Today could almost be the first day of spring. It has stopped raining. The birds are singing. The Harley started first turn of the key. I even managed a short run to put air in the tyres and some fresh petrol in the tank.
But tomorrow rain is forecast and doubtless the depression will return.
Living with this government is like an ironic version of the Christopher Logue poem about Lao Tzu: Lao-Tzu meets a woman weeping, everything has gone wrong, her husband, son, daughter all face calamity and the traffic drives her mad. Why stay in this place? he enquires.
'O well', she replies, 'the government is not too bad'. If only that were true of this Tory led government.
After struggling with my hearing for a year or two and leaving my hearing aid at home when I visited Genoa I am trying an experiment and wearing it permanently.
Amazing! An aural revelation. I can hear again. It's the aural equivalent of what happens when you get your first pair of spectacles, a world in technicolour or in this case, stereo.
My hearing aid came via the NHS but for how much longer I wonder? And then what £10,000 for a private hearing aid?
Everything I have valued throughout my life is now being threatened or challenged whilst at the same time the head of Barclays tells us to, 'get over yourselves', whilst pocketing a £9M bonus, which is more than I have earned in my life as a Vicar and Charity Worker.
Between 1974 and 1978 I was a vicar in Salford, I was constantly amazed and impressed and really quite proud of the congregation who volunteered as samaritans, meals on wheels staff, WRVS etc etc this group of mainly retired people truly represented a society which was extended, community based and alive to the needs of others. They represented a caring and practical expression of faith in action, they did it because it needed doing, they cared and they recognised that their faith demanded it.
David Cameron should wake up to the fact that the Big Society is not a new idea and recognise with some sense of humility how much has been done over the years by ordinary folk making extra-ordinary efforts to live as 'good neighbours' wihtout needing to be 'encouraged' by the removal of benefits and an increase in taxation.
Tell it like it is, Geoff!! There's something absurd -(if you lose your sense of humour it stops being absurd and just becomes repulsive)- about privileged poshboys explaining the nature of our civic and social duty to us while at the same time they cut so many services. Come the revolution everyone shall dance! Anyone who does not dance will be shot. Was also moved by the sight of large crowd of Muslims in Tahrir Square in Cairo applauding and joing hands with Coptic Christians who were there and speaking of one people.. let's hope this simple idea holds... otherwise, in the ever widening gyre, the falcon will no longer hear the falconer and the blood dimmed tide will be loosed still further on the world (to bungle up some Yeats in a bundle... Was probably less gutted than you by the result on Molyneux on Saturday though...
ReplyDeleteHi Geoff.Do you remember a woman called Leona Helmsley? She was the hotel owning socialite who famously said during her trial for tax evasion, "Taxes are for the little people." That's how the the current government regime feels. MPs and bankers are saying to us "the economic squeeze and sacrifices can be made by the little people." But you can only squeeze so much toothpaste out of a tube and I think the limit will be met very soon.
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