DRINK UP!

 

As we all stagger out of Lockdown, trying to dodge the Indian Covid variant and no doubt the next Great Plague too, our habits must adapt to our newly liberated world. The reopening of pubs and restaurants is good news generally, but my tastes in food and drink are a little antique and I am chary of abandoning social distancing quite yet.

    A return to conviviality

 I was fascinated by the recent story of the campaign to save Britain’s 40,000 pubs. It issued a clarion call for all adults to increase their pub spending this year and each consume;

124 pints of beer, or,

122 glasses of wine, or, if teetotal

976 packets of crisps, or

40 roast dinners.

Most of us will at least attempt to do their bounden duty to save our pubs and imbibe with enthusiasm!

The licensed trade campaign actually is not setting very high consumption bars for the habitual drinker (230 or so days left in 2021) – but “all adults” is another matter. I used to drink very regularly and in quantities I reckoned normal, but our alarmist and timid NHS would brand “excessive”. In my dotage, my capacity has tailed off, but I very rarely have an alcohol-free day. Sadly, I now mainly drink at home so I am no great gift to the licensed trade.

As I cautiously peer over the top of my Brexit trench, I consider what wines I should drink. I am reluctant to buy French (although they do produce excellent, if overpriced, stuff) and I can probably do without Italian and German gargles. I may have to make do with Chilean or Argentinian reds supplemented by Antipodean whites – English wine is potable but expensive. I cannot renounce my warming  Spanish sherry, mainstay of my long and idle afternoons.

As for food, I cherish Scotch beef and Welsh lamb, said to be endangered by a prospective free trade deal between the UK and Australia, a substantial meat producer. I guess there is an element of special pleading about this controversy and a deal will materially benefit both countries. All deals are to be welcomed, especially with our Commonwealth brothers, as we rebuild the contacts of Global Britain, no doubt in due course with our European and American cousins too.

Once we escape from Lockdown, how do we amuse ourselves? Large-scale spectator events, like football, cricket and rugby matches, are not attractive to me (much better viewed on the telly) though an English village cricket game, with tea and crumpets, would warm the cockles. I watch far too much afternoon TV and brain-rot is an (non-)occupational hazard. Worst of all, over three nights this week we have the Eurovision Song Contest, long ago seized by the gays and the glitterati. This year it comes from liberal Rotterdam and deadly dud songs, flamboyant flouncers and strobe lighting will invade every house in the land. OMG – popular culture!

                                    Fallen Angel Tix of Norway enchants Eurovision

We idly dream of foreign holidays but that road seems to be strewn with obstacles, quarantines, tests and red, amber and green lists – not to mention bureaucratic confusion, the threat of variants and different rules for different countries. The contradictory voices of “experts” assail us, hopelessly entwining science with politics. The British weather has been particularly unkind, pushing us to flee South and we yearn for the Mediterranean sun or spacious America. At present the human price is too high, what with profiteering airlines, dodgy local infection statistics and lengthy, sweaty arrival queues at Heathrow.

I optimistically hope that these matters will be sorted out in the next few months but our luck could easily be running thin this year. More realistically, we may have to settle for 2 bracing weeks in Skegness, a mystery bus tour to Wolverhampton and a plateful of tepid Cornish pasties!

 

SMD

20.05.21

Text Copyright© Sidney Donald 2021

THE BORIS PHENOMENON

 

 

The 6 May election bonanza, a rich stew of by-election, English local elections, mayoralty contests, Scottish and Welsh devolved parliamentary elections, produced feasts for some, thin gruel for others and fragrant mouthfuls for yet others. It allowed 3 of the 4 home countries to let off their political steam, Covid-suppressed since 2019, and it took updated temperatures of the UK’s changing mood and sentiment.

First, let there be no doubt that 6 May was a huge triumph for Boris Johnson and his Conservatives. His strategy of “levelling up” in the English regions, defying the opinion of metropolitan elites, has been vindicated.

                

                       Boris rubs elbows with the victor of Hartlepool

The 2019 general election had seen the Conservatives breach the Labour “red wall” in the North. These elections saw even more local authorities in the North turn blue – Co. Durham, Teesside, bastions of working-class England. Much of the Midlands and most of the South is steadily blue. Boris, folksy and outgoing, seems to cast an electoral magic attracting the most unlikely groups of voters. Astonishingly, Boris chalked up a landslide victory in depressed Hartlepool’s by-election, once one of Labour’s safest Westminster seats. There is precious little in Boris’ own background or behaviour to explain this enchantment, but it is real. Boris personally has become an immense electoral asset for the Conservative cause and, to the dismay of his many sneering detractors, his leadership position is probably safe for years. Well played, Boris!

Labour have had a very uncomfortable set of results. Sir Keir Starmer sits in the hottest of hot seats. Leader of the Opposition and of the Labour Party since April 2020, worthy lawyer Starmer has little charisma or political touch and his Party will take a long time to bury public memories of erstwhile Leader Jeremy Corbyn’s 5-year term and his extreme left-wing agendas. Most voters have turned their back on Labour and Starmer is drenched with Wokery, illiberalism and “progressive” claptrap, light-years away from the concerns of ordinary British people. Do not suppose the electorate will forget the shameful sight of Starmer with Angela Rayner “taking the knee” as they abase themselves at the behest of the BLM agitators, so alien to the UK world-view.

National Embarrassment: Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner “take the knee”

Although Labour is on the ropes, it is by no means down and out. It held Wales quite comfortably, a reward for Mark Drakeford’s confident management of the pandemic. It lost Council seats but its haul in the English mayoralty contests was impressive. Sadiq Khan held on to London, Andy Burnham won Greater Manchester and is maybe Starmer’s heir-apparent, Tracy Brabin was the new West Yorkshire mayor and Dan Norris seized West of England from the Tories. Conservatives Ben Houchin and Andy Street won in Teesside and West Midlands respectively, historically Labour territory. The Conservatives will fancy their chances of winning the by-election at Batley and Spen, vacated by Tracy Brabin and the old Yorkshire seat of Jo Cox MP murdered by a right-wing terrorist in 2016. If Labour loses, Starmer will surely be doomed.

Alas, in one part of the UK Boris’ magic does not work. The SNP swept to their 4^th successive Scottish Parliament victory and are sitting pretty for another 5 years.

Cocky Nicola Sturgeon

Needing 65 of the 130 seats for an overall majority, the SNP won 64, but there is an independence referendum majority as the 8 Greens support that Nationalist cause. The Conservatives held their vote with 31 seats and Labour won only 22 (down 2). The LibDems scraped 4 and ex-First Minister Alex Salmond’s new Alba Party got nowhere (thank goodness). Solid Douglas Ross, the new Tory leader, did not enthuse the masses and Labour’s leader, likeable Anas Sanwar, failed to galvanise his vote.

All the crowing in Scotland was done by my bête noire, Nicola Sturgeon. She is a very irritating person (we Scots call her “a wee nyaff”), cocksure and fanatical. Her party’s dominance is a grave threat to the Union and the prosperity of the UK. The SNP government has a mediocre record and depends heavily on UK subsidies. There has not been an informed debate on how Scotland would function if it left the Union. It is a classic clash between the head and the heart and Boris probably hopes that sentiment will change as he brings all the UK back to prosperity in the next few months. A solution requires state-craft of a high order or we may experience the agony of insurrection, suppression, East-West partition and generations of inter-communal enmity, a dark cloud indeed.  

This is a dystopian vision and all Britons of good- will must work together to avoid it becoming a reality.

 

SMD

11.05.21

Text Copyright© Sidney Donald 2021