I must admit to feeling ever so slightly hypocritical this morning. I do after all write on a very important subject matter from the balcony of our suite overlooking both the pool and the mediterranean sea. Below people are beginning their day, going to breakfast in one of the hotel restaurants or laying towels on sunbeds. The Cypriot sun even at a little past eight am is hot with the promise of another scorching day ahead. This will of course be tempered by numerous trips to the pool bar or walks into the warm sea. So as it goes , It's not a bad day for me and I should be relaxed and happy for more of the same. But news from home, and the increased frustration at what I have seen going on in recent months leaves me restless, more than a little tense and quite bloody angry. And it's nearly spoiling my holiday !! Well not quite but it is playing on my mind. One question in particular I think needs asking and hopefully answering. A question that may resonate with many others looking at the priorities of those in power. A question of what is right and what's wrong , in depth, meaningful and looking for debate. So I ask it here,in all seriousness. Has the world finally gone totally bloody mad? I ask this mainly for the following reasons. For a start we are for whatever reason facing a fuel crisis, right in the middle of a cost of living crisis. The Conspiracy Theorists may suggest the timing of these two events is almost too perfect for them not to be pre planned. Household energy bills are predicted to rise to £5000 next year, that's about £450 per month. That's the same as perhaps a household's mortgage or rent and for sure you could buy a good car with that as your monthly payment. But this isn't for a new Hyundai or Peugeot. It's to heat your home, to warm your water, to cook the family meals, to wash their clothes and to have the lights on to be able to do these things. Work from home they told you, perhaps now we can see why. I mean we wouldn't want the energy bills of our huge corporate friends to go massively high would we ? By working from home your energy costs can remain your own, saving your large employers all those extra costs and allowing you to pay them instead.Aren't you lucky to have such thoughtful employers?
Inflation is going through the roof. People are seeing their wages in real terms completely and utterly cut. “It's the same for everyone” they cry. Yes a pack of Lurpak might cost two different people nine quid but it's hardly the same expense when one is just receiving his corporate dividend and earns 90k and the other is on zero hours and universal credit and picks up a princely £200 a week if they are lucky.
Even so say “well paid “people haven't had a rise in years, they strike and are branded the devil incarnate. Striking when the country is in crisis, how very selfish!. Greedy train drivers, lazy BT workers, it's all the same. Dare to say NO, dare to say you need better when your companies bosses are literally pocketing millions from your hard graft makes you a bad person.
You drive to work ? as soon as oil prices go up the price for your litre of liquid gold goes up accordingly, sometimes within minutes it appears. On the other hand any reduction in those prices are only reflected with a speed similar to that of continental drift.
We have had a drought called by water companies in recent days. These companies return huge financial packages to chief executives , seem to want to empty all kinds of crap into our rivers, approach leaks in the water system in the same carefree manner as my 14yo treats the tidy up days in his bedroom and despite us being an island surrounded by sea water for at least a few thousand years, seem to do nothing to enable the treatment of said water to be usable, preferring instead to allow grim faced executives to be interviewed by science and nature correspondents on the news while pointing at a quarter filled reservoir .
Police and Fire service operations are in special measures, The Ambulance service at breaking point. Police and nurses are having to use food banks and those food banks are reporting record requests for help.
And yet !
Nothing will be done about any of this until
September.
By which time one of two MPs who stood steadfastly by the PM even though he was lying and breaking the law and choosing only to break away and distance themselves from that self same PM at the very last moment, will be elected the new PM.
But they won't be elected by the country, or even all Conservative Voters. No for the third time in what a decade? A handful of Conservative MPs and members who pay their subs each year will choose the next PM of our country.
Chosen from two MPS who will tell you now how they intend putting right all the stuff that's gone hideously wrong in the past five years or so while they've been part of the team that's been in charge of all the stuff that's gone hideously wrong in the last five years. “Ready For Rishi” or “In Liz Trust” we read.Slogans held aloft by MPs , by political bigwigs, councilors and even Police and crime commissioners. All telling us how their preferred candidate ( or perhaps the one that's offered them a job) will sort out all the crap that they themselves have been responsible for creating in the last few years. Locally idiotic wannabes, making incorrect or at best misleading statements for political gain, Tories attacking any Greenish initiative because they are scared witless of another even bigger hiding in next Mays local elections are usual fodder. Even then the local Tories attacking a Biosphere designation proposal in the misleading interests of keeping the Forest in public hands is a little hard to swallow seeing how not too long ago they were in the process of selling off the public forest estate to the highest bidder and one of their splendid PM candidates will propose a return to Fracking exploration. It's not just the Tories either. Flushed with success and a keen public interest in the environment The Greens are going to basically defecate miracles and will win nearly every seat in the Forest of Dean next May. Not seeing that the environment is just one of a number of vital issues desperately important to people. It doesn't weaken the discussion on climate change and a biodiversity emergency to hold housing, the economy and health on at the same level of importance. It is sad for me personally that after working together for so long, “leaving politics at the door” and achieving so much by being a community, the Greens appear to be no different to other main parties, driven purely by ideology and a ravenous hunger for total power. So that's why I ask, in all seriousness Has the world finally gone mad ? Where's the priority ? the compassion, the desire to look after one another. The desire to allow people to live, where's the sense of what's right? Are we now so blinkered that these things are happening and we just accept them as the way things are ?
There is much more to say on this, much more. I have the utmost respect for the positions that I hold and have always tried to treat them with dignity. I need to work with people in the interests of both the Council and the District and that's what I will continue to do during my remaining time in the hot seat. But there will come a day… oh there will come a day. I understand the heatwave back home will end today. I hope its not been too demanding People are good at managing, good at getting through tough times. It's just that sometimes they need a lot more support than they are given.
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