Review of Wicked Little Letters.
To a far greater degree than the Republican Party, Britain’s governing class believes that the real spirit of the nation can be found in its countryside. The national stage is not located in big cities like London, but in the shires and market towns, where conflicts social and political can play out in miniature form. Virtually every one of the post-2016 tranche of Brexit novels – most notably Jonathan Coe’s Middle England (2018) and Bourneville (2022) – is set in small-town Britain. Political coverage in Britain is also bucolic in its assumptions. When a Westminster politician heads out into the shires, during an election or in the aftermath of a flood, it is thought that they will there confront what is an essentially perennial Englishness – an Englishness that, it is implied, in some way has their measure. It is in places like these that the temperature of the nation is taken.
But unlike Middlemarch, which depicts England on the eve of the Reform Bill through the goings-on in a small Midlands town, modern portrayals of these places show us a settled idyll. In the fiction and the programming of the 2010s, depictions of these towns and villages are an exercise in pointed whimsy. Forelock-tugging ploughmen; local eccentrics; and a clergy and aristocracy that still enjoy something like social deference – these are always the essential ingredients. This is meant above all to be comfortable terrain, an England that has always existed and will exist forever.
In these depictions, the kick to the narrative is always provided by some outside force that threatens to disturb this idyll: a dodgy developer, an obnoxious interloper from out of town or a kulturkampf issue that divides loyalties. The task for our heroes, usually a local worthy aided by an enlisted posse of eccentrics, is to restore the old equilibrium. This is the basic narrative device behind the cosy mystery stories of Richard Osman and Richard Coles, where acts of gruesome murder are counterposed against church bake sales and colourful bunting.
The indispensable woman of this genre is Olivia Coleman. Her characters are known for being models of traditional provincial respectability. The people she portrays, we are told, are repositories of a musn’t-grumble English decency and decorum – which is held to be as eternal as the shires and market towns themselves.
But what if such a person suddenly screamed “Fuck”? Her decorous and polite characters often do. The device is the same: a beau ideal that has, briefly, been thrown off kilter.
But with Wicked Little Letters, which premiered on Friday, this carefully constructed set-piece has at last tipped in chaos to the floor. The film is not so much a picking apart of the genre as a keying up of each of its characteristics to the absolute maximum. The resulting atmosphere is one of fever and lunacy. The setting – the seaside town of Littlehampton in the aftermath of World War One – is not a collection of quaint eccentrics, but a traditional freakshow. The residents of Littlehampton are sub-sentient, swivel-eyed and illiterate. They burp, fart, shit, brawl and fuck one another with a glazed, dead-eyed mania. Figures of authority, like the local police chief and magistrates, are not merely self-important but simple lunatics: bug-eyed, shrieking, liable to burst at any moment.
Wicked Little Letters is about Edith Swan (Olivia Coleman), an overripe version of the usual Coleman character. Edith is a pious, though vain and foolish woman who lives with her parents in Littlehampton, and has started to receive foul poison-pen letters from an anonymous source. The police get involved, and the finger of suspicion quickly falls on their neighbor Rose Goody (Jessie Buckley), a single mother tearaway who swears, fights, drinks and co-habits with her boyfriend.
Rose is arrested and put on trial for libel. We soon learn, however, that Edith has herself been writing the letters, which she keeps in a portfolio hidden in her bedroom wall. Edith unconsciously hates her overbearing parents, especially her gruesome tyrant of a father (Timothy Spall), and writes these letters as a way to express her suppressed rage.
Olivia Coleman saying “Fuck” has been the go-to comedic device of English cinema for close to a decade. Here it is tested to destruction. It is essentially the only joke in Wicked Little Letters: Coleman’s character is a prim and proper English lady who’s been driven over the edge, and so her horrible letters are exercises in cutesy viciousness (Rose later makes fun of Edith for overusing the term ‘foxy’ in her missives).
