Being Thankful for Invaluable Advice.

I never cease to be surprised by the advice we receive here in the UK when some sort of real or imagined crisis appears to be looming into view. I’ve mentioned a few times the advice we were given to paint our houses white when there was a short heatwave expected to arrive, and today we were treated to another piece of mind-boggling wisdom. It gave a list of actions we should take when grocery shopping to help us deal with the cost of living crisis, and the first on the list was:

Check your cupboards before you leave home to see what items you already have in stock.

If only they’d told us this before. Then we wouldn’t have needed food banks, or had to rely on teachers providing food for children who’d come to school without breakfast, or learned of pensioners and others low on the income scale having to choose between going cold or going hungry during the winter. If only we’d known…

But do you know what’s possibly even sadder? I’ll bet there are people out there who really don’t know what they’ve already got in the cupboard, because modern culture conditions us to expect everything to be served up on a plate (as long as we’ve got all the technology, and all the apps, and as long as we trip dutifully along between the tramlines laid down by, and for the benefit of, the corporate world.) People aren’t really trained to think for themselves these days, are they? Then again, I expect most people who don’t know what’s in the cupboard are wealthy enough not to care, so they don’t need any advice, fatuous or otherwise. It’s all so sad, silly, and a little ironic.

And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall one of these days. I wonder what advice we’ll be given then, to help us stay dry in the deluge. Self-immolation to evaporate the water?