It is no wonder the Government is worried about the level of innumeracy in Britain when its own statisticians and civil servants can’t count. We could have told them there are more immigrants than they thought, we trip over them everywhere. This particular statistic is important, and the looming problems more so, but the really important problem is that our Government is totally incompetent, frighteningly so. I believe they are in such a hurry to be loved, they rush to the microphone with some new idea without previously discussing it, getting other opinions, and then thinking again. These days it seems there is little they can get right. Our last Chancellor was supposed to be the best since God knows when, but now we are finding he had feet of clay – maybe they still are, his record of being positive, commanding, and foreseeing, as all PMs are supposed to be, has still to be proven. U turns don’t help.
This idea of charging for rubbish collection by weight has been on, off again and is now on again. They recently quoted that we were on the verge of a stupendous fine from the EU for not recycling enough. If it’s just us, why has the government not found out why we are so much worse than the rest of the EU, who, presumably, are able to adhere to the EU directive? If they told us that initially, we might be able to advise our masters how to achieve it, obviously they don’t know. Time and again excessive packaging has been highlighted, but no action. What really aggravates me is that they haven’t thought it through, before talking about it; it is as though they want the public to tell them the answers to problems it has. I aired them in a previous article.
With all subjects, there is always the ridiculous and I am never quite sure if the BBC doesn’t post items with tongue in cheek Like, having us all with a population of pet worms, chewing their way through the most repulsive garbage to produce compost!! They forgot to tell us what flat and small house residents were suppose to do with the worms’ progeny, and the compost. My Sophie would run a mile.
Different strokes for different folks. In N Ireland we are used to that. Each successive Government, since the start of the Troubles, has thought up schemes for getting rid of us, and applying different rules to us rather than the rest of the UK. In fact we are generally hard working, pleasant and a generous people, apart from a very few, who look upon criminality, shooting, arson, and the odd murder as enjoyable diversions – it’s the excitement, you know, and there might of course, be some financial advantage.
Westminster has no domestic political link with another nation except in having an arrangement with Eire affecting the running of Northern Ireland which, I personally take exception to. Westminster is contemplating requiring residents here to need a passport to get onto the Mainland, as it is proposing to tighten its borders against illegal entry, as it did in WW2. Isn’t that a contravention of some right or other?
There have been a number of agreements to bring about stability, all are contravened by both sides. A bad flair-up with the police by a unionist faction, the UDA, caused a Minister in our Assembly to withdraw £1m development fund intended to help the UDA get back to normality. At the same time, 32 Orange halls had been burned by the breakaway IRA group, the Continuity IRA, and 9 men were arrested for failed attacks on the police, together with almost daily sectarian shootings on both sides, She, the Minister, didn’t make the same stricture in the case of the IRA.. In N. Ireland politics is passed down through the generations by word of mouth, song and in the genes, and has absolutely nothing to do with religion, but a lot to do with history. It is gerrymandered by everyone who thinks he can get away with it, including the government. At elections the cynical, and prophetic joke is ‘vote early, vote often’. When I first saw an election in Ulster, a man was pointed out to me and it was alleged he voted several times, impersonating people he knew didn’t vote, by changing his appearance. If nothing else, living here keeps one interested.