Braying

The noise you can hear in the background is The Law. Braying. Earlier this week in the town of Strabane, 20 km from where I live (Derry, 54.9 degrees North, 7.3 degrees West), a woman was sentenced to three weeks in prison for shoplifting a ten pounds pair of jeans. Meanwhile white collar and war criminals walk free in Ireland and Britain, safe in the knowledge that The Law, though braying, is not braying at them. It is not The Law which is an ass, but all of us.
This story deepens my sense of living in a time of parallel universes, where the logic applied in one is not applied in another, where rules and understandings regarding right and wrong are not universal, but specific and unique to whichever of these universes you occupy at this time. 
My City Council tells me that the salary of the Chief Executive must be increased by ten thousand pounds per annum in order to attract and retain the right calibre of person. At the same time, my City Council tells me that wage and job cuts for service delivery staff are essential to make the services offered more efficient. The logic of retaining the right calibre of person by increasing salaries does not apply to the jobs of swimming pool attendant, grave digger, refuse collector, community worker and other service delivery staff. There are two universes in the world of my City Council and the logic of one does not permeate the other.
Of course, we're not Egypt and are unlikely to take to our main square, Guildhall Square, and face down The President. We did gather in crowds, however, in The Guildhall Square on Sunday 30th January - estimates suggested twenty five thousand people - to mark the anniversary of the 1972 killings by state forces known as Bloody Sunday. There was a mood of muted celebration as the families who spearheaded the campaign for justice for the victims of the killings indicated that this would be the last such campaigning march. Yet the sense of living in parallel universes festered within me when I considered that though soldiers had been shown to have acted wrongly, their officers, in general and their political masters in total, escaped without censure.
Officers, political leaders and chief executives live in one universe. Foot soldiers, shoplifters, service delivery staff live in another.
And where do I live? With the ass? Braying?