Have we become the people we hate?
I have lived in Ireland most of my life. I like living here, my wife is Irish, my children are Irish; even my loyalties are Irish. One of the things I loved about being here was that it wasn’t England; it wasn’t governed by pettiness and political correctness. I am worried that both diseases have arrived on these shores.
We are in a new house. The house next door to us is still being built. The builder used a road roller when laying the driveways in both houses. The roller was parked on the verge after the work was complete. It was causing no harm to anyone; it was outside the house of no-one except me.
The roller won’t go anywhere at the present time because someone has poured sand into the fuel tank. The builder has not yet got the engine fixed. The roller has sat at the roadside for some weeks, but it’s not in anyone’s view.
Last week a man driving a car which was obviously designed to shore up his ego stopped at the gate and asked who owned the roller.
“The contractor.” I replied.
“It’s very unsightly”.
“It is.” I agreed.
“When’s it being moved?”
“When the sand is cleared out of the fuel tank.”
(The builder’s son may not have helped matters at this point by interjecting that it shouldn’t take more than a year).
This morning a harassed sounding man from Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council phoned me. “I have had a complaint about a steam roller parked outside your house from the Environmental Protection Agency Hotline. When is it going to be moved?”
I hadn’t heard of the EPA Hotline let alone had imagined that our road roller would figure so highly in its list of priorities. The pettiness of it was astonishing. If the man wanted to complain he could have phoned me – no wonder he needed a big car. It was worthy of English suburbia at its worst.
Responding to the Co Council I expressed the hope that the EPA were as diligent in their treatment of all groups in society. There is a political correctness that says it’s all right to harass law abiding people, but under no circumstances must we say anything about those who leave a trail of debris wherever they are. Political correctness is deeply discriminatory and racist.
We seem to have caught diseases from England.
Why didn’t you tell the bloke in the car that if he really wanted it, he could have it?
😉
Nah, he was Homo Novum Killinensis. His father might have driven a road roller in the 1950s building the motorways in England, but this man lives in Killiney (or that part of Ballybrack that calls itself Killiney)
Ah! Ballybrack Upper?
You should have told him it was a work of art by Antony Gormley.
There is a lot pf pettiness going on. I think it is because now most people are enjoying the good times and now need turn their attention on other things.
There is a litter warden in our home town who just loves calling to houses in the estates telling them to cut their front lawns or he will fine them.
He even went so far as to tell one of my former colleagues to remove their coal bunker from their front garden despite it not being in view from the street!
This is no longer a road roller. It is a piece of installation art.
http://speckledtown.blogspot.com/