I can't say there will be
much structure to this blog. You are not about to be taken on a careful, well structured journey from A to B to C. Instead it's going to be a bunch of random observations of a pandemic drenched
world where the lunatics are running the asylum into the ground.
Every day brings forth
facts which a couple of years ago would have been utterly
inconceivable. Unthinkable.
I guess it is what
Britain 2021 has become.
Unthinkable. All of it. The stuff on
the news. The stuff in day to day life.
I was chatting with Kerr
the other day. He owns the Little Bakery in Dumfries and he supplies us
with two and a half thousand of his award winning pies a month at a price which is
quite frankly ridiculous.
Anyway.
He was talking bills.
Right now, as 2021 draws its final few breaths, he is paying 14p a unit
for his electricity. Then 1 January 2022 will land on the mat. And
does it ever.
The brave new year will
see Kerr's electric costs go up from 14p per unit all the way to 33p
per unit.
Just like that. Over
night.
And he uses plenty
electric. It's a factory when all is said and done. His flour
supplier has been round to slap a non negotiable 20% rise on the
table. His insurance provider is wanting a 100% increase.
It's not so much death by
a thousand cuts as death by a thousand machete slashes.
And of course there are
only two outcomes. Kerr can keep his prices where they are and slowly
but surely fade away into bankruptcy. Of he can pass on all the
increases to you and me.
This isn't just a hint of
inflation. This is a complete nightmare. Right there in black and
white. Across the board.
And yet even at these ever
rising prices, ordering in fifty tins of tinned spaghetti generally
doesn't go well. Some days we are lucky to receive half a dozen. And
this has somehow become normal.
Where will it all end up
is the $64,000 question.
Christ knows.
Lets take a ride up the
A76 to the village of Thornhill. Is it a village? I'm not entirely
sure. Population of 2000 or thereabouts with a Co-op and a high
school. Does this make it a small town?
Maybe.
Whatever. For those of you
who don't know Thornhill, it is a postcard kind of a place. The high
street is still home to well appointed expensive shops for well appointed customers who park up their gleaming 4x4's cheek by jowl.
The venerable red stone buildings sit in front of a glorious backdrop
of Scottish hills. Add in a seasonal sprinkling of snow, and the place
positively gleams.
Our food parcels have been
available for collection from the small library for many years. Once
upon a time, a busy month would see three parcels picked up. A quiet month would mean a big fat zero. From time to time, I would get a
call asking me to pick up parcels containing items which had slipped
by their sell by date.
Well that was then.
I think it is fair to say
things have changed somewhat.
The pandemic closed the
library for book business but Dumfries and Galloway Council gave us a
set of keys and allowed us to use the space for emergency food. I am
truly chuffed to be able to report this arrangement is now permanent.
We are open once a week.
On a Sunday. From 10 am to Noon. A brilliant team of volunteers runs
the show from top to bottom. I turn up once a week with a van load of
top up food to supplement what the local community donates. Which is
lots by the way.
All of which brings me to
last Sunday morning.
Our volunteers provided
emergency food for 55 people.
In two hours.
In Thornhill.
In an affluent
village/town of 2000 souls.
Yeah.
I know.
If this is a canary in the
coal mine, we are about to be absolutely swamped when the biting cold
reality of January arrives like a bunch of Russian mercenaries.
In balaclavas.
Happily other unexpected
2021 things are rather more encouraging. We are now nearly two years
into the era of Covid and still the local community never ceases to
be completely amazing. Every day sees food and cash donations pour
in. Every week I turn up at Morrisons to pack my van to bursting
point. I would like nothing more than to ramble on for page after
page thanking all the people to are helping us to do what we do.
But that would be really,
really boring.
And you would stop
reading.
So the thank you will have
to be scatter gun and general, but completely heartfelt all the same.
But I think three cases do warrant a spotlight.
Let's face it, power
companies are not exactly flavour of the month right now. We see them
as giant, faceless corporations who are draining our bank accounts
and wrecking the climate.
As in bad guys. Wall to
wall bad guys.
Well I am going to buck
the trend here and give a shout out for three local purveyors of power who
aren't such bad guys after all.
In truth, nobody in their
right mind would ever call the Wood Fuel Co-Op in Dumfries bad
guys. They sell a wide variety of eco friendly, re-cycled products
designed to make open fires and wood burners environmentally
acceptable. You know the kind of thing. You see these kinds of
products stacked high in petrol stations where they are sold at double
the prices the guys at the Wood Fuel Co-Op charge.
Their name of course gives
the game away.
They are a Co-Op and here
is how things work. When you pitch up, they will ask if you would like
to become a member and thereby be eligible for a discount on the fuel
you purchase. You don't have to say yes, but the member's discount
makes it kind of hard to say no.
So. How much?
Well it's as much or as
little as you like.
And where does the money
go?
Well, that would be to us, actually. To First Base. To the local food bank.
And every month members
are encouraged to give a donation when they stop by for their fuel.
And every month the
proceeds are sent our way via our JustGiving page.
£710 this month.
How good is that?
If Heineken did green fuel
businesses........
Next.
An e mail. Not asked for.
Not solicited. Not begging lettered.
An email from out of the
clear blue of cyber space.
It was from E'on. From
their Steven's Croft Biomass power station in Lockerbie. The company
had made funds available for the staff to give to charity and the
staff had chosen First Base.
Could I furnish our bank
details?
I could. I did. And £995
duly landed in our account,
Next.
Another email. Not asked
for. Not solicited. Not begging lettered.
This time from Scottish
Power.
Every year the company
provides the staff with a fund for Christmas parties. By the way,
this particular email landed before Christmas parties became quite
such a thing as they are as I pen these words.
Well this year the staff
got their collective heads together and decided the money would
better going to hard stretched front line charities rather than cakes
and ale. They decided to allow staff from across all regions vote to
identify their chosen charity.
The email was happy to
inform me that hundreds and hundreds of staff working in the South
West of Scotland had voted for First Base.
Which meant some cash would
be headed our way once I filled in a couple of boxes and provided our
bank details.
So could I call to talk
things through?
Of course I could. And I
did and within a minute or so I damn nearly fell off my chair.
£10,000.
Seriously. Ten thousand
bloody pounds.
I was completely
speechless.
This is the kind of thing
which counts double for us. Treble. When I fill in an application and
get a 'yes' letter in response, it is good. Obviously.
But this is different.
Hundreds of people have voted for First Base on the back of what we
have been trying to do for the last twenty years.
I guess you can imagine
how it makes us feel.
Humbled. Honoured.
Motivated to keep on doing what we do.
It is worth remembering how behind the smug corporate logos lie millions of real living and breathing human
beings. People power. The optimistic Ying to the scary corporate
Yang.
I heard the CEO of some
massive global investment fund interviewed a while ago. His outfit
was managing tens of billions of pension fund cash and they were
announcing to the world that from here on in the money was heading
into renewables. Of course he made a long term economic case and
warned of stranded money lost in the untapped oil wells of the
future.
But then he went personal.
He talked of his teenage kids. And he explained how he really didn't
want his teenage kids to hate his guts.
He explained how this was one of the main reasons why his fund was sticking two fingers up to the likes
of Trump and Bolsonaro and piling tens of billions into a better
future for our grand kids.
People power, right?
Long may it last.
THE FIRST BASE ONLINE FUNDRAISING PAGE