Inflation ills and evils

We hear unions and government sat around the table for five days and finally came up with a decision to increase salaries for civil servants by five percent. The powers that be are trying. Granted, this is not high praise. It’s like saying that somebody is marginally nicer than Hitler. But it’s something.

Usually salary increases are met with euphoria, anger and inflation. Some are saying, however, a five percent increase is as useless as teats on a bull. For workers in the lower rung things couldn’t be redder- it’s like a tomato puree production factory. For them five percent is like a kick in the nuts from someone wearing steel-toed jackboots. When the calculations were done a few truths hit home – diets must be rationalised, lifestyles must be readjusted and small houses must be shed etc.

Whenever landlords hear about salary increases they lose their minds. Landlords usually follow salary negotiations with keen interest. Sometimes, in fact most times, people involved in salary negotiations are landlords. There’s always that invisible hand of a landlord trying to bump up the increment. Whilst they are officially representing workers they also double as landlord representatives. There’s a direct correlation between salary hikes and rental increases. They know that if they achieve the increment they will be smiling all the way to the Orange Money outlets or the bank. Rent now costs random new numbers that your landlord make every few months.

Inflation is like a machine-controlled poverty programme. In recent times inflation has been so bad that a picture that used to be worth a thousand words is now only about 200 words. Nannies have lost their jobs and now parents are relearning their kids’ names. As a rule, in butchery business, the insides of every animal costs cheaper than the meat itself so when inflation quills are out we resort to eating offal.

So now the offal business has quickly creeped into blue chip terrain.

There’s seemingly a gore-fest visited on our poor wallets at every turn thanks to the relentless fury of inflation. The goring continues unabated.

Only last Friday the nation woke up to another fuel price increase. Usually in our republic when there’s an issue about the money that was allegedly siphoned off the National Petroleum Fund (NPF) with large hoses it is accompanied by a fuel hike.

So what happened is that a certain court ruled that the government should not have locked the money in question in their vault.

But as the owner was about to collect, BURS decided there was an acrid stench from that end and bawled, ‘Don’t touch it. Don’t even think of it’. A huge tax bill landed on the court victor’s table. Then, sure as day and night, fuel prices increased.

This time the fuel increase seems to have come with more fury. We are fervently hoping that the NPF case is put to bed in order to hopefully stem the tide. The more knowledgeable people, those who graduated from Fuel Hike School, say it has nothing to do with the NPF case but rather issues of supply and demand and the war in Ukraine and Russia. We have nothing to do with the hostilities, but it is clear that Europe cannot cough without Africa catching the coronavirus. So here we are, all bent out of shape because two European Presidents had a huge argument and decided to kill each other’s citizens.

When all is said and done we need to chisel something out of the debris of our salaries. The kids have to eat, gotta eat but meals are in danger of becoming more and more incidental. Most of us are rapidly losing weight. Every other week I am taking my belt to the cobbler and having another hole punched. Sign of the times, sorry, signs of that doggone inflation.

The kids have to eat, gotta eat but meals are in danger

of becoming more and more

incidental