Akureyri - 09.10.2014, Page 22
22 37. tölublað 4. árgangur 9. október 2014
THE ENGLISH CORNER WITH MICHAEL CLARKE
Does Anyone Care?
Doctors, surgeons and music
teachers are now either on strike
or about to be. Who cares? Certa-
inly not the National Television
Service who did a riveting report
about a new dog
cemetery in Akureyri
but chose to avoid
the less important
news that the music
teachers throughout
the country had just
voted to lay down
their instruments. It
is always said that
the first casualty
of war is the truth.
With this govern-
ment the war started
by gaining power
with lies and then is being waged
by avoiding telling the truth, The
media, particularly the public
ones, are totally in the hands of the
ruling parties, and make a good
job of editing out what the public
don’t need to know. So who are
the enemies? -Like with any other
dictatorship, the public. And why
should they care? Why bother to
even tell them anything?
The fact that doctors are on
strike could be slightly uncom-
fortable. That is if you are ill. If
you are lucky enough to be at
death’s door however, there will be
a skeleton force on call. However,
music teachers are almost comp-
letely superfluous anyway, and
apart from the huge savings of not
needing to pay their
wages, there will be
a lot of people reli-
eved to not have to
drive the kids to all
those boring les-
sons and band rehe-
arsals, apart from
the peace from all
those horrible scales
and exercises that
have been driving us
all mad and making
it impossible to hear
the evening news.
Wage agreements have been
made with secondary school
teachers. Just as well, as for the
general public having to have the
little brats hanging around at
home is a real pest.
But music teachers and doct-
ors? Back in Iceland’s golden past
there weren’t any and we got on
alright. There were travelling
healers who went from farm to
farm, chopping bits off and getting
a hot meal in return. And if people
wanted to waste their time with
trivialities like “song and dances”
there were plenty of country dance
booze ups where you could have
a good sing song. So why should
we care? If they can’t accept the
generous offer of a 2 % pay rise
that they have been offered they
can just bugger off that’s what I
say. Who needs them anyway?
And we can just carry on as we
did in the past. We survived after
all. Just.
Michael Clarke
Doctors, surgeons and music
teachers are now either on
strike or about to be. Who cares?
Certainly not the National
Television Service who did a
riveting report about a new dog
cemetery in Akureyri ...
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