It will probably have escaped your notice – what with one thing and another – that trouble is brewing over on the continent from which we have recently splendidly isolated ourselves.
The EU has passed a directive to standardise all mobile phone chargers on the continent; specifically, henceforth all mobile phones sold in Europe must accept USB–C cables.
This has, as you can imagine, gone down like a cup of cold sick with US tech giant Apple, who are famous for their insistence upon proprietary tech, in particular the dinky ‘lightning’ connectors which power their iPhones and iPads (although interestingly, they’re perfectly content to use USB–C for their laptops).
The prospect of having to produce a Europe-only edition of the iPhone and iPad (jePhone et jePad, peut-être) is further than this particular Apple is willing to roll.
So there you go, Britain! While we remain secure in our island refuge, with our near total food shortages, fuel shortages, labour crisis, rocketing viral infections, political corruption, economic meltdown and incipient societal collapse, over in the moribund, bureaucracy-bound EU, they are MIRED IN A MINOR QUIBBLE ABOUT PHONE CHARGERS! Boy, I’m glad we’re free of all that nonsense, aren’t you?
Meanwhile, back here in Bold Brexit Britain, as we keep calm and knuckle under and get used to the sight of empty supermarket shelves and empty fuel pumps, here are some more things we can expect to run out of in the glorious weeks to come:
BUS DRIVERS
Well it’s a question of priorities, isn’t it? We are, as you know, currently 100,000 HGV drivers short in this country, hence the concomitant shortages in everything else.
We need to get those big trucks moving, and we already have the qualified drivers to do it.
Bus drivers have been trained in the safe handling of long unwieldy vehicles, they’re more than used to sitting in stationary traffic for hours on end, and they are currently squandering their talents schlepping around a bunch of losers who can’t even get it together to buy their own cars. Get them in the lorries! It’s not like anybody important needs to take the bus anyway.
TREES
You may have heard that we face a fizzy drink shortage because of a dearth of the carbon dioxide used the create the fizz. This is nothing to do with Brexit (because remember: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH BREXIT) but is, rather, a clear and unmistakable sign that THE TREES ARE GETTING GREEDY.
Trees, as you know, breathe IN the carbon dioxide we (and our motor cars and factories) breathe out. So if there’s not enough all of a sudden, where’s it all going? FAT GREEDY TREES, that’s where.
So it’s out with the chainsaws! You can have Diet Coke OR trees, not both (besides, we’ll be glad of all that firewood in a few weeks when we’ve had our gas cut off).
Speaking of firewood…
FURNITURE
Now it is not the case that in order to avoid freezing to death, we’ll have burned down all the trees by January and will have to move on to burning our furniture…
In a fine example of the joined-up thinking for which our government is so justly famed, we will see the introduction of the “Stand Up For Britain” initiative.
There’s no room for slugabeds and layabouts in Bold Brexit Britain, so get off those sofas and easy chairs and stand on your own two feet, thus freeing up those sofas and easy chairs to be re-purposed (the plastic bits will burn as well as the wood, and some of the leather might even be edible).
CATS
As our wise and noble leaders have told us, the country faces some tough choices (well, not tough for the wise and noble leaders, obviously; be sensible).
The lack of refrigerated lorries has meant that the fresh meat counters of our supermarkets were among the first to be emptied, and we need to be considering alternative sources of protein.
Now look, nobody likes to say this, but… Well, it’s not as if cats actually DO anything for us, is it?
All they do is lie around being fluffy and adorable and eating the food we lay out for them. Well soon we’re going to need that cat food
for ourselves, and once all that’s gone…
I know, I know, obviously we’ll miss having the cats around, and yes, they do keep mice at bay in our homes, but once we’ve eaten all the cats, we may well need those mice…
POEM OF THE WEEK
I’m trying to write a poem
It’s harder than it appears
I appear to be afflicted
By a shortage of ideas
At last! Some inspiration
But although it seems absurd
When I come to write my poem
I’m short by just one
