To be or not to be is the question facing a large swathe of politicians this fateful autumn as they return from holidays bronzed but chastened to face the music of a disillusioned electorate. By now they must have found out that the disgusted stay-at-homes have been asking themselves what the hell the people they returned to the Stormont assembly have done to merit another chance? Devolution has been an unmitigated disaster story in our pathetic land of No. In any other modern society the tumbrils would be out by now to shift the serried ranks of idiotic 'no' politicians and paramilitary bomb-throwing clowns quickly out of sight and earshot to a black hole in the bogs of desolation where they belong.
But normality is a long way off as the unconvincing political yapping for an early election has now sunk to a mere cheep as our ill-starred UK outpost fades from the international picture.
Unfortunately the big boys in the White House, 10 Downing Street and Dublin, who would normally kick-start (or kick in the pants) the political process here, are up to the neck in their own troubles, the first two in the Baghdad bungle of the Iraq war and Bertie Ahern losing face over his daughter's Hello marriage in Paris (pettines and begrudgery!). The truth is this has been a lacklustre summer for politicians everywhere as the man and woman in the street at the receiving end wonder what went wrong and is there more to follow? We thought the wartime blackout was a thing of the past but the thousands trapped in the tube trains in New York and London have provided a grim warning that incompetence in high places could render us all vulnerable to the unexpected. Is this the sad legacy of the bean counters in the US and their Thatcherite copy cats?
They deny it, but there must be some reason for the breakdown in so many vital services, health, transport, justice, and now electricity. Is it all due to penny pinching at the top with greedy executives getting out in time with bags full of loot?
Here at home in the Sick Counties some observers have been congratulating themselves on the comparative quiet of the dreary marching season just over, but they leave out the fed up factor of a populace, sick to death of the neverending political posturing of a befuddled Unionist Party boring us to despair with its Neroesque fiddling, feuding, incessant appeals to its 900-strong 'grass roots' to stop the slide downward. It faces an uncertain future.
This week a sure sign that crisis point has been reached was the appearance in town of Senator George Mitchell, chief architect of the Good Friday Agreement. He has been to see all the political leaders of the parties who signed that commitment but talking to some of them must be like conversing with scatterbrains. We marvel at his patience as his plane touches down once more in a political looneyville. How many times has he come and talked to them as a friendly uncle telling them the facts of life in the new century but as soon as his back is turned they are back up river in a logjam shouting the same old slogans and catch cries of yesteryear?
Weary years have passed with nothing done and many problems left undone, while the so-called leaders play footsy out in the sticks far away from the big house on the Stormont Hill, apparently content to let a bunch of Westminster small timers do the job they were elected to do. Meantime the dramatis personae of the long running soap opera, featuring Trimble, Donaldson, Smyth and Burnside plays to empty houses. Tiring of his dull script Mr Burnside wants some rich jokers with more money than sense to buy him The News Letter and turn it into A Daily Wail.
What a terrible prospect for the poor old lady who left Donegall Street!
