Snow on the Roof

On old farts, sagging roofs and politicians.

Recently I emerged from my winter funk long enough to visit with another old fart who like myself finds it tough dealing with this never ending winter. After the usual moaning about the temperature - a balmy minus 21 that morning, the price of fuel – cordwood up to $85, the speed that the liquor bottle goes empty………, we eventually started talking about political choices. Or more correctly the lack thereof. The two of us who combined have a total of over 120 years of study at the school of life came to the conclusion that non of the political partys currently representing the people in the HoC have anything to really offer us, their leaders are all pretty much a lack luster lot, a failing that is now particularly obvious with the change in regime south of us. They keep talking about “helping” the working man when they have little or no idea of exactly what that means. Most, if not all of them, have never been on a factory floor except to use the workers as a background for some announcement of a hand out to some corporation, the closest they have been to having a conversation with the typical worker is a meeting with some highly paid union leader who himself represents the elite of our working society. They are it seems, totally out of touch with the majority in our society that do not make $50,000 to $70,000 a year but might make half of that with both mom & dad working (if they can find a job).

The jobless figures recently released show just how rough it is going to be, giving tax credits to few folks just is not going to cut it. So many of us will be out of work or making so little that not only will we not have extra to spend on nonessentials but even if we did the tax “savings” are so minuscule as to make no difference anyway. Much of the “downturn” is related to “confidence”, or the lack thereof in our collective ability to see our way forward, In my view it is pretty hard for the “people” to have confidence when NONE of our political leaders could lead a conga line let alone our country. The only thing any of them seem to care about is themselves and their rich and powerful buddies, they will do almost anything including play games with our democratic processes in order to keep or get power.

What does any of this to do with clearing roofs? Well, apart from both us old codgers having white hair, one of us being more follicly challenged than the other, it goes like this.…… Having just viewed the wood shed and noted the sagging rafters weighed down by the excessive amount of snow load on the roof and navigated my creaking old bones up on top to shovel the accumulation off before it collapsed, I did find a comparison.

It seems that our democracy is showing signs of strain, but despite some of those that may well be hurt by its collapse pointing out the cracks in the supports, no one seems willing to get up there and do any shoveling. It is true that what they would have to shovel is not light and fluffy but probably stuck in place, difficult to tell apart from the supporting structure and may well stink, but someone had better start doing something about it pretty damn soon. As when we cleared our roof one would land up with a big pile off to the side which may also get in the way, but unlike our snow pile which will eventually go away when spring arrives, the clearing of the stuff blocking our way to change and increased room for the peoples choice will not simply melt away. Even if that were true it’s a long cold parliamentary winter with no forecast of when spring will arrive, if ever!