The Solar Panels have finally arrived .There… I’ve said it. You might recall that I mentioned them some time back in the Summertime…. July? Was it? Anyway ,there have been a few false starts since then which left me wondering if my initial scepticism wasn’t unwarranted. I made reference to Santa Claus and his undoubted largesse but I had no idea ,in those summer months ,that it would be nearing the very Yuletime celebrations when he would arrive on his sleigh.I had , in the intervening months , several phone calls to the effect that workmen would be arriving within days , at the unearthly hour of eight in the morning and would be scurrying over my roof and into the entrails of my attic, linking the household to the sun.
There were possibly three false starts over the past few months, before the van eventually arrived today at around ten thirty .I began to think that in the company involved , one hand didn’t know what the other hand was doing .Much like our very own Government, in fact. An arrangement would be made and no one would arrive. I’d ring and some excuse would be made and another appointment would be arranged . It got to the stage that I hardly believed the installation operation would actually happen.I began to think maybe I was being scammed, but I couldn’t see any holes in the deal worth worrying about. I could hardly argue when I was getting the panels free , in the first place,could I? Sure , I was locked into the deal for the next twenty years, but i had no plans to go anywhere anyway….and it was still free! Imagine my surprise when the van finally arrived.It was like the unlikelihood of the current Talks Process actually bearing some fruit that we could all get a taste of.
As the roofers scurry across my roof and the the spark climbs into the roofspace , local Norneverland politician and one man awkward squad, Jim Allister ,is on the radio pleading for a new form of Government in Norneverland. Mandatory Coalition , he says, is causing gridlock here. Somehow I don’t imagine the other politicians who have made a lovely cosy gig for themselves, which is well-paid and from which they basically can never, ever be winkled out, within this generation, are about to agree to anything as radical as taking away their power and replacing it with a voluntary coalition.. Of course Government here is not working properly because the terms of the various original agreements were never properly attended to and agreements made, were reneged on.The British and Irish Governments who were to guarantee them, took their hands off the tiller , in that respect, and allowed the ship of Stormont to drift. Politicians in Norneverland , if left to their own devices will always hunker back down in the bunker and lean heavily on the wheel that slows down time and change. There’s a conservatism working against change and it needs an outside hand to provide oil for that wee wheel. In fact it really needs something like an electric prod if i’m truthful.That has been proven many times in the past already. Norneverland would wallow in the shallows forever without someone giving it a helping punt away from shore.
Would another form of governance work any better when the same voices would still be involved with the same old ideas? I somehow doubt that. One hand would be pulling against the other.
The solar panels are now up on the roof ; sixteen of them .There’s an I-Boost installed too.That’s a wee additional gadget to soak away even more heat into my hot water tank..Hopefully, this science-fiction hope for the future will work as promised and provide us , the community and the planet with some real, clean and essential energy and benefits, , unlike our grubby little government of broken dreams and promises.They’d need something stronger than an I-Boost , methinks…
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