THERE’S talk of a cost of living crisis. Of spiralling inflation. Of families being forced to choose between heating or eating. Well, as that great statesman Jacob Rees-Mogg would say, ‘Hallelujah!’
As a country, it would do us the power of good to go a few months without food. Not Telegraph staff like me personally, although I would relish the challenge faced by our World War II forebears forced to eat nothing but iron railings during the character-building winter of 1939.
We need to remember our history. Only the aristocracy and royal family regularly ate food up until the late 19th century, and rightly so.
Peasants might be treated to a hearty stew of giblets and turnips, one bucket per village, on festivals such as St Swithin’s Day, but they got 18 hours of exercise a day working in the fields. Later they ate a sensibly frugal diet with the help of their slave wages at factories and mills.
But then, thanks to champagne socialist Charles Dickens, we were spoiled by high-calorie Christmas turkeys for all, paid for by benevolent wealth-creators.
Worse still, the horrendous welfare state of 1945 aimed to make sure no child went hungry. In an unbelievably irresponsible act, Bevan’s woke do-gooders gave full-fat milk to small children.
We are still living with the results of this sentimental nonsense. 20-stone blob-people on mobility scooters clogging up the pavements as they trundle to grab their handouts at the benefits office. Fat nurses in hospitals when they should all be thin and pretty. My daughter’s class photo ruined by an unsightly plump child.
If ordinary Britons are priced out of the food market, it is all to the good. It will make us leaner, hungrier, and yes, in many cases, deader. But there’d be no disgusting fatsos blocking the aisles when I’m filling my trolley in Waitrose.
