The Tight Corner (Part 1).

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The Tight Corner. Part 1.

By Randall Stephen Hall.

 

 

What a bloody tight corner we are in at present, regarding politics,

procedures, peace, and “pissing in the wind” at Stormont. Excuse my language,

I really meant “The People’s Assembly”, for Northern Ireland.

 

The political machine has almost ground to a halt and is like a fat cat (they eat anything you give them), on the verge of a heart attack, brought on by any lack of personal responsibility or any responsibility to the people who fill their bowl.

 

How have we reached this place? Well it hasn’t been overnight. It has taken much longer than just the journey from 1998. For it has taken at least 2,000 years. I think that nothing much has changed here regarding the misuse of power by small elite groups of people. Taking us back to the iron age days of the bog bodies.

 

If I’ve got the exact time period wrong, never worry, I’m sure you get the feel for what I mean. For failure as a leader generally involved being ritually sacrificed and buried in a bog, on a tribal boundary line between ancient groupings. Some of the evidence and the actual examples can be found in the Irish History Museum in Dublin.

 

These bog folk, their leathery hands, almost as fresh as the day they were buried, reach out to us, across the millennia.

 

To fail and to fail badly, in politics, here in Northern Ireland involves at least embracing the sacrifice of the bog body rather than the actual ancient ritual act of sacrifice. You are cast out by your electorate, or those who still vote. This experience, in more recent years has, in the main, not been shared amongst the elite or the great and the good, the tribal leaders and such like. No, that has been doled out to the mothers, the marginalized, some soldiers, some active participants in terrorism, informers or people, fingered, in the wrong.

 

The ancient bodies that rise up from our bogs now are displayed in our museums. They are afforded a type of historical respect. They seem to me, to be no less human and are in no less a need of a decent burial than those shot and buried in bogs around Ireland from the 1970’s onward.

 

What would we learn from them, our recent bog bodies, if they were displayed in the positions they were buried, (an impossible thought), with information panels, lighting and a glass case to let us see them up close. But not in a museum. Rather, placed in the entrance hall of the assembly (our museum to poor leadership and factional self interest), as a reminder to those who are meant to work there. Charged with the responsibility of growing peaceful flowers from toxic soil.

 

What would these modern bog bodies say to us in the museum that is Stormont? Who would they blame and how would they comment on the inability of our politcians to see beyond POLITICS to a shared culture. To see beyond their own tight wee corners. To see beyond the fact that they get paid to do this, for a living while the dead look on, with clear minds, seeing past all the jiggery-pokery, the what-a-boutery and now all the “IN-AND-OUTERY”.

 

There are two many of us now, gathering like an angry melt water, bubbling up behind the auld cracked walls of the assembly, (it doesn’t warrant a capital “A”). Like the water behind a dam. Getting ready to break through and to wash away this edifice of dead plaster. For it is no better than a theatrical flat, painted to look like something of substance, like rock. While not being that, at all. Flat, un-dynamic, lost and without innovation, where ever you look.

 

An auld folly, festooned with brambles, sheep and a number of goats, all nibbling away at the weeds. A typical Irish scene from the 18th Century. Quaintly, disorganized, useless and there to give a sense of being real. But not being real at all.

 

We bury our dead while our politicians make regular deposits without the responsibility or feeling any real necessity of achievement.

 

 

2 Responses to The Tight Corner (Part 1).

  1. Séamus Ó Néill October 13, 2015 at 10:53 am #

    It’s hardly surprising that “There are too many of us now, gathering like an angry melt water, bubbling up behind the auld cracked walls of the assembly,” ….we are sick to the back teeth of ineffectual ,pseudo politicians blatantly on the make for themselves and their cronies at every opportunity. The ,grossly immature , in-out shenanigans of Unionism whilst collecting every available penny is an affront to decency….how long are we supposed to endure their petulant actions ,their derogatory name calling and their sectarian bile. George Hamilton , who sparked this latest episode of “The Magic Roundabout” has the audacity to suggest that Unionist Paramilitaries could be transformed into MORE Community Workers…..how many can any society tolerate ……They are illegal ,gun – totting, drug dealing gangsters…..deal with them as a normal police force would,.Now , to crown it all ,we also have a wish list from these repugnant parasites …..they want a say in running this place ,although when they put themselves before the electorate they were resoundingly and humiliatingly defeated…..are we all touched with insanity ? .Harold Wilson ,in 1974 ,during the ” UWC ” strike summed it up perfectly in referring to these Unionist Paramilitaries ,”Yet people who benefit from all this now viciously defy Westminster, purporting to act as though they were an elected government; people who spend their lives sponging on Westminster and British democracy and then systematically assault democratic methods. Who do these people think they are?

  2. Randall Stephen Hall October 26, 2015 at 9:42 pm #

    Thanks Seamus. It seems to me that we have people at Stormont whose attitude is “we can govern without consequences”. If there was an intelligent, creative and unending response to this at every cut and turn in the form of print, You Tube, Face Book etc we would have a different Stormont but, as the general population are like young children doped up on MacDoodah’s fast food, Fizzo, gassed water and MacSteroid’s Family Buckets, Ulster remains under a spell from which we seem unable to awake.