Photo: Province of BC/Flickr CC Licence
In 1988, a year before the Iron Curtain fell, I was in Budapest and after a stroll I went back to my group in the hotel and said this: “Folks, this regime is in trouble…when I was in the main square, the money changers were doing their deals bold as brass right under the nostrils of the police. When moneylenders in a communist country lose fear, respect, call it what you will, authority is in trouble.”
I really had no premonition that 10 moths later, that ironclad border which passed through to Austria would be as open as the Ambleside Seawall on a Sunday afternoon.
People are that way. Where they will hide their actions at one point, the more time that passes, the more caution is fluttering off in the breeze. I thought of that when I read the National Observer yesterday and was horrified to find myself about to upchuck my Cheerios at a sight I thought was out of my life – the admittedly pretty face of the last premier, her full toothed, ear-to-ear grin of self satisfaction at something agreeably trivial. Continue Reading »
If you contribute your cash to a man in a bar selling expensive watches for $10, or get into card games with people you don’t know, or believe the man on the phone you’ve never met before who tells you that Consolidated Moose Turds is going to go to $25 tomorrow morning so buy now, well, as they say, a fool and his money are soon separated.