The assumption here is that this gag really is enough to carry an entire film on its own. It is not. This is a complacent piece of work, and it shows the exhaustion of the genre.
Edith is eventually found out, cackling maniacally as the paddy wagon takes her away. But look a little past this general bedlam and you’ll find the real heart of Wicked Little Letters. This is the local policewoman Gladys, who is the one who cracks the case and exonerates Rose. Gladys is a thoroughly Mayite figure, a dutiful, unsmiling, and conscientious social guardian. Gladys is one of the few sane people in Littlehampton, and certainly the only responsible adult. In the 2020s, cosy English fiction makes greater and greater recourse to grim figures of authority like Gladys. These are the only people – it is implied – who can maintain the old idyll in the face of challenges to social order, which is always ascribed to a kind of reefer madness. Littlehampton is mad; England is mad, and it is up to people like Gladys to corral these loopy bat-eared freaks into some semblance of civilised order. More than anything else, Wicked Little Letters is a depiction of the social theory of Mayism, of Starmerism. It’s an aesthetic of exhaustion that breaks down into absurdism; but it’s an absurdism that, tellingly, still never thinks to leave the English countryside.
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‘GB News shatters climate consensus.’
‘Ofcom cannot allow these statements to go unchallenged and uninvestigated.’
Caroline Lucas, Green M.P.
Socialist Fascism in action.
It’s all falling apart like the sandcastle it always was. The tide of truth is washing away all the nonsense so expect them to ramp up the rhetoric and design even more heinous plans to shut you down, shut us up, restrict, confine, and control you but just say ‘no’. Not the way we want to go. Get on yer bike, Lucas, and do that thing which involves procreating but do it ‘off’.
You’ve hit the nail sock on the head!
Jeez, ”My non-binary 7 year old..” You are the one with the mental illness, deluded lady, there’s nothing wrong with your kid!
https://twitter.com/BillboardChris/status/1662205013207429121
Clearly bonkers and also perhaps an actress. Gaslighting normal people as terrorists!
Good grief Mogs! What is this world we live in? if its full “mothers” like that!
“Non-binary” is a complete nonsense. If you say “I am non-binary” to you, I am saying what I am NOT. Who gives a monkeys what someone is not? I am interested in what someone is, FFS
The excellent Pierre Kory dropping the truth bombs and wearing that anti-vax badge with pride ( not the rainbow kind ) in this mini-clip. ”These vaccines saved no-one!”
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1662102658415575041
Thanks Mogs always follow your links. Not sure why you’ve got the down tick Miss Spring must be up early with her verify team, keeping an eye on us conspiracy theory idiots.
Lol, thanks Jabba.
Red numbers are ever-present under my posts so I became desensitised to them long ago and stopped noticing. Now if I don’t have any red I find something’s amiss. A bit like when you leave the house and realise you forgot to put your undercrackers on. It just doesn’t feel the same. 
Yep..I agree, I don’t even notice them..I remember the ‘old days’ when people like Concrete used to get 30 or 40 daily! Now that was down ticking LOL!
Pretty sure I could top that if I insult Jeremy Clarkson.
Many thanks for the link Mogs.
“The BBC’s transparency initiative to counter misinformation and restore public trust will do no such thing”
Are those the real reasons for this initiative? Or is it designed to shut down opposition to positions dear to the BBC’s agenda? For “public trust” read “some people do not believe everything we say unquestioningly”.
I got banned from commenting on the BBC for daring to suggest that people die from other causes and not just covid. The BBC is arrogant and dangerous. How Marianna Spring at 27 thinks she’s arbiter of mis,dis,malinformation is hilarious and her lack of curiosity as an investigative journalist is staggering.
The BBC is a major problem for the UK. I expect Spring is pretty typical of modern “journalists”. I get the impression that like so many “professions” most of the people who join are frustrated politicians or activists whose real ambitions are not to excel at their “profession” but to “make the world a better place” – and of course there will be some who simply see which way the wind is blowing and pursue career advancement.
