THE British population is well schooled in the belief that to save our NHS, doctors, nurses and hospitals need the sick to stand aside rather than seek medical help. As winter approaches, we are warned that a ‘twindemic’ of flu and Covid will provide a new onslaught against beleaguered health workers on top of waiting lists and backlogs too long to be calculated. The patience of patients shows how we should rein in our over-indulged expectations in other areas as well.
Hosepipe bans continue in most regions and if we can curb our unreasonable requirement for baths, showers, general cleanliness and drinking water we could maintain overall demand to levels which satisfied a smaller immediate post-war generation used to nothing different. Out of solidarity with the dedicated and hard-pressed water industry professionals, we must learn to shy away from the taps and grow accustomed to being perhaps a little gamey.
The idea of washing machines, dryers and dishwashers in every home would be fantastic to housewives of yesteryear, for whom a twin-tub machine was an aspiration and a Hoover Keymatic a pipedream. Should we not learn to make do in times of general hardship with reducing our dependence on the precious public resource which is water? By all means let’s bang our saucepans for the water companies but let’s never, never fill them with water.
What of the power consumption of those wasteful household gadgets we take for granted? Let’s save our National Grid and turn off the machines. Polar bears and the corals at the Great Barrier Reef are thriving but experts such as King Charles insist that renewables are the only way forward to save a dying planet, and it would be discourteous not to bow to his prejudices at this time.
Let us also admire with due humility the majesty of the brave motionless turbines in their eerie wind farms as they stand erect on our landscapes and point to the decarbonised heavens on which our fossil fuel-free future depends.
Archbishop Welby may have suggested that a renewed interdict of the church should not be contemplated, but responsible members of the inter-denominational communion will recognise that in today’s complex geopolitical landscape, with turmoil in public services, inflation, the war in Ukraine and, obviously, the aftermath of Brexit, God will be overwhelmed with myriad calls upon his attention without your inconsequential and importunate witterings. Show a little consideration, please, and stay away from places of worship wherever possible.
If you need a replacement for traditional religious veneration, Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, Modern Monetary Theory, Marxism, Stonewall, Greenpeace and countless other ideologies would welcome uncritical new adherents ready to espouse an alternative faith and, like all good converts, to wage war on the apostate.
