How quickly things can change.
The Archdruid noted last night that the French are striking - and the knock-on effects this will have on the Beaker Folk as they wander about in the dark, freezing cold. The French strikers are not just burning sheep and blocking British ferries as they try to bring Stella Artois and cheap Burgundy across the Channel - no, they are closing down power stations and impacting on the nuclear-powered electricity to which the French have become accustomed. No doubt, if they could succeed where King Cnut failed, they would have stopped in the tide in the mighty Rance. Although one has to guess that, if the Marseilles pastis manufactories were to close, the French government could fall in an hour.
This is all so different to the summer, when a grateful United Kingdom doubled its use of French electricity - a glut of which was being produced.
But if the cheap French electricity is not to be found, then the prices in Britain will, eventually, go up. Ask not for whom the meter goes round, as the poet said - it charges thee.
Maybe if the French continue to revolt we will have to revert to alternative sources - not the useless ones like the wind turbines at Petsoe, as they stand there - presumably, for you can't see Petsoe from here - still in the windless environment of a High Pressure area. Maybe we will have to revert to the old days of the real Beaker Folk, as the smoke from 1,000 wood fires fills the air above Husborne Crawley, blocking out the full moon. Standing here in my wood, with the hide of an elephant and the cold-proofing of a breeze block, I feel for you.
I have no problem with not having french electricity - I have always suspected that the French are trying to do by stealth, what they failed to do in over a 1000 years of warfare, undermine the English/Scottish/Welsh/Irish sense of humour.
ReplyDeleteBy buying up our national assets such as EDF energy - they fired a warning shot across our bows, which the late, lamented, labour government actually caught and used, rather than fighting them off by sending a gun boat.
We no have the opportunity to re-instate our national interest (after all - we are all in this together) and return to coal mines, pit ponies, oil lamps and canaries in cages. Coal blackened men, emerging from the pits into dazzling light (sorry, mediocre light) and rushing home for their bath in a tin tub, in front of a roaring coal fire. With their wife in pinny and hair scarf (over the curlers) waiting with a full breakfast of hovis and werfers originals.
Oh, the great days of empire - how we loved them, and look back in nostalgia.