Mary Kenny“younger people are nagging and bossing their older parents and relations to vote the ‘progressive’ way, while oldies sometimes keep their doubts to themselves”, writes Mary Kenny
It will not have escaped the notice of the shrewd observer that Britain (and Northern Ireland) are very nearly obsessed, at the present time, with the referendum which looms on June 23. This, as everyone knows, is whether the United Kingdom should leave the European Union.
And in many ways, there are distinct parallels with Ireland’s referendum, just over a year ago, on the question of same-sex marriage.
The subject-matter differs, to be sure. But the conduct and contours of the campaigns are not dissimilar.
Traditional
On one side, an upper and upper-middle class – people who define themselves as younger, more metropolitan and richer advocate a ‘Remain’. On the other side, voters who are defined as more rural, older and more traditional are tending towards the ‘Leave’.
On the ‘Remain’ side, you see a well-funded establishment, backed by every form of big business and big government agencies. On the ‘Leave’ side there are small businesses, small farmers, fishermen, working-class people – and lesser funding.
And another parallel: younger people are nagging and bossing their older parents and relations to vote the ‘progressive’ way, while oldies sometimes keep their doubts to themselves.
The ‘Remain’ side will win, probably: they have all the big guns. This may, of course, be the right outcome, both for Britain – and for Ireland, too.
I don’t say there is a moral equivalence to these plebiscites: but there are certainly similarities in the way they are carried out.
No time to ‘stop and smell the roses’
I was driving through a stretch of countryside the other day, and passing by fields where the grass was being mown, I had the urge to halt the car, get out and just lie in the grass, smelling the freshness of the air, hearing the birds, gazing on the trees, being in touch with nature. Such beautiful lilac and wisteria lining the country roads: and the horse chestnuts, the hawthorn (known as the May-tree) and the elderflower.
But, regrettably, I hurried on, mindful of some footling household chores I had to attend to. Later, those thoughtful lines by the Welsh poet (and sometime tramp) William Henry Davies came back to me: “What is this life, if full of care/We have no time to stand and stare/No time to stand beneath the boughs/And stare as long as sheep or cows…” So, so true.
Smoking has become major social taboo
Whenever smoking is mentioned – as the new Minister Finian McGrath has discovered – a torrent of priggish finger-wagging greets any expression of tolerance towards the practice.
People who preach liberal values – sometimes individuals who campaign for the legalisation of recreational drugs such as cannabis – fly into a temper and rain maledictions against anyone who says anything kind-hearted about smokers.
It’s as though the entire instinct for social taboo has now been weighted onto one vice and one vice alone: tobacco.
The outbursts of fury – Mr McGrath merely suggested that other countries provide public locations where smokers can still puff away – are startling.
We all know fags are bad for us. Some of us are paying the price for our gaspers, with chronic chest conditions in our senior years.
However, it would be rational to bear in mind that (a) the product is still legal and (b) we will all die of something. Fanatical anti-smokers speak as though biological life would be otherwise immortal.
The morally balanced attitude to smoking is that you should have consideration for others; and for yourself, you should accept the consequences of your choices.
The unbalanced attitude is to castigate tobacco as though it were the only sin known to human flesh, and shriek hysterically for punishments for anyone who says otherwise.