crabbit curmudgeon

They say you can’t keep a good man down. Well, just to provide the exception to the rule, it appears you cannot keep a cynic down either. In which I am sure there is a sort of a pun.

One particular news item caught my eye – that of finding the ‘happiest’ place in the UK. The answer, and I admit I certainly never saw that coming, is Omagh and Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. For those who lived at a certain time, these towns are infamous. They were the sites of some of the worst atrocities committed by either side during the ‘troubles’ when the IRA and the UDF were the ISIL of the times. So, why are they now happy places to be? Perhaps because the inhabitants know the important things in life – because they saw so many of them stripped away in a fraction of a second. The importance of community, family, and the ability to draw breath.

Compare, if you will, the image of a populace in fear as presented in the recent UK election and the current Canadian election campaign. It may also be appropriate to consider the Scottish referendum where fear was so nearly trumped. The message which resonates is centred on fear and why changing leader is so risky. Fear of the ‘other’ – immigrants taking jobs; terrorists lurking in the dark alleys; a woman whose face you cannot see; people not ‘old Canada’; taxes. The Conservatives have managed to achieve a populace drowning in debt – surviving only on the ability to continue to refinance their homes on the back of a price bubble. People become fixated on their ability to service the debt – prime candidates for the fear. Don’t rock the boat, up to the gunwales and leaking like a sieve, only a small wave enough to pitch you into the cold dark waters where monsters lurk. What sort of mind uses this as a means to harvest the votes required to cling to power? Who thinks up the next ‘terror’? They must inhabit a truly awful place – would you want to live there? Oh, I forgot, we do. What happened to hope? Maybe it died with Jack, trampled in the race for the next iGadget (iMisery?).

Think for a minute about the last Parliament. Running up massive debt – where did the money go? Not to Joe Public; not to build new roads, subways, bridges; not into providing services such as schools or hospitals; and not into enriching our lives. Instead it languishes in the coffers of big businesses who see no need to spend on new machines or factories. Either that or churning around in the shark pits of the stock exchanges. Take from the poor and give to the rich – what idiocy of economic theory. Set a man against his neighbour in a climate of fear and you are delivered power.

I think I will go and live in Enniskillen.