Crappy days are here again
Time for an Apocalypsewatch roundup after further evidence that a new dark age is upon us drops into our lap.
Hot on the heels on Gordon Brown’s announcement that soup is good food and that eventually we’ll get used to the taste of powdered egg, we hear that quaint British crime of the austerity era of nicking lead off the church roof is back. That along with pilfering manhole covers and railway signal covers. Makes you wonder why people bother going to university when they could be a (albeit muscular and daring) Steptoe and Son.
Next up we find that inarticulacy is heriditary with the news that up to 40,000 children starting school cannot speak properly. Now, I’m not sure I see a need to panic here. The state of the British job market being what it is, do the people really need spoken English? Did serfs need to be erudite?
Our servile caste, doomed to shelf stacking and soul-crushing menial drudgery, could probably get by with a series of grunts, couldn’t they? With a bit of pointing thrown in, perhaps. How articulate do you have to be to serve a city broker his dinner? Sure, you need decent English to work in a call centre but it seems residents of Mumbai do a better job of it.
When one of the country’s most popular television programmes consists entirely of people trying to guess what’s in a series of boxes, surely it’s time to admit that the age of the ordinary British citizen needing to be able to communicate complex ideas is well and truly over.
Posted on July 8th, 2008 at 11:19 am
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Was it Private Eye that ran a story a few weeks ago about the theft of lead from a church roof? If memory serves, the parishioners had grown tired of the ongoing theft during repairs to the church (paid for out of donations) by thieves using the scaffolding. These good Christians set up a neighbourhood watch. When yet another bunch of youths were seen ripping the roof off one evening, local plod was called.
Plod climbed the scaffold to speak to the thieves. They said they had only climbed onto the church roof to look at the view; although sections of roof were pulled up ready to be robbed, plod couldn’t assertain whether THESE youths were the suspects, and as they were not wearing stripy outfits, masks and carrying bags emblazoned with SWAG, he sent them on their way.
The locals, whose church roof was disappearing nightly were rightfully upset. The next night more roof disappeared. Plod wasn’t called.
This incident occurred in the former mining village of Treeton near Rotherham.
At least on this occassion they were stopped before they get away with their booty. Unfortunately, this has not been the case with our Telephone Exchange which has not only lost the lead off its roof the cheeky sods have “tagged” a wall at roof level.
Still, at least it shows:
a) That Thatcherite entrepeunership is alive and kicking.
and
b) We have at least one thriving industry in the UK other then bombing the crap out of other peoples land to get hold of their resources.
Over here in Amsterdam if it ain’t nailed down it always gets nicked. At least the city is less violent than it used to be. In the age of YouTube it is only to be expected that literacy will decline.