Tower and Town, May 2018

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Some Political Thoughts

The great thing about awakenings is that they can happen at anytime and anywhere. As I shivered through the full impact of "the beast from the east" last week, I had an awakening about snow. Apart from seeing it as momentarily exotic and magical, I realised that snow can also have a transformative impact on one's own political thoughts too. Although the layer of snow muffles and softens all the hard sounds and edges around us, on a more abstract level it can exacerbate and heighten our awareness to the more pressing social issues of our times. How many stories did we hear of kindly community action where people stranded or isolated by the snow were helped out by strangers? The snow also brought into sharp focus those questions we ask our politicians but never really get a suitable backdrop in which to contextualise these grievances. The snow offered that and so an opportunity for introspection and an invitation to ask our leaders - both locally and nationally - some awkward questions. Why are so many people still sleeping in doorways or in makeshift shelters? Why isn't there enough money to actually resolve the most basic of human needs, shelter? Why isn't there an extreme weather contingency plan held in readiness now that these events are becoming more common and why isn't this provoking a more urgent debate on climate change? Does anyone care at the Council that the potholes in the roads are going to be even worse after this round of freeze thaw? Why does it take a bout of heavy snowfall to make people more community minded?  And then the snow melts and those perspectives disappear along with it and we all return to the familiar.

Matt Gow