My part in overthrowing Mubarak
This is meant as something funny and maybe thought provoking but also annoying thing that happened to me this morning in the dark cold hours on the side of an Irish road but in a few hours has lead me for the first time in my life to do my small part in bucking the system, beating the man and who knows maybe overthrowing a middle east dictator. I would have started with Cowen but he is pretty much dealt with just before my road to Damascus moment this morning so I’m starting with Mr. Mu.
Interested ?
Then read on.
Early this morning with the stars hopping and the frost biting I was stopped by one of Irelands finest and by the look of him our youngest member of the Guards. First I knew of him was the blues and twos flashing in my mirror and not driving my normal dukes of hazard car I felt compliance was the better half of valor just this once so I pulled over on a straight and wide part of a national road and rolled down my window and got my lisence ready.
He wanders up in my side mirror with that John Wayne walk when his cheeks are welded together from 3 days on the Santa Fe trail stagecoach that only an Irish guard can manage to imitate and must be part of the training or something and proceeded to lean into my window so close that you feel your personal space is now his to do with as he wants or he just ran a marathon and needed a place to lean and asks.
Do you know why I stopped you ?
Now the Guards have a hard job generally, dangerous job at times and I don’t knock them but there is one type of Guard that annoys me, it’s the fresh out of Templemore ones who you know when you see them they are set to become Sargent before the end of the year or before their balls drop, whichever comes first and the best way to do that is log up as many summonses and fine on poor saps just like me in as fast a time as possible and this guy looming in the window turned out to be just like that.
With my eyes locked on his I went through what dastardly deed I might have been caught out on, was the wife’s mothers fingers sticking out from the boot, did I remember to stash that 10 mill of coke from the same boot before wedging her in on top of it ? My God was she in there with the stuff ?
Confident in my innocent I reply, no Guard I don’t. He reply’s with an intake of breath that lead me to think this must be a rap sheet as long as your arm and says,
You have a busted break light.
I know what your thinking, big deal, why the thread but lady’s and gentleman bare with me.
I genuinely did not know it was out but I always keep a spare in the glove box and told him I was sorry and I'll change it here in a minute or two. Now any sensible Guard would have said grand job and left it at that, maybe stick around to make sure its done but not this guy, like I say he want to make Sargent and leaving small fry like me off with a warning is not going to do that so he starts off about how he’s not being paid to stand around while people do repairs on the side of the road, fair enough says I. I would have had it changed three times over by now and I knew I was wasting my time so I said look write a ticket or whatever you have to do but he already had the biro out.
This is the moment that started the worm turning, that butterfly’s wing flap that causes a hurricane on the other side of the world.
Because out of the corner of my eye as he writing and now and then looking at me like I was son of sams understudy I see in the side mirror that he has one headlight busted.
Now I, like a lot of Irish have been a sheep for most of my life. I take it, I take all the crap we get here in this country, the prices of things, I just pay it and shut up, the roads, I pay for my shock absorbers that should last a lot longer in any other country apart from the rougher parts of Afghanistan being wrecked on roads that I also pay to have the potholes filled but never are. I pay my vhi only to be told when I need it for the first time that it was taken out on a full moon so I don’t qualify. I sit and watch our children’s future be pissed up against a wall by the most inept bunch of morons that ever walked the corridors of power on two legs and two hands. I watch bankers fall over themselves trying to help people who owe them (and now us) 100 million but if I owe 1000 they would nail me to the wall if I miss a payment. I watch these same developers still using helicopters that should have been taken of them by NAMA and I am paying for the fuel that’s keeping them in the air. I see scumbags mock up as they walk free from court with two fingers put up to say they are untouchable. Worst of all I see the Church spend two decades wangling their way out of the most horrible crimes possible to do, to take a child’s innocence. To fail to live by the very creed they preach and wonder why has attendance fallen.
I take all that, like most of us do, I say nothing like a good little Irish sheep, not a word, why ? because I am Irish and for some unknown reason we just take this stuff in a ‘ah sur what can we do’ shrug and bend over to take more of it.
I take all that but amazingly it’s a small thing like sitting in my car at 5 in the morning looking at an arm of the same state, the same state that shafts me year in and year out like clockwork scribbling on his pad to fine me for the same thing he is guilty of, in fact he used a car that I pay for to do to this and its this small thing that finally shakes me out of my silence and acceptance of how things are.
Before all the never ending banker stuff on seeing that broken headlight I would have done what I always do, which is nothing, bite my lip and accept I am a pawn in a game that I have little or no say.
For some reason something inside of me switched. What did I do. Did I jump out the car and trottle him and writing this from his local nicks plush accommodation ? no, nothing so dramatic, I just politely gestured in my mirror and pointed out that his headlight is broken and asked did he have replacement bulbs with him ?
He paused his writing my faith on his pad but stayed looking at it for a second, looked over to his squad car, looked at me and said no.
I then said that its bit ironic and hypocritical to fine me for something that I can fix on the side of the road and would have it done by now if you let me when you are also breaking the same law but you cant fix it and will drive on with a dangerous vehicle. What is someone drives into you thinking you are a motorbike on a smaller road and does not allow for your car being wider ?
Well, that’s when I knew I had him morally beat but also that the system, even the small cogs just wont let you win, no matter how right you are. He straightened up to his full 5.7 and got 2 foot taller and 3 foot wider he took in so much indignant air of a lowly citizen questioning his authority.
So anyways we go our separate ways, me with a fine and for my cheek probably a few points on my licensee to remind me never to challenge the system and I am mulling all this over but still in ‘ahh sur what can you do’ when I hear Vodafone rolled over like a lap dog and did what some two bit dictator wanted who thinks its Gods will he never fuck off and when he shuffles of this mortal coil his spawn will take over.
This is a western company who I am a customer of who provides the means to do that basic human thing, to communicate and they do the biding of a dictator so he can stay in his ivory tower and lord it over them for another few decades.
I pay this company and they do this ? well they wont be getting my few euro any more as I did for the first time in my life use my power as a consumer to object, to end my dealings with them, do they care ? no, of course not, does Mubarack care, no, does inspector gadget of the traffic corp care, that’s assuming he heard of Egypt care ? you’ll have to ask him but if we all did the same thing you bet your Grandads ball bag Vodafone would care and switch on whatever they switched of and those people might have a better chance to taste the freedoms we enjoy even if ours seem to be being eroded away before or eyes.
It’s funny the way things can be connected, today a small time Guard pissed off a even smaller time citizen on an Irish road and it lead to me doing my small tiny little bit to say no, we wont stand for this, we wont have you do this and still pay you our money.
I may loose my appeal on the traffic fine but I might just have helped bring down a corrupt government, it’s a pity I did not wake up until now to bring down my own.
I should have done what I did a long time ago, and that’s, wake up.