The first ” x/activists” I can remember were Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins who were actor/activists. At the time, I think Hollywood was bemused. No one was an activist. No one preached at the Oscars. Then like all fashions, it grew and grew. Humans are like this. At first, one person in the whole world wears jeans with a ripped knee. After a few years, it becomes a mass market thing where everyone wears ripped jeans. Humans are pretty daft.
We just ignore it. Radio 5 + 5X for sport, R3 when it’s not completely dumbed down. Junked the TB way back. May listen to Today now and again, in order to remind me why I don’t.
Works every time.
Just ignore them. They’re talking to themselves.
Oh I do ignore them (I am gradually withdrawing from mainstream life) but sadly others don’t.
Try ukcolumnnews. It´s great.
“How Marianna Spring at 27 thinks she’s… an investigative journalist is staggering.”
An insult to even the intelligent stupid although they would probably swallow her guff.
It seems to me she basically went to a private girls’ school that funnels kids into young writer schemes thus enabling them to have a CV of relevant work experience even before they’ve gone to university. They can then knock on important doors and land ridiculous jobs way before their time.
Even though she was interested in “the news” from a very young age, I don’t believe a 27 year old has enough data points for the pattern recognition that comes with living a long life. Bear in mind during the covid fiasco she was only 24/25.
“Risks and uncertainties surrounding Covid vaccines demand urgent investigation”
Yer, fat chance!
Oh, and by the way, downticking is not debate! Come on sceptic! Stop this nonsense! Downtick all you like but back it up with a view! Or no chance of downticking!
Sorry Toby but I for one am fed up with this Shyte , or stick your subscription, I’m out of here!
You need to stop taking the bait Dinger. They’ll just do it all the more if they know they’ll get a rise out of you. “Don’t feed the trolls.”
And always remember, it’s a case of ‘Hamster penises all the way down’ with all the lurkers. Scroteless, pitiful saddos who lack purpose, hobbies and friends. You wanna let someone like that win?
Fair enough, but we do possess the tech to stop this nonsense! It’s supposed to be debate! Letting anyone down tick with no debate is playing into their hands! I’m sure just stop oil would love this “cancel with no repercussions” attitude
Seconded. I seem to remember we have had this discussion more than once Mogs over… how many years is it now
Dinger, just ignore the downtickers. Take a red one as a win just as much as an uptick.
And as Mogs states:
Don’t feed the trolls.”
Hey Mogs & Dings, I appear to have joined you despite only sporadic comment – I even got a downtick for my mini tribute to the late great Tina Turner! It amuses me no end that we are sitting inside someone’s effed up head for no other reason than wishing to comment and debate current issues. That, or someone just does a job lot – because DS, of course.
“It amuses me no end that we are sitting inside someone’s effed up head for no other reason than wishing to comment and debate current issues.”
Exactly, and so eloquently put.
Heehee yes bang on! The worst thing you can do is take it personally. Dinger needs to learn that. He need just look around and see he’s in good company.
I do understand that Mogs, but these people need to joint in, not tick and run! I genuinely want to know their point of view!
I think in this climate of bank accounts being cancelled, some people might not want to have Daily Sceptic on their bank statement. It gave me pause.
BTW your gnome article from yesterday was class. I am now enlightened as to all things Gnome-like, including how they are not a symbol of white supremacy!
Cheers – but I’m still not having any in my garden. Is that gnomist. d’you think?!
They might be women, in which case hamster clitorises/clitorae?
They’re just your resident ignorant trolls. Too cowardly to actually engage in some robust adult discussions but quite comfortable to express their dissatisfaction through a little, harmless downtick. I mean it’s laughable. It’s the sort of mentality that infests Just Stop Oil or XR – they are unable to debate, they just screech and cover things in orange powder or, in this case, downtick! Anyway, don’t put your travelling shoes on just yet, Dings, we need you here.
Seconded.
