March 8, International Women's Day of Solidarity with New York textile workers and street protesters, and the anniversary of German socialist Clara Zetkin's friendship with Rosa Luxemburg, should have been the central event of the week, but this year tulip and other flower sellers didn't make a lot of money - people were instead buying jars of pickles and pickled tomatoes to throw at drones.
If any turmoil in the world leads to a rise in oil prices, in Latvia it mostly results in salt, toilet paper and buckwheat disappearing from the store shelves. The crisis caused by the war in Ukraine differed from the previous ones in that the Latvian people had decided to live on salt alone and use it for everything. There was no precise information yet on what the people were going to do with the salt they had bought, so the hypothesis was born that in future there would be salt spread on salty bread for breakfast, tea and coffee will be drunk with salt, salted potatoes and salt soup for lunch and salt ice cream or salted jam for dessert. Rimi, Maxima and Lidl swore that the salt shortage in the shops was only temporary, but no one believed them, so classifieds appeared on portals saying "I'll trade my car for 1 kg of salt".
However, such classifieds went unheeded, because these days few people could afford a luxury item like a car. Fuel sellers, with grim and doomed faces, each day announced the percentage increase in fuel prices, while fuel buyers, accompanied by Chopin's mournful march, waited for petrol to break the symbolic two euro per liter mark. Saeima was not even going to consider the proposal to put the brakes on fuel price rises by cutting excise duty. Finance man Reirs pointed out that the people of Latvia should show solidarity and suffer at least in some way: "The war in Ukraine is costing people their lives, but for us, in Latvia, it will cost money, and fuel prices are a relatively small inconvenience." "Now, wait just a minute!" were the first cries of indignation. "We already put Ukrainian flags on our profile pictures on Facebook, isn't that enough? Dismis Saima!"
Kariņš also decided to speak out about the price increase on LTV's "Rīta Pornorama". "We need to vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate, oh, sorry, grabbed the old speech...", the Prime Minister messed up at first when asked about inflation and modelling price fluctuations, but then found the right mantra: "There is a war in Ukraine, in Ukraine there is a war, people are dying there." Kariņš urged people to reconsider their habits, for example, to take public transport, bicycle or scooter, to rideshare with a neighbor or his wife, or not to ride at all. "Once again: vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate - oh, ugh, what's the matter with me today?! There is a war going on in Ukraine, in Ukraine there is a war going on, people are dying there!" stressed Kariņš. Although his words were logical in a way, everybody had gotten so tired of the prime minister in the era of the Covid that nobody listens to him anymore.
But it turned out that it wasn't so bad - a poll conducted by the public opinion research center SKDS showed that 87% of Latvians thought that food prices in shops were high, but this meant that 13% of respondents did not think so. Now the task of the PR companies close to the government was to find these 13% and interview them so that they could create success stories to be broadcast in the public media, but they had to do it really fast before the 13% went to the shops and joined the other 87%. That was a more difficult task.
Meanwhile, the stern and uncompromisingly judicial Bordāns was busy reassuring people on TV3's "900 sekundes" and urging them not to take too seriously "the attempts of the fool Putin to intimidate everyone". When they heard this, the Latvian people sighed in relief, because say what you will, but fools are the one thing Bordāns had researched thoroughly and from the inside, so his words could be believed.
On the other hand, Defense man Pabriks tweeted that Latvia should build a nuclear power plant together with Estonia, and do it in Estonia, using the latest technology from Sweden and Canada. He studiously kept quiet about what the fierce eesti pois thought of this, but local green-thinkers who once protested the Ignalina NPP suspected that Pabriks, like Bordāns, had started studying fools from the inside.
The Centre for Radiation Safety was forced to remind the Latvian public that there is currently no need to use iodine for radiation prophylaxis, and that iodine prophylaxis is generally only meant for areas close to nuclear power plants. The Ministry of Health also warned that iodine is not a cure for radiation and that its unnecessary use could pose a health risk, but there was reason to suspect that these warnings would go unheeded. "Well, if you want to use something so bad, you can devour the livestock dewormer ivermectin that you bought during the pandemic - at least then it won't go to waste," the experts gave up.
In these difficult times, there was at least some good news - the government supported a proposal to convert the Riga Congress Centre into the National Acoustic Concert Hall. This meant that the concert hall would not be built on AB Dam, replace the Pārdaugava Panorama Wheel or at Šķēle's place in Andrejsala, and the former Central Committee building, the existing Central Market or the future Central Station would not be demolished to make way for it. Culture man Puntulis stressed that this is the third attempt by the government to build a concert hall. "And if we recall the motifs of Rainis' play 'The Golden Horse', it is inspiring," the minister said mysteriously. The Latvian people flipped through the play in the memory chambers of their minds, remembered that there was something about Saulcerīte, a horse and Antiņš, who managed to ride up the glass hill on the third time, did not really understand what the Puntulis was referring to, and went to sleep.