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.
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