Not being much of a political animal I steer clear of the circus that is British politics. However, a comment by the current PM, Boris Johnson, comparing Jeremy Corbyn with Stalin made me pause for thought.
Labour propose to introduce a 4 day working week in the next ten years. All good and well but are they imitatating one of the Soviet Dictator’s doctrines.
In 1929 Stalin had a calendar moment and eradicated Saturdays and Sundays from a normal week. And then there were five, as it were. Workers worked four days a week on different rotas and got one day off. That’s one way to boost productivity.
Labour aren’t saying but does this mean, in the near future we must proclaim…
Saturdays no more.
Sundays no more.
Boadicea's Chariot 
It doesn’t much matter. It seems the more you work, the more Korbyn & Co will decide how your wealth genertion will be ‘invested’ for the greater good. No input from the generator required.
OZ
Bolleaux. “generation…”
OZ
The weekend went a long time ago. It used to start at midday on Saturday after a morning’s work. Sport in the afternoon. A dinner party in the evening. Church on Sunday morning. Family lunch. Afternoon kip, followed by a walk. Quiet evening reading or playing games.
Now it is shop, shop, shop, shop, shop. Sport is played at goddamn awful hours of the day, or rather night. Meals are replaced by takeaways. Going to church is considered deviant behaviour. Exercise is limited to thumb action on a mobile phone. People have forgotten how to read proper books and nobody plays games anymore. All they do in the evenings is watch trashy, so-called reality TV that caters for the lowest common denominator and in so doing reduces everybody to that level. Dinner parties have been replaced by drug-fuelled binges.
One does not have to believe in God to be a Christian. But Christianity and family values have all but been destroyed in the UK. One does not have to look too far to find the instigators of that tragedy.
Meanwhile back in the land of ‘milk and money’*, the economy continues its descent. My savings and income have been reduced by 96%. What was US$1,000 only a couple of years ago, is now US$40 at the black market rate. Food is becoming increasingly scarce. There is almost no fuel while electricity comes on at night for 5 hours only. I have installed solar panels, batteries and inverter. Since there is no municipal water, people either buy water or have their own boreholes. I fall into the latter category. My borehole is powered by solar, or it was until yesterday afternoon when it burned out. On top of that, we need rain! The medical aid companies are broke. There are no medicines and government doctors are on strike; understandably so.
So, I am allowed to whinge.
What follows is some politically incorrect Rhodesian comedy that will mean nothing to 99.9% of the worlds population. But it still makes me laugh.
I am sorry to read of the trials and tribulations of life in Zimbabwe, Sipu. But if you care to call round one Sunday when our granddaughters are here, you will sit round the table to eat lunch with all of us and then get to play games such as dominos or Beetle and whichever one the girls pull out from the collection. I agree you have the right to whinge, but please don’t tar all of us in the UK with the same brush. If you can manage this coming Sunday, you will be able to join younger grandson’s first birthday party. We do quite a lot of family lunches.
Hi Sheona, I am glad to hear that you are a shining beacon of civilisation and probably not alone. That is good and I hope future generations of Peds and Sheonas continue the tradition. I would love to come to lunch on Sunday, but I am otherwise engaged, celebrating, if that is the right word, an 80th birthday. I am not sure that I would celebrate reaching such an age, though it is not that far off.
It is a long time since I played Beetle, or bridge for that matter. I do not have grandchildren of my own, but I gather that they can be a delight, provided that they go back in the box when the games are over.
On the bright side, my borehole pump has been repaired and is currently irrigating my garden, courtesy of Mr Sol.
I feel a bit like Peter Sellers.
Sipu: Wrex Tarr gave me a good laugh.
Hi Christopher. Chilaplapa, aka Kitchen Kaffir or Fanagalo in South Africa, was the language spoken by most white employers to their workers. Much to our shame, we never learned to speak Shona or Ndebele when we were growing up, one of the main reasons being that many workers came from Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique and thus spoke different languages. Chilapalapa, which means ‘here, there, there’ was the lingua franca, and contained bits of Swahili, Zulu and other languages. Back in the colonial days, the Shona did not really need to find work on farms as they had their own homesteads to tend.
Since Independence in 1980, Chilapalapa has fallen into disrepute because of its colonialist history. But there are still some of us who speak it, though mostly to other intransigent Rhodies.
Wrex Tarr did a series of stories like the one above, including one on James Bond, Macbeth and Jack and the Mealie Stalk. But as I said, the audience is limited and getting smaller.
Anyway, I am glad you enjoyed it and hope you managed to make some sense of it all.
Sipu: I understood most of it, well, at least the gist of most of it. I did a fair amount of research into colonial Africa, including post-World War Two Rhodesia and South Africa so a lot of the references made sense.
It’s all rather a pity. I tend to get on well with Africans of all hues. The past is not without is problems and failures, but there were triumphs and successes that are often underplayed, if not actively ignored. Even worse, those who, on balance, did more good than bad are maligned and those whose only real legacy is death, destruction and famine are somehow treated as heroes because some intellectual midgets with egos well out of proportion of any justifiability deem them to be worthy. Do you know where I can find more?