It’s taken a while to get over the infection that hospitalised me but I finally feel like myself. Actually, more like an angrier version of myself. (What was in those drips they had me on?) Fingers in ears while I rant. (Or skip down to the next chapter of my African saga, where Koba is coping with the fallout from the band being doused in pesticide by her arch enemy. Kinda how I feel right now.)
The rant
I want to bang heads together. Specifically, Steve Bannon’s, Donald Trump’s, Nigel Farage’s, Jacob Zuma’s, Benjamin Netanyahu’s and those of every CEO of every water company in the UK.
Donald Trump? Bahhhh! 😤 Let’s not give that sneering misogynist and self-serving felon any more column inches; all I want to know is will he ever be punished? I’m eyeing the US Criminal Justice system but with faint hope.
Meanwhile, that the slime mould he cosied up with, Steven Bannon, has actually been ordered to jail for four months for contempt of court. So maybe there is hope…. But will Bannon serve his sentence? With his far-right rabble-rousing and insidious conspiracy theory-stoking I believe he’s one of the greatest dangers liberal society faces.
Who is Nigel Farage, you might ask? He’s the Yogi Bear-lookalike (check out the cartoonishly long space between his upper lip and snout – ) who campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union. He fostered xenophobia to swing the vote in the infamous Brexit referendum and to this day has never admitted that the ensuing chaos and now shortages (e.g. drugs for UK patients with life-threatening conditions) is a result of his ‘F *** Europe’, fervour.
Who’s next on my hit list? Someone indicted for bribery and fraud, the sitting Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu. Those crimes aside, on any reasonable scale, his extermination of his neighbours can be viewed as genocide. It seems that many of his own citizens, let alone Jews in the diaspora plus people all over the world (witness widespread protests) want him to stop the attacks on Gaza. I’m dumbfounded that the USA House of Representatives wishes to impose sanction against the International Criminal Court for issuing a warrant for the arrests of Israeli and Hamas leaders, all war criminals, in my opinion.
Then there’s Jacob Zuma, ex-president of South Africa, found guilty on corruption charges in South Africa, but too ill apparently to serve anything like his full term in prison. However, he’s well enough to form a new political party and gain a sizeable chunk of the votes in the recent election, campaigning on what I view as a dangerously divisive, tribal platform.
The politically powerful seem to be Teflon-coated. Their disgraces barely leave a scratch. It stinks!
Another stink
Is the shameful under-investment in sewage treatment works by the privately-owned water companies in the UK.
The Environmental Agency’s annual sewage data shows that there were 3 times more sewage spills (464,056 to be exact) last year, than the year before. Yuck!! Not one river in England and Northern Ireland is now in “good overall status” according to the latest census by the Rivers Trust. And the sewage, manure and other pollutants end up in the seas around this island. When the red X appears on the SOS (Save Our Seas) app, as it has far too frequently lately, it's not safe to swim.
My journalist hero, George Monbiot, Guardian columnist and environmental activist, describes the water companies’ business strategy as: “load themselves with debt to finance dividends payouts; load the future with costs as they fail to build infrastructure, such as new reservoirs and pipes” required to meet the growing needs of the UK population, “load the rivers with excrement to avoid the expense of upgrading the plants.“ An astounding £78bn has been paid by water companies in dividends, since they were privatised in 1989! (Guardian, 26 April, 2024.)
Don’t water companies get fined for illegal pollution you might ask. Sure, but the underfunded, understaffed Environment Agency has had to resort to asking the water companies to self-monitor. That’s like leaving an alcoholic in charge of the bar. No wonder the organisation Surfers Against Sewage, calls it
“ a total sh💩tshow from the greedy, incompetent mess that is our water industry.”
I long for this to become an election issue in the UK, for the new government to look seriously at renationalising water supply and disposal in this country. Or could they at least give the Environment Agency enough budget to buy some teeth? Water companies need to be hit where it hurts most– in their shareholders’ pockets.
But I guess those shameless CEOs, like the shameless politicians and influencer mentioned earlier, will simply slither away, unpunished.
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Continuing the Koba saga from book 2. If you would like to read the first book please find it here in various formats. Remember, full proceeds from every sale go to Village Schools Feeding scheme.
Chapter 16
A rare moment of understanding between Koba and her frenemy, Tsamkxao, as they deal with the poisonous aftermath.
‘What was that mist? Could it be bad? What did you see?’
People around Tsamkxao, coughing, clamouring to know what had happened.
‘You got him, you shot the bad vulture with the bad n|om,’ a boy gasp-shouted, capering around the tall man who stood glaring at the sky where the plane had been.
‘Xohhhh, in his foot, straight in. Xohhhh!’ Old Dabe exulted, until he started wheezing.
Spitting to rid himself of a strange, salty taste, Gxao confirmed that he too had seen the arrowhead lodge in the wheel.
‘How-how did you know… know we were in danger?’ Xoan∥a spluttered, hanging onto Tsamkxao’s arm.
‘Better you should ask what that |’Hun was looking for,’ Tsamkxao snarled.
Koba was helping |Kuni from the water. They’d avoided immediate contact with the spray, but Koba insisted |Kuni rinse herself in clean water as fast as possible. ‘In case bad . . .’ She hesitated to use the word ‘n|om’– not wanting to attribute any kind of power to the plane. ‘In case bad-ness lay on the water – the baby . . .’ She could hardly bear to look at |Kuni’s pregnant belly. The men, most of whom had escaped the spray, scooped up children still happily playing in the water and herded the puzzled band together. People milled around gabbling about the bizarre incident, spluttering outrage at being doused with something that made them cough and cry. They’d all seen aeroplanes before, admired jets emitting vapour trails they took as evidence of spiritual energy similar to what their most powerful healers had, the ones who could travel, transcend time and space to confer with ancestors. But no one had seen a plane close-up nor choked on its tail.
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