In the news this week:
The Queen spent a night in hospital, Meghan Markle’s thoughts and prayers went out to herself.

There’s the Alec Baldwin story I initially saw the headline and assumed that hollywood were finally making another sequel in the Lethal Weapon franchise. Then I read what actually happened, and personally I think Baldwin is a bit old to be playing Oscar Pistorious, but maybe it’s was a biopic about Phil Spector.

There was also the death of Colin Power, who’s death was a huge cause of the spread of misinformation that might end up killing people. So at least he died doing something that he enjoyed.

But for me the larger story this week is something I touched on a few weeks back which is slow and deliberate sabotaging of the economy and society by governments and companies choosing to lay off thousands of critical staff, even when they’re struggling to remain functional as is. But hey, never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

One example is the city of Chicago, which is going down the route of preparing to lay off as many police officers as it takes in order to force compliance with stringent new proof-of-vaccine laws. This is after the union encouraged its members not to comply with publicly sharing their medical details - quite the standoff. The city is already an active warzone with close to 700 murders so far this year, close to 2000 sexual assaults and several thousand non-fatal shootings. And yet Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s response is to lay off roughly 3000 police officers and prepare to blame everyone for when things fall apart. If this sounds familiar it’s probably because it’s vaguely like the plot in Robocop although the situation is so farcical you half expect the cast of Police Academy to show up. When it comes to poor decision making, the only way things could get worse would be if the gangs decided to take a lesson from history and construct a large wooden outside city hall one night and see if they let it in the front door. But if we’re talking about horses then let’s talk about bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted, the city is now desperately asking neighbouring counties to lend members of staff, none of whom are apparently very keen to help out in what is a political situation, one that could easily be corrected by just changing their mind about laying off half the force.

If those people are after a job though, well elsewhere in California, you can now get a 6 figure salary and a $15k sign-on bonus if you want to be a lorry driver, although unlike the UK Yorkie Bars are not as readily available to truckers in the Golden State. Hang on, a shortage of truck drivers? I still find it strange that many people online seem to be obsessed over the idea that the driver shortage in the haulage is solely an issue in the UK and related to Brexit. America didn’t vote to leave Europe, at least not since the 18th century.

There are 3 pieces to California’s woes. Covid is of course a contributing factor, whether it be a lack of hiring and training, or companies actively laying off staff who don’t wat to get vaccinated. On top of this though is green legislation which bans any trucks made prior to 2011. Never mind that toungue twister about “red lorry yellow lorry” because thanks to Governor Newsom the only ones allowed are green lorries. On top of this, yet another piece of the puzzle is another law called AB5 which prohibits Owner Operators. This is the law that they passed to force Uber to employ workers in the gig economy and force them to pay tax on their earnings, but it’s also now encouraging truckers to go find tax-efficient work elsewhere in any of the other 49 states. That’s the thing about that line of work, it’s pretty easy to move house when everyone you know (including yourself) happens to be a man with a van.