Slow Learners: A Raj Quartet

While it's said that the average voter has a memory span of less than six months, customer backlash against bad service¹ can persist for years. I remember reading², many years ago, about a small business that had so aroused the ire of a customer, that he celebrated when the place eventually went belly-up. 

Apparently, the voting public is not analogous to a political consumer. Perhaps that's because, as consumers, we buy goods and services, but as voters are inflicted with bad governance, despite our voting choice. 


Since when did our elected representatives stop representing us? Maybe they never did.

Courtesy Channel 4

Recently, a British MP told 10 O'Clock Live's David Mitchell that most people go into politics because they believe strongly in what they advocate. Like freshly minted graduates in their first job, these peoples' representatives must be in for some serious reality shock. I'd expected Mitchell, usually very funny, to retort that it must be cynicism that turns them power-hungry. Or perhaps his humour was so dry, I failed to notice it. 

* * *

Many Canadians can't be bothered to take the time to vote. So why go to the polls when most of us only sleep in our community, not live in them? Time was, I believed I was living in a vibrant city, rather than a bedroom suburb -- a place where neighbours knew each other's names and looked out for each other. Then one day, like Rip van Winkle, I awoke in a snake pit. The scales slid from my eyes and I found myself in a Mayan Cancun, Canadian style. 


I dreamt that years of political infighting and a forced municipal merger had turned the city into another dot on the map. With the life sucked out of it, my former neighbourhood of similarly-minded citizens had become a dull urban adjunct to a large metropolis. The acquaintances and friends next door were faceless nobodies who couldn't be bothered to look in my direction when I greeted them. The loud music blaring from their patio was the signal they'd returned.

A serious danger to pedestrians,
this uneven sidewalk isn't yet
ripe for rehabilitation.

Not that the bureaucrats at the Rathaus were of much help. It's hard work keeping the citizens content. Why should they encourage their taxpayers to engage in the community when a pen full of disinterested sheep is so much easier to manage?  Hence the whisper that came from everyone I encountered: Nobody cares and nothing can be done in these tough times.


I imagined living in a place so destitute that the municipal recreation centre exercise classes were now conducted amongst the traffic, rather than in a gym. An area fallen on such hard times, that roads, and not just seedy buildings, were in need of rehabilitation³. Consider a Procne-like transmogrification of a once proud city into The Birds' Cloud Cuckoo Land. 


And to think I was never told how pertinent classics courses would be in university. Lucky I registered for a folklore⁷ course too. Its class on Turkish rhyming games was even more pertinent than Aristophanes. Unfortunately, I had to see for myself that the rhyming game mentality persisted.

If I wanted to fit in and avoid being ostracized, I'd need to forget the fact that playing⁷ in the middle of a residential road -- in the rain and during rush hour --  is an accident waiting to happen. More importantly, I was to ignore⁷ the fact that calliopean screaming⁷ of instructions (along with encouragement) in front of other peoples' homes might be interpreted as acoustic terrorism. In this dog-eat-dog suburb, a breach of other humans' right to enjoyment of life is of no consequence. It's their problem.

* * *

It was time to wake up and smell the burnt coffee.

One solution is an appeal to the police. For years, I've read about community standards degrading to the point that once unheard of activities become tolerated. Yet who is it that sets these standards and who allows them to become so lax? Surely it's the people who live there. Wrong. Here, apparently, its the Rathaus and the police. The police, because they have discretion as to the acts -- illegal parking, speeding, disturbing the peace, and such -- they act upon and those they ignore. City officials, because (as I was told by a police officer) they petition the police to ignore the actions of certain individuals.


Nevertheless, as I'd previously threatened, I telephoned the police⁷. Rather than the usual run-around (well, just a bit, for form's sake) the officer promised an investigation, agreeing playing in the traffic might not be kosher. We'll see. Words are cheap; actions speak far louder.

As it turns out, the right to dystopian privacy extends only to unauthorized use of one's image and not its capture. How wonderful to have learnt I live under what has been described as the most restrictive photographic regime in North America⁴. And how fortunate it has not yet extended its tentacles to photo-/soul-capture. And so it goes. Or so I imagine Kurt Vonnegut might have replied.

Lacking kosher behaviour
(amazon.co.uk)

Those who play in the traffic must expend⁷ only a smidgeon of their inconsiderable brain power pondering the inevitability of death and taxes. The utterance of these conjoined twins brings back memories of my first law course. My professor, using an appropriate hand gesture to ram the concept through our thick skulls, declared confidently: "My right to hit you stops at the end of your nose!" 

I didn't believe this for a second. It wasn't true then and it isn't now. I've learnt the hard way. In this Orwellian Animal Farm world, your non-existent rights are bombarded by acoustic terrorism through to permitting vehicles to plow you down on the sidewalk. Just ask the neighbourhood police⁷. Yes, some are more equal than others. Welcome to the Wild East, where the worthy enjoy rights, while the powerless are burdened with obligations.

