Hi Everyone
I think that it is a good idea that everyone should remind themselves occasionally that the money our government is spending is our money that we have paid them over the years in taxes. Just this week the Post Office scandal revealed that £100M of our money was spent by the Post Office in 2015 to try to cover up the fact that they knew about the failures in their computer system that had ruined the lives of so many Post Office owners. In 2008 we had the banking crash, then along came Covid which could not be entirely anticipated but which cost billions in mistakes even though some good decisions were made. Now we have a well over budget new aircraft carrier with no fighter planes to put on it, a National Health Service that needs billions more to work properly, near bankrupt local authorities, crumbling school buildings, and teachers facing ever more badly behaved students, just to name a few of our ongoing problems. There seem to me to be two common denominators here, firstly that most of the people responsible have walked away from their highly paid jobs to spend the rest of their lives in comfortable retirement rather than doing community service or, better still, prison. Secondly, the government's finances are run just the same as our personal finances except on a much bigger scale. If we had mismanaged our finances as badly as they have, most of us would be homeless but at least we could then apply for help to survive by getting some of our own money back.
If you are a longtime Rubbish reader you will know that the shop next to the Fruit, Vegetable, Flower, Game and Lolly shop was Betty's fresh fish shop. Betty was what would now be described as a character. She wore a man's trilby hat and jacket, had a husband Fred who did not recognise the word work, and a strange assistant called Oliver who lived in and who brought the fish from the railway station on a railway platform truck at least twice a week. Betty also had a loud voice and a complete repertoire of swear words. I am reporting all this Rubbish as Good Friday was Betty's day of the year as the tradition was to eat fish on Good Friday when Betty and Oliver worked hard to satisfy all the customers while Fred slept soundly in the back of his car. I think he spent more time sleeping in his car than driving it. The problem was that Betty's fish shop was very small with only about four customers standing inside so on Easter Friday morning there was always a queue which ran past Betty's shop window and up to and beyond, shock horror, the Fruit, Veg............ shop door and as the pavement between the shop door and the road was narrow it seriously impeded eager customers from seeking out the Senior Partner. The result was that while Betty had her best day of the year the Senior Partner had one of her worst. I say one of the worst as, according to her, nearly every day was the worst. I never saw the Junior Partner asleep in the back of his car although I think that there were many occasions when he would like to have liked to have joined Fred in peaceful slumber.
You might think that this is a piece of useless information but 16 million miles of bus routes have been axed in England since 2010. The number 18 bus runs from the centre of our city to the market town of Leek, just about 10 miles away. Before Covid, the service ran every twenty minutes - now it's once an hour. A daily traveler reported that the bus is constantly running late, is overcrowded, and costs him £7 a day compared to £3-50 if he lived in Birmingham. There is no train link between the towns as the line was closed in the 1970s but the line still exists. For the daily commuter, the last bus leaves the city at
6-30 in the evening, hardly an ideal service for a modern economy. If you have a car the journey takes about 25 minutes or up to two hours by bus. Going backward and forward between our city centre and Leek sounds more like more backward than forward, and is obviously a story that can be told many times across the country.
Just a Thought :
Money isn't everything but it keeps the kids in touch.
The Senior Partner's purse was like an onion. Every time she opened it, it made her cry.
My friend hopped on a bus the other day. The driver told him to sit down like everyone else.
Hope my Eggs-cellent jokes crack you up.
Brian