There is some reason to believe that we’re part of the King Creosote fan club, but really he’s just a very convenient person to go to when one is looking for a song with barbed lyrics married to a suitably critical song title. So what brings us to ‘You’ve No Clue Do You‘ this week? Well, it’s in part due to our friend The Count (who, you’ll recall, “loves to count“) who is constantly whispering numbers in our ears whilst we sleep. “40,000 a month” he says “waiting for more than 12 hours to be seen in A&E.” Then with a chuckle he adds “it was 10, under the last Labour Government. Just 10 people per month waiting for more than 12 hours, and now it is 40,000 – and , ha ha ha, you all just accept this as normal.”
There’s no escaping it, one may roll over and put a pillow over one’s head and yet it is still possible to hear that Transylvanian Numerist “A new record number of people in absolute poverty – 12 million people, that’s, ha ha ha, around 1 person in 6! I am the Count and I love to Count.” And he rumbles on about the number of food banks, the number of users of food banks, and how the school rebuilding budget has to go solely to replace RAC (“ha ha ha, all the schools with leaking roofs need to buy one, two, three four….buckets, ha ha ha“).
But really it isn’t The Count we’re irritated by – if the numbers weren’t there to count well he wouldn’t count them would he? No – it’s the ministers who visit food banks and say what a wonderful thing they are and how marvellous it is that the community has rallied around. It’s the ministers who say that the poverty figures would be even worse if they hadn’t done anything at all. Oh God, take that pat on the back, why not? It’s the ministers who blame the A&E waiting times on the Winter (because Winter didn’t exist before 2010 despite what Charles Dickens might try to tell you), the NHS strikes (what did you expect from a decade of pay freezes/caps followed by a self inflicted record inflation fuelled by the Truss disaster budget?). And yes, ministers who like to remind their audience that no-one could have foreseen the crumbling RAC in public buildings problem (other than the structural engineers of the 1960s who gave the material a useful life of 50 years tops).
As Kenny Anderson helpfully sings on ‘You’ve No Clue Do You‘ this is all the behaviour “of a cheat, of a liar, of a scum bag” before recognising a cathartic benefit “that’s that off my chest. You’ve no clue do you?”