* * *

In this wild eastern epitome of the human right, taxation without representation is de rigeur. And I don't mean some  MPs' fantasy world of a golden shower of other people's cash. I mean the dishonest practice of being taxed by a regime in which you do not qualify as a voter. Described by Quebec's fracking poster boy as the place where democracy was almost born. Here, men can miraculously become pregnant, Montreal's former mayor Drapeau once assured us. And kin, but not kin, to China⁵, this is a land inhabited by the genetically differentiated (wisdom from the fracking poster boy⁷ again).

Don't try this at home

A paradise where, as local police⁷ have explained to me, if you have a commercial excuse, you can virtually buy rights. Pay a hard-up city and the police⁷ will use their discretion not to ticket you should you break laws that only apply to others. 

So bring your money and park beside that fire hydrant. Drive on the left or on the right -- whatever your heart desires. Park facing the traffic, or against. Plutocracy rules!

Yes, Virginia, there is a (taxpayer) Santa Claus. Just look in the mirror.

Courtesy amazon.ca

 Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole is an excellent source for more about proletarian paradises and being PC. The Edwardians had Kenneth Grahame's Moley, friend to Toad, Badger and Ratty. We have Moley, PC single father in extremis. The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole, 1999-2001⁶, a recent addition to my library, does double duty as a reminder of just how long the War on Terror has been around. 

In Townsend's world, there are the Pandoras, and then there's the rabble. We're all Adrians in Pandora's eyes.

* * *

The Inferno (punishing deception)
Courtesy Wikipedia

A few years ago, I took a trip to Hawaiian Hades, with its "Shoot with Real Guns!" placard-carrying streetwalkers. After a few run-ins with hotel staff at a place I can only describe as a paradise for acoustic terrorists, I was convinced that the ante-air-conditioning Edwardians were on the right track. Then, hot places were thought to be detrimental to one's health, if not one's soul. There were very good reasons why only mad dogs and Englishmen ventured into the noonday sun.


Aloha. A very multi-purpose word. Wash your mouth with soap after use.

* * *

Notes

¹ According to reporter Jena McGregor, "the sting of a bad experience cuts so deep that it transforms [some people] from a merely upset customer into an activist no longer just looking for a refund." 

² The Victoria Times Colonist. Far too long ago to find the article on line. I think it had to do with a bicycle shop. Bad service is pedestrian. However, some businesses work ceaselessly to provide the very highest standard of atrocious service. Despite the writing on the wall, they fail to learn that such effort is counter-productive. Better to focus corporate effort on improving (not poisoning) client relations and selling real (versus virtual) goods or services. 

With some much anti-social effort involved, the downfall of theses businesses is truly worthy of celebration. Party time for me first coincided with the demise of Eastern Airlines (no food, no service, and most importantly, no information). In recent years, the crash of Zoom, the service-free, no-flight, travel business, engendered much rejoicing chez moi, as did FlyGlobespan's 2009 nosedive.  My early Christmas present, par excellence.

Whoopie, and a very good riddance, to all!

³ An engineering industry nonce word. Or so I've been told (via personal communication). By a politician. Engineering new words, I'd say.


⁴ A tentacle of the right to privacy. In a key court case, photography snapped into the spotlight. And, according to Kristian Gravenor of Montreal's Mirror, became the basis of a potentially remunerative cottage industry.

Fascinating. Don't be
discouraged by the
incredibly poor artwork.
(amazon.com)

⁵ Medical doctor and physical anthropologist, Alice Roberts travels to China in the Asia episode to the BBC's The Incredible Human Journey travelled to China. There, she speaks with local experts regarding the Chinese being descended from Peking Man, a Homo erectus line, rather than having evolved into Homo sapiens sapiens, aka the rest of us.


I'm sure Montreal major Drapeau would have approved, given his Olympic beliefs regarding masculine pregnancy.


Not to be confused with the successful Piltdown Man (Eoanthropus dawsoni) hoax.

Check out the series book too -- The Incredible Human Journey: The Story of How We Colonised the Planet.

⁶ I've been following the lad's exploits since he was 13 and 3/4 with his introduction to the Stick Insect. I've just finished The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole, 1999-2001 in which his parents marry for the third time and he meets and develops an intense hatred for half-sibling Brett, the Stick Insect's son. As usual, things go from offal to awful, with numerous unpublished literary side trips along the way. Life may be a trial, but at least Moley has the ear of local government. 

Not that it's of any help.


⁷ T-shirt wisdom. Don`t be surprised when the link vanishes, its number's already out of order. Only diamonds are forever.

* * *

Books mentioned

• The Birds and Other Plays
• Animal Farm
• The Wind on the Willows (Kenneth Grahame)
• The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole, 1999-2001
• The Inferno