Twilight Zone

Other than the abdication/resignation of the much (wrongly) maligned Pope Benedict XVI (even Middle Man can change his mind), two news stories have dominated the UK news in the last few days:

• Horsemeat in everything
• Call for a cull on urban foxes following a supposed attack on a month-old baby in South East London

I have even heard a suggestion on a radio chat show (where else) that the two stories may be linked. The theory goes that since the ban on hunting foxes in the UK in 2004, British toffs have been unable to justify the cost of keeping their horses and that they have sold them off cheaply, and Dobbin has entered the food chain as a consequence. Also, the lack of fox-hunting has obviously led to a proliferation of foxes who are moving from the rural green belt into our cities in search of food, dragging our babies from their cots in a terror reminiscent of dingo killings in Australia over thirty years ago.

Clearly this is all nonsense but it is interesting how some people think, make ridiculous connections and foster conspiracy theories. I suspect that such people are easily duped by April Fool pranks…….

It is not the Great British Aristocracy that are to blame for the contamination of our frozen lasagna, shepherds pies and “beef” burgers with horse and donkey meat. Fox hunters have always treated their four-legged friends exactly so – as friends, or pets. They are as unlikely to sell them off for food processing as I am to start eating cat. Even less civilised nations, such as France, only took to the “fashion” of eating horsemeat at times of great austerity and famine such as during the Franco-Prussian war, the siege of Paris and at the time of the Revolution. And, to be fair, it wasn’t just horses that ran scared in those times – Parisians took to surviving by eating most of the occupants of the Paris Zoo. Today, your well-to-do Parisian suffering the effects of austerity and President Hollande’s tax regime are relocating to London in great numbers. While the French language and cafe society are becoming ever more prevalent on the streets of our Capital, I do not think the greatest French invasion since 1066 is the cause of either the horsemeat scandal or a rise in uppity urban foxes.

It is Vampires wot did it!

Yes, it is clear that the root of the proliferation of cheap horsemeat and the consequential intervention of fraudulent and scurrilous organised criminals passing it off as beef in our extended supermarket supply chains has been traced back to Romania, the well-known home of Vlad III of Wallachia, known otherwise as Tepes, the Impaler, or, Dracula……

Now we know that Vampires are real and exist. Porphyria, is a genuine hereditary disease from which some one in twenty-thousand people suffer. Sufferers are unable to produce red corpuscles and consequently the blood lacks oxygen , leading to hemoglobin breakdown in sunshine, causing blisters and ulcers and, in extreme cases, death – and we all know that Vampires and sunshine don’t mix. The disease is also known to cause nose, ears and cartilage deformation, a tightening of gums and yellowing of the teeth – people start to look like Vampires! And, as recently as last year, graves of over a hundred Vampires were unearthed in Sozopol in Bulgaria.

We also know that the governments of the world know that Vampires exist. How? Hollywood!! In much the same way as we have been prepared for imminent alien invasion by a plethora of alien invasion movies, Western governments have sought to prepare us for the fight against the blood-sucking undead by unleashing Buffy, the Twilight Saga, the Blade Trilogy and Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter upon us. Most Haunted recently did a Vampire special in Romania. And, just a couple of weeks ago that great British institution, the BBC, even aired Lesbian Vampire Killers. Nuff said.

Vampires are still the dominant power in Romania and they keep the rural population essentially as a source of food. The similarities here with slavery in the deep south of America in the nineteenth century are compelling. The European austerity measures have hit Romania hard and many of the rural poor have sought to escape to neighbouring countries in search of a better life. In search of any life. The Vampire Nation has reacted to the mass exodus by banning horses from the Romanian highways, making it harder for their impoverished citizens from walking away. Consequently, the rural poor have been forced to sell their steeds, suppressing the price, and creating a business opportunity exploited by criminal gangs, Findus and Tescos.

So, stop listening to all the rubbish spouted on our radio phone ins and start melting down your silver. The Vampires are coming.

Remember, you heard it here first!