The End of the Road?

A dry day at last!
I didn't get down to the allotment until early evening, as my wife and I had visitors all day (and very pleasant too).
As a result I found Nosher ensconced in his deckchair outside his old shed, wine glass in hand, relaxing after a day's gardening.
'What time do you call this?' he grumbled as he handed me a glass full of parsnip wine.
'Sorry, Nosh, couldn't get here any earlier.'
I sank into the deckchair with exhaustion and sipped the amber nectar Nosher creates with the residue of each year's parsnip crop.
It tasted good.
'Did you hear about the fuel protest by the hauliers in London and Cardiff?' Nosher asked 'I'm not sure they have a realistic chance of achieving anything, but I think they have a valid point.'
'The problem with transport in the Dis-United Kingdom' I commented 'is that almost from the very beginnings of the petroleum age our shortsighted governments have treated fuel as an opportunity to raise punitive taxation, instead of viewing it as the life-blood of commerce. In the US they took the opposite view, and as a result stimulated their economy. In this country we are now reaping the results of decades of mismanagement as our road transport industry is gradually being taken over by European hauliers benefitting from cheaper fuel using trucks with long range tanks, so they don't even buy any fuel in this country.'
Nosher gazed around at his little plot, now dominated by greenery climbing ever higher to the sky.
'As a country we depend on our road transport industry for almost everything, since our rail freight system was allowed to collapse' he said ' which means that every increase in fuel price is passed along the line to the end-user of the all the goods that travel by road. It is lunacy to drive our hauliers out of business with punitive taxation, whilst allowing continental hauliers to take over. If the bus industry can have cheap fuel why not the road haulage industry? Yet another British industry is dying on its feet - sorry, wheels - and our idiot government just watch it go to the wall. In the end all that will have been achieved is the destruction of yet another British industry, and an ever-increasing dependency upon Europe.'
'That is the story of Britain's involvement with Europe' I said 'but will the idiots who rule over us do anything before it's too late?'
'I doubt it' Nosher replied 'at the end of this road lies economic slavery for all of us.'
More from http://www.overthegardenfence.blogspot.com/ soon.
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Stay well, and happy gardening!