Peggylicious moments

II don’t want to include

the ‘speak for yourself’ brigade and hence the narrow use of

‘we’

n the past few years we have been feeling like we are in a horror movie where you are in a dark room and sense immediately that your body has been surgically removed from your head. At least in terms of the cost of living.

Hell, even funeral undertakers are increasing the cost of funerals and blaming it on the cost of living. Fresh hell just dropped it seems. How did we even get here? Despite all this meltdown we are always hopeful that we will somewhat turn the corner and get lifted out of the morass we are experiencing. ‘We’ in this case means me and my family and my new neighbour. Why have I included him? Well, we had a chat and shared exactly the same views. I don’t want to include the ‘speak for yourself’ brigade and hence the narrow use of ‘we’. The ‘speak for yourself’ brigade is the type that has the same issues as you, but are too embarrassed and petrified to admit it in front of people. As we were praying for some superheroes to pull us out of the abyss one emerged in the form of Peggylicious. Peggylicious is a name given to the national bean counter when she makes sweet announcements like the ones that she made this week. Other times when she’s announcing belt-tightening decisions she’s just Mma Serame. Besides the President, Peggylicious is the only person who can instantly turn Btv into must-watch TV when she makes an announcement. That is the kind of power she wields. I know her power, you know her power, your grandma’s dog sitter’s ex-boyfriend’s hairdresser probably knows her power and therefore you’ll know exactly why the country stops to listen. Perhaps the most interesting one is the allowance increase for students. Now in this country nobody (except of course Peggylicious) believes student allowance should be increased. There have been countless and unrelenting strikes for an increase in student allowance and several SRC presidents have gone out in a whimper after promising to push for an increase. This is a penny drop moment. You do not need a strike to get a salary increase. All you need is a Peggylicious moment.

Value Added Tax (VAT) has also been reduced by two percent. VAT is one of those things that somehow keeps going up, but Peggylicious bucked the trend somehow. There was also a relief measure specifically targeted for sidewalk restaurants that boil potatoes in oil when she announced that liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and cooking oil will be zero rated for tax meaning that it would be cheaper to fry potatoes and make the famous mafresh if you can find the potatoes that is. Being an ordinary citizen, I am way too stupid to understand the complex problems of trying to balance the national budget and all other issues ‘peggylicious’.

When she made the announcements I put my lower primary education to good use and pulled out the abacus but it was no use. My rudimentary skills were too feeble to crunch the financial reality in front of me. Fortunately, we have journalists who will try and bring it down to the level of distressed, confused and single digit IQ masses. Ok, before you butt me with any more buts I want to make this grand announcement that I am not a real journalist, so I am in the pot of the masses. Proper journalists go to journalism schools and learn journalist things and qualify with journalist degrees. Yes, there are incidental journalists that have never seen the mouth of a journalist professor. I fall into the latter. The latter (my grouping) is the one more prone to litigation. Litigation hugs every journalist like a lover whose partner is about to board a plane to study overseas. Some have opined through the help of highly-advanced computer programmes that this is not really a Peggylicious

moment but more of a Mma Serame moment – i.e. much ado about nothing. There are always conspiracy theories that accompany these types of changes with some even claiming that perhaps she’s planning to venture into the business of selling mafresh fried in VAT zero-rated LPG and VAT zero-rated cooking oil. Well, I don’t give a hoot as long as I can get my fries at a cheaper price. So, yes the nation does intermittently have those Peggylicious moments but what the nation really wants is to have more frequent Peggylicious moments. And you tertiary guys just remember

your Peggylicious moment is only a P300 bump up. The landlords east of the city in that village on your way to the border are watching with keen interest. A little landlord/tenant war is brewing that side of the republic.

(For comments, feedback and insults email inkspills1969@gmail.com)

* Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email: ultimaxtraining@