How are we all?
I've got a bad feeling about this post...it could turn into a rant...
Later today, I'll be having a visit from the man from Care & Repair. This is a service run by our local council and it's aimed at older people who pile up wee jobs in the house and might struggle to find tradesmen to do them. It also saves a few folk getting ripped off by rogue tradesmen who work alongside the traditional excellent tradesmen we're used to in Scotland.
A man vetted by the council is coming here to replace light bulbs in the kitchen and bathroom, put in a new oven light and replace the washer on the kitchen tap. I'll be able to suss out a couple of other wee jobs I'm not sure about and, all being well, I'll book him for another time. Of course, I could learn to do these things myself with a Youtube video to guide me, but honestly, if you knew me, you wouldn't even let me try. I could ask relatives, but they're all working or child-minding.
The other day someone said: "That's a great service. Imagine the council doing that for free". It's not free, pal. I pay council tax and income tax (despite being retired for 12 years now). We're all paying for it.
And that's something we seem to forget these days: the council, like the Scottish and Westminster governments, don't actually have any money. WE have the money. You know, US. The people who work, produce, keep the country ticking over.
So when I heard the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer tell businesses and homeowners the government would stand by those who are going to be in serious trouble over the coronavirus with loans 'at decent rates', well, I spat in my porridge.
Although I'm living in a wee pensioner's flat, I'm not inside some sort of bubble. I watch Euronews and rt (the latter with suspicion) every day. I read the papers. There I hear the announcements by other countries about how they are supporting small businesses and homeowners and renters, and they're not offering loans.They're giving people their own tax money back so they can live.
Mortgage payments, local taxes, utility bills - across Europe, these are all suspended, with governments acting as guarantors for working people and the owners of small businesses. If people have to stay at home because they or their family are sick, they don't have to worry about how they will feed them.
Except here in the UK where, for some reason, we seem to have the most moronic, ignorant bunch of politicians, backed up by civil servants and Bank of England economists who are either as stupid as the politicians or haven't realised the shit we're in and are maybe still beavering away trying to sort out brexit, while a lot of us ask 'Why bother?' Let's deal with survival.
While the rest of Europe seems to have managed to changed direction politically and is trying to work out how we get through this, the people in charge in London seem to be caught like rabbits in the headlights. This is a time for imaginative, resourceful thinkers and I don't see them in London. You may not like Merkel and Macron but, by jings, they're clever and they have clever people working for them.
The UK media don't help: they are fixated on London. If they do venture out into 'the provinces' or - god forbid - Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland - all we get are couthy wee stories about communities rallying round to help each other. Or, if it's Scotland, bad news stories about disasters in the Scottish NHS which suit the Tory agenda. There's no attempt to analyse what is happening or how it could be managed better. Mostly it's the Dunkirk spirit or scare-mongering (leading to - o the horror - panic-buying in the supermarkets) and nothing else. When this is over, there will be a reckoning and quite a few newspapers, TV stations and journalists will be facing their own armageddon.
The most annoying picture in the past couple of weeks has been billionaire industrialists (living in exile, obvs) telling us how they want their businesses to be 'rescued' in the current catastrophe. If it's up to the rest of us, Branson, you'll be at the end of the queue. We'll make sure everybody else is ok before we worry about you and your shareholders. You know, the people who have had so many fat years in the UK. Time they had a few lean years now.
It's also time for google, facebook and the rest to face up to reality and start paying their taxes. And the banks? Maybe it's time to welcome them to the reality we've all had to face since the banks collapsed out of sheer greed in 2008. Time for them to pay back. Of course, the behaviour of the UK's supermarkets has been atrocious. I don't expect anything else. Do you?
As for brexit, I don't give a rat's arse. I'm seeing the UK's incompetence being bailed out by the EU's ability to get its act together - for example, including the UK in contracts for hospital ventilators. Given the state of England's NHS, these will literally be a lifesaver.
If Scotland's voters don't go for independence now, it'll be our fault - the Yes people, I mean. It might not happen till next year, but more people are politicised now. They can see how incompetent Boris Johnson (the new Churchill) is; how he has lied and continues to lie about what his government was doing to help; how London-based the UK government is; how the Westminster government is failing to support people; and, worst of all, how the death toll from the coronavirus is rising so fast because the Tories kept on putting off the actions needed to save us all.
I hope we all come through this okay, but for the sake of the younger generation, I hope we examine what we've done in this crisis and promise it will never happen again. And get rid of the Tories once and for all.
