Business in Glasgow

At the time of writing I still don’t know if we have a government or not. In one sense of course we dohave a government. The wheels of the civil service continue to grind away and there is still food in the shops etc etc. However it will soon show if there is no agreement on the way ahead, regarding the ‘hung’ parliament. Confidence will begin to creak, suspicions will grow, uncertainty will flavour  everything. Its bad enough when things are ticking along quite nicely but when the battery in the clock has almost discharged and the ‘big hand’ starts to stutter what then?

It is easy to have a go at politicians and at times I suppose some of them have left themselves open to huge criticism but would you aspire to what they have to do? I have been thinking about that quite a lot during the election campaign. Would I ever consider being a politician? The public servant aspect appeals but the wheeling and dealing would leave me feeling uneasy. The question around the Engage dinner table this Tuesday will be reflecting on “Do we need a better political system?” Come and join us if you can from 5.30pm until 7pm’

I was flicking through the Guardian paper the other day and came across a picture which
I found quite moving. It was a picture of a road full of people being held back in an
orderly queue by policemen with three big armoured vehicles. It stretched back as far as the eye could see.

As I read the note attached to the picture I became more and more challenged by what I saw. The picture was of residents of Oukasie in Pretoria, South Africa who were threatening to disrupt the World Cup if their demands for housing, running water, electricity and flushing toilets were not met.

I felt ashamed that here were these people  having to take to the open road to request the basic fundamentals that I take for granted. In fact my family and I rejoiced over this very thing when more than fifty years ago we moved from the inner city out to the brand new housing scheme of Easterhouse.

These thousands of people were threatening to disrupt a football competition that will be watched by billions of people because they do not have the basics of life that I take so much for granted.

I felt moved and challenged by this, so much so that I think the topic for our next table talk when we meet at Engage on Tuesday 16th March at 5.30pm is this – would I be more  annoyed at the interruption of my viewing of the World Cup than thinking that people are living in abject poverty, not so much as 20 miles from where the World Cup will take place?

I look forward to seeing you sometime at Engage, in the meantime I hope your work is prospering and more importantly that your life is flourishing.