18 June 2022.
The UK is becoming odder by the day. It is almost like living in a world whose constitution and life principles are guided by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and 1984 (1949).
In Scotland, a 66-year-old male pensioner went to give blood. A veteran of 125 donations, he was well versed in the procedure and process. This time, however, prior to donation, he was asked to complete a question and answer form. Q12. Are you pregnant, or have you been in the last 6 months? He refused to answer on the grounds that it didn’t apply to him.
The clinic refused to take his blood as he wouldn’t confirm or deny that he was pregnant. He walked away, not giving blood, never to return. The spokesperson for the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNTBC) said, “Whilst pregnancy is only a relevant question to those whose biological sex or sex assigned at birth is female, sex assigned at birth is not always visually clear to staff.” But the donation form identifies him as Mr.
The SNTBC is short of stock and is trying to recruit 16,000 new donors.
Next on our list is our old friend Ryanair. Apparently, they have been suffering from passengers holding forged South African passports. They decided that all passengers presenting with a South African passport must fill in a pre-departure form of about 15 questions – in Afrikaans. Afrikaans is the third language of South Africa with Xhosa and Zulu having more speakers than Afrikaans. Unsurprisingly they have withdrawn this directive. To defend Ryanair, if an airline allows someone without valid documentation to board an aircraft in the UK, they are fined £2,000. But why Afrikaans?
In the east of England, a local council is proposing wage increases of 24% for certain staff members. The reason? They can’t find people to fill job shortages. What the downstream impact on services and rates will be hasn’t been thought through. This will have a major impact in a situation where the cost of living is rising and inflation is forecast to reach 12% by year-end. I have my suspicions about this and suspect it will be closer to 14%. A few council employees benefit and the struggling poor will be even harder hit.
The demand on foodbanks is rising steadily but here is the paradox: as demand increases, donations and supply are decreasing. Most donations to foodbanks are from lower-income people who drop in a can here and there in the supermarket collection points. They are being hit by the increased cost of living more than middle-income earners, so their ability to donate has diminished.
There has been an outbreak of bee rustling in Cornwall. Five hives of 80,000 bees each have been stolen from a beekeeper. The size and weight of the hives mean that a lifting device and transport were needed to carry out the rustling. Shortly after the theft, the bees started to return home and the beekeeper used spare hives to rehouse them. The police regard this as a major clue as bees would only return if they were still within a radius of about a mile. This narrows the search area and an arrest is imminent.
Finally, in this little snippet of the crazy world that the UK is becoming, is the drive for more representation of women in parliament until there is close to parity between the sexes (genders?). Yes, you’ve guessed it! It is bogged down now by attempts to define what a woman is, and the main parties are trying to quickly kick this into the long grass whilst the public is distracted by more pressing issues – like survival and cost of living rises.
I am looking at returning to New Zealand later in the year and am having difficulty understanding what my country is now called.
I see on official documents that it is called Aotearoa New Zealand. If they must use Aotearoa why not call the country New Zealand Aotearoa? I suspect it is so that it is easier to gradually drop the New Zealand part and the country slips into being called Aotearoa. When John Key tried to change the flag at least he had the decency to consult the electorate.
We could take this a step further and change the name of Auckland. I would suggest calling it Savagetown in honour of the great Labour prime minister. This could be an appropriate name but for other social reasons!
It has just been pointed out to me that it wouldn’t be appropriate as even though his socialist credentials are impeccable, he was Australian.
Finally, my little corner of the world had a visit from a group of locals to welcome in summer.
