WHAT ARE POLITICIANS UP TO ANYWAY? …

… An often-asked question in the Kingdom, currently distracted by the monarch’s health problems, for which he is shunted straight to the front of the best medi-care queue in the land, while citizens wait in long, long sore lines for prostrate cancer and other treatments.

Politicians haven’t been up to much really, though they’ve asserted they are busy with constituency work. Managing to maintain their income as members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) despite not working the Legislative Assembly for two years means they have, despite alleged political differences within and between parties, managed to pull off a stunt unparalleled in democratic politics: keep their jobs and their pay as public representatives, while not fulfilling the core role of representation. 

Imagine a nurse maintaining the job and wages, while not caring for patients. Or a hospital porter taking the money and not pushing a trolley. Or a classroom assistant collecting meagre pay for not crossing the school gates. Not to mention the home helps getting their measly pennies, never once in two years crossing a threshold and uttering the most welcome call a housebound citizen hears “Howya, it’s only me. Bit of a frost in it today.” Imagine. 

But the MLAs are back at it now … 

… with an Irish nationalist (Republican) First Minister for the first time ever. And a British nationalist (Unionist) as Deputy First Minister. Two women in the top jobs. The world’s media is agog at the historic turn.

The gloss dimmed on the whole affair, when news broke that one of the opposition MLAs made his excuses part way through Day 1. He had an urgent calling. Not back to his constituency on constituency business, but to the other end of the country, to run the sideline on behalf of the visiting team he coaches in the country’s most popular sport, Gaelic Football, as organised by the Gaelic Athletic Association, the GAA.

So important a role does the MLA play for the GAA, and for the county he coaches (not his own), that he fled the heat and history of the first day of the newly revived Legislative Assembly for the salutary cold, sweat and muck of a GAA pitch. By helicopter. At a cost of £3, 000. 

At least the MLA’s team won.

I have to declare an interest. I am a member of the GAA, on the hurling and camogie side. Regardless of who paid for it, this helicopter hubris shows how far removed the elite end of the association is from the lives of the rest of the members. £3, 000 would go well towards cancer treatment (Not for the monarch. He has more than enough).

But it’s not only in this part of the Kingdom and our conjoined Republic that hubris can be found among politicians.

Across the Irish Sea, down which there is now no border, as defined by the party that organised revisions to a trade deal within the Kingdom, a new sub-party is announced at Westminster by former (brief) Prime Minister Liz Truss and her acolyte and favourite sybarite Jacob Rees-Mogg. They formed Popular Conservatism, a bold attempt at positive branding. Pop Con for short. Which makes Jacob Rees-Mogg Pop Toff and, well, you can apply your own appellation to Liz Truss. Be kind to sweet breakfast treats.

Returning across the now defunct Irish Sea Border, we find that the elite Gaelic Football coach is kicked over the bar and out of the stadium as far as his party is concerned. He is suspended from a great height, though the matter is unlikely to go away quietly, especially with an election coming up. 

In case there would be a hiatus in sporting jocularity among MLAs, two heavy-weight, old-timey sluggers rise to the occasion to josh and grin their way through a spat involving clocks and striking.

Their hubristic chuckles, giggles and grins are an insult to the citizenry and do not augur well for future improvements in our lives.

Imagine.

Back at Stormont

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-68210663

Meanwhile at Westminster

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/06/bring-the-popcons-out-liz-truss-is-the-entertainment-that-keeps-giving

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WHEN THE SIREN SOUNDS

... the fire engine is not far away. Red, loud, snarling, it bowls out of the station onto one of the city’s arterial routes, running north-south.

It can turn right and descend into the formerly marshy river-swamp that rests beneath the city centre mound. Or it can ascend to craggy heights that match the island summit above the boggy ground. All talk of ‘swamps’ and ‘craggy heights’ is out of date. Both destinations are dense population areas, with flats, houses, terraced streets, two and three-bed semis, shops, churches, schools, some light industrial units and sports grounds. 

Turning left presents the fire engine with three options. Within fifty metres, there’s a right turn and taking a steep downhill sweep, siren still blaring, it finds the riverside arterial route, also running north-south. Turning left then, parallel to the river, presents retail units, industrial and commercial premises, before diverging roads and another ascent take the fire-engine into a variety of suburban sprawls; private, public, affluent, impoverished.

By not taking the right turn and continuing along the city's upper arterial route, the red engine, its crew of firefighters making hurried final adjustments to their uniforms, bowls towards the north of the city, past colleges and call centres, industrial and residential zones, and the complex site of a major school-building project, on to the city limits, where the option of crossing the international border presents, readily enough in spite of recent disruptions to immigration, trade and travel. 

If the fire-engine doesn’t take the straight road north, but cuts a sharp left at the radio station, it comes up my street, very quickly passing my front door, siren blaring.

It has to blare. Cars are parked on both sides of the street. The 9a bus is coming towards it. Up ahead the daily wholesale delivery to the shops further away lumbers along the white line centering the road, trying not to clip wing mirrors or plummet into pot-holes.

The fire-engine is welcomed and feared. It excites and frightens children. Its denizens are admired, seen as heroic, performing a public service, often facing danger and threat. It is not all about coaxing kittens out of trees.

When the red streak has passed and the siren is no longer heard, I forget the engine and the firefighters. Not completely. Their jocular calls to one another sound from their compound beside me. Tannoys, not sirens, sound.

“Grub up, Helen.” 

“Marty, get in here and put the kettle on.”

When the engines drive out of the station at night, selecting their route and speeding to danger, I lie awake and wish them safety. 

When the siren sounds ...