The secret of life and happiness

Tomorrow is a big night in Barnet, there is a mass lobby of the full Council meeting at Hendon Town Hall. The lobby is timed to start at 6pm and at 7pm everyone is adjourning up the road to the Claddagh Ring for an evening of music. Barnet Unison have kindly provided a buffet and there will be some speeches to rally the masses.

I will be playing with my band, The False Dots, backing Connie who is an absolutely brilliant singer. You may ask what all this has to do with the secret of life and happiness. Well I believe it has everything to do with it. There is an old saying "No man is an Island". Every year, as I walk around Mill Hill, I see more people putting up huge fences with electronic gates. More people with entryphone systems. More windows with security shutters. I see more people who double park in Mill Hill Broadway to nip into shops, use ATM's or drop off dry cleaning. Traffic is held up, people are inconvenienced and any rebuke is greeted with a finger and a stream of expletives.

Several years ago, when my mum was still alive, but rather doddery, she was trying to cross the road at the bottom of Millway. As she was recovering from a stroke, a car got rather impatient with her and the idiot driving wound down his window and gave her a volley of abuse, purely for being unable to cross the road quickly. His words "Hurry up you bitch, you should be in a home". What he didn't realise was that I was walking down the road and had seen the whole incident. I am not proud to say that a red mist descended and I immediately ran to the car, opened the door and screamed at the driver "Get out and apologise to my mother". The guy, seeing a 6'1" ranting lunatic, immediately complied and it was vaguely satisfying to watch him grovel. My mother shouted at him "Don't you have a mother". She was extremely angry, but was absolutely made up that I'd intervened and given him what for. I walked her home and we had a guinness together. She said that she couldn't believe how a young man could behave in such a disgusting manner. As a side effect of her stroke, my mother suffered from jargon Dysphasia. This meant she couldn't get words out properly. Strangely this incident cured it for about 15 minutes.

The reason I relate all of this is because as I was pondering the arrangements for todays gig, someone asked me why I bother with all of this. I'm fairly well off, I don't really need any council services, I can afford tuition fees. I was trying to think of a way to explain and I remembered the guy screaming at my mother. The reason I do all of this is because I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be the guy who cares for nothing and no one except himself. The guy who can't wait 10 seconds for an old disabled lady to cross the road. I've always tried to do the right thing, even when it's not totally in my own financial interests. Sure I don't always get it right, but I do try. The reason we have the awful policies being enacted by this government, is because like the idiot in the car, too many people are too selfish to think beyond the next few minutes of their life.

The alternative to student loans is higher taxation. Fairer and for the common good, but no politician has the guts to say it. We are faced with the ridiculous situation where people who are prepared to study, so that the country can be equipped to face the future, are taxed for it. Why? So that people can have a few extra quid in their bank, which will pay for a couple of Starbucks coffees and a cheap porn video. I don't believe in wasting money, I'm all for rigorous accounting in Town Halls. It's just some cuts are false economies.

Everyone who votes for cuts to front line services is, in my opinion, ten times worse than the idiot who swore at my mother. He was merely a rude dolt, wheras voting for these cuts will ruin peoples lives and in some cases kill them. What is someone who votes for that?

I lured you into this blog with a promise of the secret of life and happiness. Sadly life has too many ups and downs to have any guarantees of such things. The point is that when these challenges hit us, we need support. This may come from family, it may come from friends or it may have to come from the state in the form of the NHS, The Council or our schools. Anything which damages the ability of these institutions to support us, sooner or later will damage the quality of our life. We never know when illness will strike. Many millionaires end their lives penniless due to financial misfortune. I saw first hand with my own Mother how a stroke transformed a proud, well off, articulate woman into a wreck, unable to defend herself against abuse from a moronic imbecile. To me, the secret of life and happiness is best found through building a strong community, where no one is left behind, where no one is in too much of a hurry to spare a thought for others and where people know that they won't be cast adrift when age or illness robs them of self sufficiency.

Take a moment to think about this. If you agree with me, please come down, support the rally and then come along and join me for a drink and a bite to eat in the Claddagh. If you don't agree with me, I guess you've lined yourself up with the idiot who abused my Mum and quite frankly, I guess I'd rather you didn't join me.