POLITICIANS AND WORK by Harry McAvinchey

“Under every stone lurks a politician.” Aristophanes

It’s very simple , really .I’ m having a cup of  tea listening to the radio :listening to local politicians waffling.They’re supposed to be talking about why “The Talks “{that’s “the Talks 2014 , Season 2”, for all you DVD box-set fans….} haven’t  really started yet after three weeks of pretending that they have. It’s like listening to a couple of fellows in a pub and as the drinks go down , the conversation becomes more and more surreal and abstract. They usually end up talking about something completely different or there’s a row when the drink is in and the wit is out.It sometimes gets violent. It might , yet.

“I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.” Charles De Gaulle

I’ve decided that our local politicians are so far removed from the real world of actually working for a wage that they  have forgotten what it means to actually do something “real”, as in “real work”, in the physical here and now world. Their job seems to consist of  talking about nothing of substance and achieving nothing of any consequence. You might call it  “money for auld rope”, if you were feeling a little Ulster-Scots. If you actually sat back and listened , you’d really have to conclude that they were engaged in wasting your time and very obviously being paid very well for doing so.

“Crime does not pay … as well as politics.” Alfred E. Newman

I am about to walk out into my garden and dig a couple of post holes for a trellis I’m about to make and erect. I have also to dig out a  flower-bed and  will possibly supplement the top -soil with the soil I”ll dig out for the post-holes.  It’s very surprising how soil grows in volume as soon as you release it from its neat little compact home under the lawn . If you never did this , you’d live and die without knowing this humble fact of life. It grows exponentially and soon you’ll be ferrying several  heavily laden wheelbarrows back and forth from these little two- foot deep holes. One great development has been this new product “Postcrete” which is is basically a fencer’s cake -mix. “Just add water and you have instant concrete”…just like those little “Mary Baker” buns your mother may have made instantly from a packet, when you were a child. This means no more back-breaking mixing up concrete in a wheelbarrow. That’s what i’d call progress.; something tangible that has made life easier for us all.Someone , certainly not a politician, needs a little pat on the back for that one.

“No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country.” George Smith Patton

The weather is still very warm and clement which is unusual for this time of year. That’s causing something of a problem because my honeybees think it is summer still and I need to dig those holes quite near them .The general idea  is to erect a flight barrier that will steer the foraging bees vertically , to greater heights, before taking to the warm winds and generally keeping them out of my hair as they return home. It’s not ideal to work in their flight path or to encourage them to believe that they can rest up on your head on the way home. they may take offence at the sweet bay rum smell of your hair-dressing or after-shave , for example, and decide to comment sharply.

“Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.” Charles De Gaulle

While I’m sorting all of this out, one of our politicians is on the radio getting himself very excited about whether the city of Derry/Londonderry should be called one or the other of the two titles.You’d really wonder what tiny planet this man inhabits in his head. I thought the late Gerry Anderson had that one nailed long ago with the sobriquet “Stroke City”. It was his offhand way of telling such politicians to run away quickly and get themselves something like a real life, before they wandered off and fell down a hole in their  own head. How can anyone take  a politician like that seriously? ….and yet….it’s obvious that we are  scarily surrounded by a lot of people who think this kind of thing is very important. They will obviously someday die and be buried in that same soil I am digging , still worrying about this  kind of  stuff. You couldn’t make it up.

“Politics is war without bloodshed ,while war is politics with bloodshed.” Mao Tse-Tung

It got me thinking , do any of these “wafflers” ever do anything that involves actual physical “work”? It might help them  clear the cobwebs from their furred -up brains.I  know that when  I am digging, walking,  or making something “real” in the outside world , it is the time when my mind goes to  places where  it wouldn’t normally drift, or when ideas and problems are solved.Maybe the lot of them need to get out and plant a few trees before trying to talk to each other. I don’t mean holding a  shiny, unused, silver shovel , like the Queen or Charles either. I mean ,actually putting some effort into the process of  digging a few holes and working up some sweat. Booting that sticky blade into the unyielding earth: clanging against a hidden rock as big as a battleship: spending an hour excavating it before proceeding further. Mind  you, to look at some of them, they could benefit from a bit of physical activity.Peter Robinson ‘s suit is starting to look like that  oversize zoot suit that the guy in  Talking Heads used to wear.

“Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” Henry Adams

The idea of arguing over a name strikes me as the kind of thing a grown-up should never  be involved in, but then again , we have politicians who are not sure what politics are really about. Who said that politics are the art of the possible?

“Politics is the art of the possible.” Otto Von Bismarck

….Oh…that’s  about right, isn’t it? That,  from a bullying ,manipulative bastard who   took steps to silence or restrain political opposition, as evidenced by laws restricting the freedom of the press, and the anti-socialist laws that  he introduced .

“The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’, meaning ‘blood sucking parasites’.” Larry Hardiman