A list of organizations that Pfizer donated money to, so small wonder that the death jabs were pushed so zealously, even mandated in many places, across the U.S. The donations don’t appear to be huge sums of money, some very small, but this list ( all 28 pages in fact ) is only for the first half of 2021 so possibly some are recurring donations. That would mean a lot of vested interest in encouraging jab uptake and a lot of loyalty to Pfizer. Look at all the paediatricians and children’s organizations. Toxic tentacles of Big Pharma everywhere. Pure bribery.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23787007-pfizer-2021-report
I have had a quick look at the Pfizzer donations Mogs and this list would appear to be donations in the USA only.
Yes it’d be interesting to see where the poisonous tentacles infiltrate in the UK or EU. The data will be out there but I haven’t actively gone in search of it.
Meryl Nass also pointed out in her latest substack:
‘… I earlier saw where in 2020 Pfizer paid off the American College Health Association directly, along with the CDC, to study the issue of vaccine uptake. Those were bigger grants. The American College Health Association got a few million, if I remember correctly.’
“The virus panic drums are beating once again, but is anyone listening?”
No
Nope. Just hear birdsong. They won’t get away with it next time even if they try. They’ve lost, they know it and they’re desperate so watch out for more laughable comedy moments as the Keystone Kops of the WHO, UN, WEF et al fall over themselves as their truck veers off the tarmac and heads into the abyss…
Governments all over the EU are obeying the EU, saying “we need to give the WHO more power”!
So it´s bird flu next, or is it fish flu?
But if UK approves the WHO Treaty and the IHR regs. it´ll be enforced with ferocity.
“A huge oversupply of clean, hydroelectric power means Finnish suppliers are almost giving it away”
It’s alright for some! My last bill for 2 months was €900! Give me some finish lecky!
And we could build a thorium factory in Dounreay and ship a mini-power station to any town that wanted one.
Rolls-Royce have had them on the drawing board for years.
But Greenies oppose it . . .
“Australian Government agency censors breastfeeding tweets”
Men trying to breastfeed = child abuse!
An anecdote:
My elder sister so jealous after I was born that I was being fed by Mum & that sister was not the centre of attention, climbed onto my father’s lap, lifted up his shirt & latched on. Dad said that it hurt!
Otherwise I agree entirely with your post Dings
BB
“The great disinformation panic” ?
Dont panic, dont Panic mr Manwaring?
Just use your head! That’s why I didn’t have the clot shot and never will!
“HS2 manager’s discrimination claim dismissed”
Cancel hs2 before we pour anymore public money into “Fat cat” railway!
Good grief is this antediluvian dinosaur project still tearing up the countryside for the unicorn fantasy train to nowhere? What next I wonder? A smart cycle path from your home to Tescos, keeping you safe with a camera on every street lamp, irradiating you with 5G as you virtuously pedal along to get your gene-edited Brussel sprouts? What about filling in the bloody potholes, you useless local councils or doing some useful like providing more land to grow food on before we all start boiling our belts next winter!
I here leather boots are rather tasty too!, so long as they haven’t been worn too much!
”“Eco-fanatics kidnap the King’s lambs and attack Chelsea Flower Show” – Public sympathy is wilting as animal rights stunts are escalating, according to MailOnline.””
What public sympathy is that, and what planet are they living on?
https://www.cureus.com/articles/149410-estimation-of-excess-mortality-in-germany-during-2020-2022#!/
aussie17
@_aussie17
Oh-oh! Peer reviewed article on German excess death just published !
2020, deaths was close to expected.
2021, 2-standard deviations
2022, 4-standard deviations
These findings indicate that SOMETHING MUST HAVE HAPPENED IN SPRING 2021 that led to a SUDDEN and SUSTAINED INCREASE in MORTALITY!
It’s a mystery!!
From the same article….
Chief Nerd
@TheChiefNerd
“A similar pattern was observed for the number of stillbirths, which was similar to the previous years until March 2021, after which also a sudden and sustained increase was observed.”
