Hecatomb. But who is sacrificing the most?

Hello, Lovelies. 

        With the summer well and truly over, and with the festive holidays just around the corner, it’s time to pack away all our warm weather clothes and pull out the winter jumpers and jackets. The nights are drawing in, and there is most definitely a chill in the air. The nights are crisp. We can now all pretend to be dragons as we watch the warm air leave our bodies. The past 18 months have been hard. We have all sacrificed a great deal. But with gas prices going up, and the shelves are once again empty of certain items, can we continue to make these great and expensive sacrifices? Do we heat or eat? All the while that we are being told that we are building back better. And what is £20 a week anyway? Half a bottle of wine for some, whereas a weeks’ worth of food for many. Should we all sing the morale building song, The sun will come out tomorrow? Or have we had enough? And the price of our collective sacrifices is enough?           

               Being a vegetarian used to be a total pain in the neck. My poor mother had to soak the unappealing Beanfeast, before trying to mold it into some resemblance of a burger of sausage, before carefully placing it into the oven and praying that when it emerged it would at least be edible. I love my mother for having to do all that for me. And I do have very fond memories or eating the mushy, crumbly, always over cooked sausages. Nowadays it is so much easier. Food in general is so much easier to buy or make. There is an endless supply of meat and fish from around the world. All manner of veggies and fruit. Everything that we could ever possibly want or need. Well. That was until we democratically voted to leave the largest single market. Now lorry drivers are a hot commodity. We still have food in our shops, but day by day the gaps in the stock grows larger and larger. But its not our essential items that are disappearing. Fizzy water is scarce for which is a necessity for me. Pasta once again is becoming harder to get. And then this week our clown in charge has told us that the fresh fruit and veg is rotting in the fields, as there is no one there to spend hours a day, for a very low wage, doing the back-breaking work. Funny that! 

           And then, to add insult to injury, Bojo said that 120,000 pigs will be slaughtered and then burnt in a hecatomb to Brexit. Hold up, hold up. What the actual! There is a lack of abattoir workers due to a necessary transition for Britain to emerge from Brexit. And what the heck is a hecatomb? It is an ancient Greek or Roman great public sacrifice. Right. Got ya. So why are we told that we, and the pigs, are the price of this hecatomb. And the larger question we need to ask ourselves is why those in charge of Brexit didn’t have any idea that this was going to happen. They knew that this was coming, but they failed to do anything about it. That we all must pay the higher costs for food and fuel. All in this together, remember? Well, from my point of view, there most definitely is an ever-growing gap between those who have and us that don’t. 

           I know that my missing my fizzy water is a first world problem, but it’s all I drink that is not coffee. I know that I can make the choice of food and fuel. But for so many there isn’t a choice. And when they are facing the worst winter in recent memory, being told in the worst plumy voice that this is all part of the Brexit hecatomb is worse than a slap in the face. 

          I ask myself is there something I can do? I give to many charities, help at a food bank, and try not to waste money or our precious natural resources, but it isn’t enough. We must hold those in power to account. They are the cause of this. Not us. We were lied to again and again. How could we have made the right informed choices when they were lying and lining their already stuffed pockets. 

      We are not and never must be the hecatomb to the Tory party.