CARACAS. The earth has moved, and not in the way that leaves diplomats blushing. A 6.
2 magnitude tremor has turned Venezuela's finest concrete ambitions into a pile of gravel and guilt. But fear not, for the British engineering establishment has emerged from the dust to declare that their standards remain the global benchmark. Indeed, as rescue workers sift through the debris of what was once a school, a man from the Institution of Civil Engineers is standing in a puddle of gin and tonic on the Chelsea Embankment, nodding sagely.
'Our codes are the gold standard,' he tells a reporter. 'We use actual gold, you see. It's very expensive.
The Venezuelans probably used substandard rebar, or perhaps they didn't have enough union-mandated tea breaks. Tragic, really.' Meanwhile, in Caracas, a mother digs for her child with her bare hands.
She is not thinking about British standards. She is thinking about the irony of a nation that once had oil and now has dust. But let us be clear: this is not a time for geopolitical sniping.
This is a time to celebrate the superiority of British engineering, which has never collapsed a building except when it did, in Grenfell, but that was a different kind of fire. The point is, we have standards. We export them.
We are very proud. The Venezuelans should have imported more of them instead of all that socialism. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a very important meeting with a pamphlet on seismic retrofitting.
It involves a lot of nodding and the phrase 'best practice.' The gin is in the desk drawer.