Given the temporal relationship between the increase in vaccinations and excess mortality, it seems surprising that a respective safety signal has not been detected in the pharmacovigilance……
I clicked on the ‘cureus’ link and the page disappears immediately. I found this instead. Is it the same paper? I note the researchers were looking at excess deaths in the under 80s
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362777743_Excess_mortality_in_Germany_2020-2022
I don’t have a problem with the link..so I have got another one for you to try..
https://www.cureus.com/articles/149410-estimation-of-excess-mortality-in-germany-during-2020-2022#!/
It could be the same paper which has now been updated and gone through peer-review….as it’s new I would expect some of the clever usual suspects to pick over it in the next few days, and maybe then we will know a bit more…..
Thanks. I tried the link with a different browser and it worked.
“Veganism facing wilting demand”…
I don’t imagine for a minute that it will stop them trying to force this crap on us..but it gives me hope that if we all refuse to buy into it..we can make a difference..I think ‘bug eating’..will go exactly the same way…’Just Say No!’
Can’t overlook the article about Bill Gates, his young lover and her good friend… Russian superspy Anna Chapman in today’s Mail!!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12128919/Bill-Gatess-younger-Russian-lover-links-notorious-Kremlin-spy-Anna-Chapman
All’s quiet and seemingly normal on the surface but it is quite clear that we are descending into chaos. We don’t notice it here in the shires but now and again, I hear people in shops expressing frustration. In a health food shop the other day, a woman was venting about the disappearing banks in the town and access to cash. There used to be 5 banks, now there are two. That’s three less ATMs. Older people like cash and get confused with online banking and all the passwords and verification steps you need to take before doing something simple. If you phone up your bank, you’re put on hold to listen to the Carpenters or some such 70s music (which I happen to like but not enough to listen to the same song for an hour or so), and are told that due to heavy demand or higher than normal demand – it’s always the same whatever the service, whatever the need. Customer service is completely the opposite of what it is meant to be. Everything is around the wrong way. Slowly the town’s shops are closing. I had a drink with an ex-councillor last night and he told me that the landlords don’t care about an empty high street, they want oodles of cash for rents but don’t need the dosh so they let them sit empty. This is a tourist town. The fact that landlords don’t care means a slight tightening. Younger people are more likely to shop online or use the omnipotent bazar that is Amazon. It’s a slow process this decline. Slow enough that it doesn’t shock but it is a decline…..which is why we’re taking matters in our own hands…
We want a vibrant community that nourishes and supports us, that inspires us and gives us hope. So we’ve initiated a town meeting that will look at people’s concerns and will start to knit the fabric of our community together…we hope. We can but try but watching as the town and county councils do nothing is not an option. I’l let you know how we get on…town meeting is set for 20th June.
Well done Aethelred and I wish you the best of luck
The little local shopping precinct near me sums that up – I’ve lived in this area on and off since I was born in the 1970s (my folks have stayed in the same house for 46 years.) The precinct is one of those vaguely 1950s-style, Swedish-design square blocks with flats on the first and second floors and with an open corner with grassy area at the top right. When I was a child in the early 1980s, the precinct had a Key Market, separate Key Market cheese shop, a betting shop, fish and chip takeaway, baker’s, hardware shop, barber’s, flower shop, pharmacy, green grocer’s, newsagent, women’s hairdressers, post office doubling up as a wool and sewing shop, and the ubiquitous NatWest, Lloyd’s and Barclays banks (with ATMs.) There was a public library above the Natwest.
Compare that with now: Chinese takeaway, fish and chip takeaway, baker’s, betting shop, pasty takeaway, unisex hairdressers, pharmacy (with a pharmacist in the shop about three times a week), Indian takeaway, newsagent (which might be closing soon), nail salon, kebab shop, an empty unit where Barclays was, a tattooist and a charity shop. The Key Market had become Gateway, Somerfield and finally the Co-Op, who were allowed to expand the shop, closing off the open corner of the square, turning it shadowy and dingy in the daytime and unwelcomingly dark in the evening. The library is only accessible from outside the square now. An ATM is in the newsagent, but often runs out.