Later today, I'll be having a visit from the man from Care & Repair. This is a service run by our local council and it's aimed at older people who pile up wee jobs in the house and might struggle to find tradesmen to do them. It also saves a few folk getting ripped off by rogue tradesmen who work alongside the traditional excellent tradesmen we're used to in Scotland.
A man vetted by the council is coming here to replace light bulbs in the kitchen and bathroom, put in a new oven light and replace the washer on the kitchen tap. I'll be able to suss out a couple of other wee jobs I'm not sure about and, all being well, I'll book him for another time. Of course, I could learn to do these things myself with a Youtube video to guide me, but honestly, if you knew me, you wouldn't even let me try. I could ask relatives, but they're all working or child-minding.
The other day someone said: "That's a great service. Imagine the council doing that for free". It's not free, pal. I pay council tax and income tax (despite being retired for 12 years now). We're all paying for it.
And that's something we seem to forget these days: the council, like the Scottish and Westminster governments, don't actually have any money. WE have the money. You know, US. The people who work, produce, keep the country ticking over.
So when I heard the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer tell businesses and homeowners the government would stand by those who are going to be in serious trouble over the coronavirus with loans 'at decent rates', well, I spat in my porridge.
Although I'm living in a wee pensioner's flat, I'm not inside some sort of bubble. I watch Euronews and rt (the latter with suspicion) every day. I read the papers. There I hear the announcements by other countries about how they are supporting small businesses and homeowners and renters, and they're not offering loans.They're giving people their own tax money back so they can live.
Mortgage payments, local taxes, utility bills - across Europe, these are all suspended, with governments acting as guarantors for working people and the owners of small businesses. If people have to stay at home because they or their family are sick, they don't have to worry about how they will feed them.
Except here in the UK where, for some reason, we seem to have the most moronic, ignorant bunch of politicians, backed up by civil servants and Bank of England economists who are either as stupid as the politicians or haven't realised the shit we're in and are maybe still beavering away trying to sort out brexit, while a lot of us ask 'Why bother?' Let's deal with survival.
While the rest of Europe seems to have managed to changed direction politically and is trying to work out how we get through this, the people in charge in London seem to be caught like rabbits in the headlights. This is a time for imaginative, resourceful thinkers and I don't see them in London. You may not like Merkel and Macron but, by jings, they're clever and they have clever people working for them.
The UK media don't help: they are fixated on London. If they do venture out into 'the provinces' or - god forbid - Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland - all we get are couthy wee stories about communities rallying round to help each other. Or, if it's Scotland, bad news stories about disasters in the Scottish NHS which suit the Tory agenda. There's no attempt to analyse what is happening or how it could be managed better. Mostly it's the Dunkirk spirit or scare-mongering (leading to - o the horror - panic-buying in the supermarkets) and nothing else. When this is over, there will be a reckoning and quite a few newspapers, TV stations and journalists will be facing their own armageddon.
The most annoying picture in the past couple of weeks has been billionaire industrialists (living in exile, obvs) telling us how they want their businesses to be 'rescued' in the current catastrophe. If it's up to the rest of us, Branson, you'll be at the end of the queue. We'll make sure everybody else is ok before we worry about you and your shareholders. You know, the people who have had so many fat years in the UK. Time they had a few lean years now.
It's also time for google, facebook and the rest to face up to reality and start paying their taxes. And the banks? Maybe it's time to welcome them to the reality we've all had to face since the banks collapsed out of sheer greed in 2008. Time for them to pay back. Of course, the behaviour of the UK's supermarkets has been atrocious. I don't expect anything else. Do you?
As for brexit, I don't give a rat's arse. I'm seeing the UK's incompetence being bailed out by the EU's ability to get its act together - for example, including the UK in contracts for hospital ventilators. Given the state of England's NHS, these will literally be a lifesaver.
If Scotland's voters don't go for independence now, it'll be our fault - the Yes people, I mean. It might not happen till next year, but more people are politicised now. They can see how incompetent Boris Johnson (the new Churchill) is; how he has lied and continues to lie about what his government was doing to help; how London-based the UK government is; how the Westminster government is failing to support people; and, worst of all, how the death toll from the coronavirus is rising so fast because the Tories kept on putting off the actions needed to save us all.
I hope we all come through this okay, but for the sake of the younger generation, I hope we examine what we've done in this crisis and promise it will never happen again. And get rid of the Tories once and for all.
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