In response to Fandango’s Who Won the Week posts, I have been looking at my own newsfeeds.
Do you remember the other week I talked about immigration?
Well I’m afraid my winner of the week is the humble pumpkin. Let me explain:
Not only has our government’s ideology brought us fuel shortages, food shortages and the threatened christmas turkey shortage, but this week we learned about the pumpkin shortage.
Now, I must admit to never having bought a pumpkin in my life, but for somereason, people do.
Did.
You see, we have had reports all summer about vegetables rotting in fields because of a shortage of farm labour (we used to have a lot of imported labour from eastern Europe). And now, apparently, it is the turn of the good old pumpkin.
What gets me about this is that it should have been thought through. All of this was entirely avoidable, and that’s heartbreaking. It’s like watching a train wreck as it happens. We could easily have implemented a Brexit where none of this happened. There didn’t have to be shortages of anything. But, no.
Instead, however, we have this bunch of idealogues whose attitude is either you see the same blue skies that we see, or you’re against us. The task of any government is to solve these problems, but the UK government don’t even recognise that the problems exist, let alone having a clue how to make them go away.
The solution is the perennial battle cry to bring in the troops – as if they will make everything good again. Squaddies being used to drive petrol tankers. They did the same with the COVID vaccines. Parachuted Navy nurses to administer the vaccine in my local Salisbury, only to send them away again because there was no vaccine. And nobody is asking how much it is costing, to put these people up in three-star hotels.
And we have already had rumbles – the next thing in the pipeline (excuse the pun) is the UK’s supply of gas itself.
I’ve had clients like this. Banks. Trust me, if you saw behind the scenes, you’d move your money. I’ve seen it happen. It didn’t surprise me that they were some of the key banks hit when the crash finally came.
Mister Bump 
Here there always seems to be an overload of pumpkins everywhere and farmers can use their seeds for next years crop, so selling them this time of year where customers go out in the field and pick their own seems profitable.
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I saw a YouTube video of apple orchard owners in Alberta, Canada, buying their own apples from anyone who would go out and pick the fruit! Between strict immigration rules and COVID19, a shortage of seasonal workers has forced farmers to ask people not only to “pick your own”, but to pick as much as they can, and get money for them.
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Yes, we’ve moticed “pick your own” springing up to. The idea has been around for years, but is far more prevalent now. When it started, it was largely thought of as quaint. You might take your kids there for an afternoon out. Now, we know the real reason.
What you saw is interesting because we hear so little about Canada, and it seems that you have gone through the exact same immigration cycle as us. I mean, I assume at one time that bthere was no shortage of pickers?
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Yeah, it used to be relatively straightforward for Latin American seasonal workers to come, I remember in the 1990s, being on planes from/to Mexico with many of them. Then Canada got pressed to restrict this flow, even though it was seasonal (The US claimed then the workers would try to cross South 🙄) and later on, the pandemic added to the crisis. At least I hope more people have realized that those workers neither stole jobs from Canadians, nor were they trying to stay or cross to the US. 🤷🏻♀️
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Absolutely. But do these people ever realise?
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Probably not!
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Pumpkin is delicious and this a is a tragedy of epic proportions.
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except that tragedy implies, to me, accidental. I don’t mind so much the idea of Brexit – wanting not to be governed by the EU seemed perfectly reasonable. But I do feel that everybody who voted for Johnson’s version of Brexit is simply reaping what they have sown. Enjoy your pumpkins – I won’t be able to get any anyway so I’m happy to pass..
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I used to get pumpkins for my kids to carve into Jack-O-Lanterns for Halloween. But once they the kids grew up and went to college, that family tradition ended and I haven’t gotten a pumpkin since.
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Traditionally, we had turnip lanterns, and I carved one every year, as a boy. Presumably those were the days when we all relied on indigenous crops. There was no such thing as a pumpkin when I was young.
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