A wicked act of vandalism
I THOUGHT I had heard it all but the news that some brute had drilled holes in the tyres of six ambulances in Ramsgate left me flabbergasted at how far human wickedness will go.
The fools who shoved and pushed to pile high their own trolleys were simply panicking.
Murder itself can be carried out in moments of red-hot anger. But this calculated act of vandalism against vehicles designed to save lives is at the far end of the scale of man’s inhumanity to man, unless of course there is very serious mental illness involved.
If the culprit is ever found, the charge should not be vandalism but recklessly endangering life and the penalty should be exacted in full.
THIS is a story of two businesses and of two very different approaches to our current exigencies.The first concerns my local laundry CleanCall, which devised a means to keep going and contributing to the economy. Customers should deposit their laundry on the doorstep and ring the bell.They should then retreat to a good distance while laundry workers collected the dirties and put a parcel of clean stuff in their place. The customer then collected that parcel and took it to the car. No money changed hands: each customer received BACS details and was told bills would be sent by email.
In the end it didn’t work when hotels, holiday lets and restaurants closed down and CleanCall’s custom dried up. So, they too are now closed but they tried, really tried and I so admired their efforts and earnestly hope they survive.
The second is a tale of inflexibility and total enslavement to the rule book. I had ordered a new Adams carpet from Austins, my favourite emporium in Devon. Alack! It is closing due to the virus. That I understood but when the carpet department rang me up to say my order was delayed indefinitely, I raised my eyebrows.
MY CARPET was coming from the manufacturers. Had they also closed? Ah, said the salesman, not yet but Austins’ warehouse would not be open to receive it. No problem, I said, they could deliver it to me instead, if they were still operating.
Austins rang me back. The manufacturers adamantly refused to deliver to a private address. The fact that 24 hours later Britain went into total lockdown and carpets can hardly be classified as necessities is irrelevant. We were not in that lockdown when they insisted on sticking to the rulebook.
The Government is tearing up its rulebooks to help the economy to survive. Is it really too much to ask that businesses show similar flexibility and initiative and tear up theirs? Or do they prefer to close down and rely on taxpayer handouts?
THREE cheers for the Daily Express which has made a point of staying positive while other papers have screamed only doom, gloom and panic in headlines big enough for the Apocalypse. In the words of the famous Kipling poem; “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs...”