I apologise to my regular readers for not having posted anything the sometime. There are two reasons, the first is that I and Sophie have been ill on and off from a number of weeks, and over Christmas she was taken into hospital seriously ill, with all that implies for both of us. The second reason is that I believe that I have little to add to the chaos and doom and gloom that has spread across the country since the credit crunch.
I would like to post an edited version of my letter to my MP at Westminster, as averse to my MLA at Stormont, in Belfast. The letter is self-explanatory as to the reason why I feel is worth posting at this time.
The letter to my MP
At the height of the Troubles it was accepted as fact that damage to the environment, and any other ploy which would put a financial strain on the UK Treasury in order to persuade them to dump us, was IRA policy. Recent years have thrown up a number of cases of murders etc, which have cost millions of pounds to research, investigate and take to law, with little to show for them. The rights and wrongs of this policy by Stormont and Westminster are debatable, especially when the criminal acts were perpetrated by both sides of the divide, and the innocent victims have been totally ignored. What caused me to write this letter was a report on the news that either 9 million or 19 million had already been spent trying to discover how someone was murdered, and that the government is proposing to persist with this in the current climate with an estimated final total of 36 million. I am beginning to think the government both here and in Westminster is totally detached from reality. Who, I ask, is going to stop this incredible waste of money, presumably supporting lawyers in a standard the rest of us are losing daily.
Up until recently the public at large was cushioned by a buoyant economy, and hence while some of us were incensed at what was being done in our name, saw little point in complaint, or even the possibility of changing this sort of policy. But now we are in a different era, the government is forcing, not asking, people with savings to contribute materially to philosophies and policies that they, the contributors, have little faith in, especially when some of these proposals seem to be concurrently conflicting, and blatantly of a political rather than a social nature, and the banks who were responsible for this state are not living up to the requirements for which the money that they have been bailed out with was intended. The fact that the main parties are fighting the next election with every soundbite, instead of combining to find an amicable solution that is safe, intelligent and has a hope of success, as was the case in 1939/45, together with words like ‘running around like a chicken with its head cut off’ being banded across the dispatch box, provides little faith and assurance to the very people who are footing the bill.
On a personal note, the situation has changed so much politically that it would take a brave man to comment, when those who are doing the commenting tend to talk at cross purposes, and all we are getting is doom and gloom, which nobody wants to read.
I trust that this letter has not been too long. I have seen such incredible changes in my life, even a chicken with its head cut off running around our compound, in Africa, in 1929, at the behest of the gardener, who, was then called The Garden Boy, probably aged 40,