable steps to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged from storm overflows” and to “demonstrate improvements in the sewerage systems”.
But surely the government can do something about it now? Well, that would require us to have a functioning government.
They’re describing it as a Zombie Government. Technically, the body of government is still functioning, but the brain has long since checked out. When Boris Johnson was forced to resign, instead of appointing an interim Prime Minister, he was allowed to stay on until the new Conservative leader/Prime Minister selected in September.
He’s had two holidays since then. #GetBackToWorkYouFatPonce was recently trending on twitter.
Of course, even when he is in the office, he refuses to do anything. Not about the water companies, not about the summer of strikes and most importantly, not about the Cost of Living Crisis, which is swiftly becoming the Cost Of Living Catastrophe. He says he doesn’t want to interfere with whatever plans the new PM might have, and anyway, households won’t really be hit until the end of the year, so it’s the next guy’s problem.
Translated from politician into English, that reads as ‘I don’t have any ideas on how to fix the problems I created with Brexit and the mishandling of the economy; and besides you people were mean to me and are making me leave my plush (government owned) homes; also, I have money and will make more on the lecture circuit then I did as PM, so the cost of living isn’t an issue for me. Also, things won’t get really bad until the end of the year, so I won’t be blamed anyway.’
The problem with that notion is that things are getting bad faster than anyone anticipated. Food prices are already shooting up week on week. My grocery bill, as a single woman living alone, has increased by up to £15 per week, and that’s after cutting out the luxuries like alcohol and prepared foods. I can’t even imagine how families are coping, although I hear more and more stories of parents skipping meals so their kids can eat. Energy costs are already going up, as I’m spending about a third more per month. Things are bad now, but they will get worse.
It’s like there’s a stampede of Tortoises coming. We can see them, the ground is shaking. We have time to get out of the way, but if we do nothing, we will get absolutely crushed.
I really feel like we need someone in charge.
But Boris is deflecting it to the next PM. And what do they have to say about the situation?
Liz Truss says that UK workers “Need more graft….It’s a mindset and attitude thing.” Basically, if we want to be a richer country, the British people have to work harder. Nothing to do with stagnant wages, underinvestment in infrastructure and countless tax breaks and loopholes for the uber-wealthy; no, it’s down to the people being lazy. Her plans to tackle the Cost Of Living crisis are focussed on tax breaks (which disproportionately benefit the wealthy) rather than “Hand outs” which might actually help the hardest hit.
Rishi Sunak seems a little more pro-active about addressing the crisis, offering a cut to VAT on energy bills, a windfall tax on energy companies, more support payments to low income families. These are all good, but he’s only doing it on a small scale. His plans will, at best, nibble around the edges of the problem, not take a big bite.
The Problem with putting rich libertarians in charge is that A) they don’t believe government should interfere in… well, much of anything and B) they have money, so aren’t affected much by cost of living increases, and if something isn’t happening to them, it isn’t happening at all.
Zombie is an apt description for our government. The brain is gone, and now the rest is starting to rot. The extremities are already falling off, as poorer families, pensioners, people already at the edge of getting by are cut off from any help. How long before the whole body falls apart?
Or the Zombie’s head is destroyed by lots of people with baseball bats? It works in the movies.
So That Happened 