When I was a child, we’d regularly run into people we knew there: people were always cashing cheques or paying bills. If my Mum was taking us to the shops, we’d often stop off at neighbours on the way and they would wander down with us and the children would run around on the grass. Almost no one goes to the precinct nowadays unless it’s for a specific item. The biggest business there apparently comes from the tattooists. There’s an Aldi a bit up the road amid the undeveloped, demolished, overgrown wasteland that used to be factories.
So that’s another part of the community’s cohesion gone.
I’ve been knocking around since the 1960s and I remember all the things you’ve mentioned! It’s so sad the the kids of today won’t understand the joys of a penny chew or the local ice cream van coming round or looking for old bottles in the hedge bottom to get the 5p deposit! getting your wellies stuck in the deep mud , playing in the fields and tin can lurky! Hide-e bo seek, coming home covered in muck and being told to “Take your boots off you dirty little sod look at you, where have you been?
Long hot summers, well, they seemed long and hot to us!
Great memories, Dings. Bit like mine – I’m from same era. We’d be out all day making camps, badly, but enjoying it nevertheless. Tired and grubby, we’d head home for fish fingers and baked beans!
Yes. Good times! I feel like the 1980s was the era that the country our ancestors had lived in died. My Dad’s parents died in the 80s – my Grandad in 1981 and my Grandmother in 1987. My Grandfather was born a month after Queen Victoria died and my Grandmother a couple of years later – my Dad was a late baby. Reading the letters and cards sent to my Grandmother after my Grandfather’s sudden death by people in the neighbourhood and from their church is very moving. They’re so formal, but they don’t lack warmth: it just wasn’t the done thing to emote excessively. They were so respectful. My grandfather’s first name wasn’t used at all: it was ‘Mr’ and his surname. To do anything else was to disrespect the dead.
I feel that, with the deaths of people such as them, the last vestiges of the country we were before WWI faded away. All the traditions died in the 1990s, our religion, the old songs everyone used to know, the old stories. Part of it was a consequence of postmodern mockery in the media, part of it left wing academia’s hatred of our past, part of it the new right’s pushy, aggressive money-money-money attitudes where fuddy-duddy tradition got in the way. The CofE started appointing useless Archbishops such as Robert Runcie and David Jenkins who didn’t even believe Jesus was resurrected.
There was a disrespectful brashness in the 1980s that became a ‘Year Zero’ ideology with Tony Blair, who wanted to create a ‘new’, ‘young’ Britain with the turn of the millennium.
I’m in my late 40s now and I don’t really feel this has been the country I was born into since the mid-1990s. And seeing the state of the neighbourhood that has always been my spiritual home – we moved here in 1977, our next door neighbours in 1978 – makes me feel like I’m walking among the ruins of our community.
For that matter, do you remember jumble sales? The school across the road always used to have them. Now the school is gated with massive railings and only opens to the public on polling days. So sad.
That’s sad to hear, Dom. I am truly hoping for a turnaround otherwise we’ve all lost!
Yes. What I neglected to mention was that the Co-Op, after its expansion had turned the square into a dingy hole, closed and the entire expanded shopping unit has been boarded up for two years.
Part of me understands the ’15 minute city’ concept is a mutated attempt to restore local communities, but I don’t see how it’ll work if the businesses and banks are abandoning bricks and mortar. I do miss it. I mean, supermarkets are too big. I wandered into Tesco today, but only briefly. I even do click and collect because it’s too much hassle searching the place with everything that gets moved about.
When I was a child, there were bushes in front of the factories that we children would all run in and out of and the Paper Converting Machine Company had three flags out the front on a smart stretch of grass. From the 2000s onwards, the PCMC office building was left abandoned and was vandalised for years; it was finally demolished following an arson attack.
