OPEN LETTER TO MY FRIEND SEYMOUR

Dear Seymour,

You won't know this, because you decamped to Europe after the Brexit vote, but between the Byres Road and our house, in Glasgow's West End where you and your wife courted by dreeping aff back-court walls, there has now opened a CHURROS BAR to speed the weary WestEnder on his homeward walk from the boozerie. The prices are extortionate! Ten fried doughnut sticks (two portions, five sticks each), wee pot of chocolate sauce, plain cardboard-box kerry-oot ("Sorry, guys, we're closed for eatin' in, it's nearly ten o'clock") - the price for this is NINE PRE-BREXIT SMACKERS, would you believe!? That's nine Maybot vouchers as we speak, or fifty-seven Maybot vouchers by the time we get to next week, and three thousand two hundred and fifty-six point three Maybot vouchers by the time we leave the European Union. Not a problem for us, because we're old and rich - one of us is nearly in the grave, and as for the other one, I'm not always sure looking at them what their current status is. But the guys in the Donut Stuffery were all juveniles! None of them was over twenty-five!

Why do we have a society in which this kind of price is not a problem for us, and not a problem for a tranche of young people with jobs - but an impossible dream for the homeless in the streets, for people using foodbanks, for PEOPLE IN WORK using foodbanks, for anybody who was raised at the wrong end of Argyle Street or who's ever got high using a needle? Can we change all this, please?

Come back soon. And vote Yes.

Yours,

Derek

 

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