Even worse, the grass verges and open grassland haven’t been mowed anywhere in my part of the city since last year, when it was cut once. The grass is hip deep (I’m six feet tall.) It breaks my heart to see everything looking so run down. It’s a microcosm of the country: if it was a house, it would be crumbling, the window frames rotted and the garden overgrown. And, if the grass stays uncut, it’ll get dry and become a fire hazard. It was really worrying last summer. Most of the ‘Apocalypse Britannia’ climate scare stories about fires last year seemed to me to be the result of untended public land.
We have exactly the same problem with banks closing and the shrinking of other services.
I have become a deeply suspicious person. I am sure it is not my imagination that road closures have become more frequent, and then these works invariably overrun. Signs pop up yet no work seems to be happening. So often I drive through temporary lights but all there are are cones, no holes, no work going on – they don’t need to be there. A journey that should have taken 20 minutes took me an hour and a half recently due to multiple road closures. Whatever they are doing, it’s not repairing potholes. Perhaps they are making more to discourage driving.
And then today, oh look, chaos at the airports and borders as the passport system mysteriously has a glitch, and on a bank holiday too. Are they hoping people will say “Sod this, I think we’ll go on holiday in the UK by bicycle next year.”
I’ve taken to driving straight on when I see ‘Road closed’ signs and invariably there’s nothing going on and you can do your normal route. I agree though, I think it’s deliberate. Slow down the traffic. Create endless diversions. It’s happening everywhere so it can’t just be me and you!
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/our-official-statistics-dont-add-up/
An interesting article lambasting incompetence at the ONS which it transpires has been unable to calculate net immigration properly.
I worked for some years in the Civil Service and I and many colleagues were more than aware that immigration figures were hopelessly wrong. Strangely enough immigration figures were ALWAYS massively below the numbers of National Insurance (NI) numbers issued.
Now despite what the government puts out in MSM the fact is that once an immigrant arrives in this country he / she will have an NI number within six months and twelve months tops. No NI, no free dosh. It really is that simple.
By our reckoning the number of immigrants would be in the region of NI numbers issued plus 10% because a percentage, for whatever reasons would always keep themselves out of the system.
If the grunts on the shop floor could work it out why not the “specialists” at the ONS ? Not firkin difficult!
All’s quiet and seemingly normal on the surface but it is quite clear that we are descending into chaos. We don’t notice it here in the shires but now and again, I hear people in shops expressing frustration. In a health food shop the other day, a woman was venting about the disappearing banks in the town and access to cash. There used to be 5 banks, now there are two. That’s three less ATMs. Older people like cash and get confused with online banking and all the passwords and verification steps you need to take before doing something simple. If you phone up your bank, you’re put on hold to listen to the Carpenters or some such 70s music (which I happen to like but not enough to listen to the same song for an hour or so!), and are told that due to heavy demand or higher than normal demand – it’s always the same whatever the service, whatever the need – there is a queue. By the time you are answered, you’ve forgotten what it is you’re waiting for! Customer service is completely the opposite of what it is meant to be. Everything is around the wrong way.
Slowly the town’s shops are closing. I had a drink with an ex-councillor last night and he told me that the landlords don’t care about an empty high street, they want oodles of cash for rents but don’t need the dosh so they let them sit empty. This is a tourist town. The fact that landlords don’t care means a slight tightening. Younger people are more likely to shop online or use the omnipotent bazar that is Amazon. It’s a slow process this decline. Slow enough that it doesn’t shock but it is a decline…..which is why we’re taking matters in our own hands…
We want a vibrant community that nourishes and supports us, that inspires us and gives us hope. So we’ve initiated a town meeting that will look at people’s concerns and will start to knit the fabric of our community together…we hope. We can but try but watching as the town and county councils do nothing is not an option. I’l let you know how we get on…town meeting is set for 20th June.