Dear Jack & Clare,
I'm renting offices in a lovely old redbrick house with beautiful high ceilings, embellished with intricate and flamboyant plasterwork, lots of original paintings and pictures and great, big, solid pine doors. I'll only be here for a short while longer and I think I'll miss it greatly. Sometimes I catch myself gazing around, lost in the elegance and grandeur of the recent past.
Well the present intruded on the past rather abruptly as I was greeted by an unusual sight when I arrived at the office this morning. We had been broken into. the thieves had an interesting modus operandi. They got into each room by using what seemed to be a bazooka (but was more likely a crowbar). The beautiful panelled pine doors and surrounds were shattered. In our office, files were strewn about, drawers opened but absolutely nothing taken. There were thousands of pounds worth of computer equipment in boxes ready for removal, portable printers and PC's, even a mobile phone with batteries and charger. All ignored.
And it was the same in each of the other offices in the building. Door blasted open, place ransacked, nothing taken. Even a cheque was left behind. One company was the exception in that they had some cash hidden up a chimney and that disappeared.
Well later on that day, much later, the Guardians of the Peace arrived or at least one plainclothes detective showed up who looked like he was heading for the golf course in his Pringle sweater and slacks, casually fiddling with his walkie talkie like it was a portable phone or a driver (he wished). He was taken around by our very efficient Receptionist cum Office Manager. Did he suggest fingerprinting? No. Mind you, he did agree with her, although none too enthusiastically, that it might be worth interviewing the next door neighbours.
His casually delivered parting remarks constituted a careful and considered summation of the situation. "Dem doors are shagged. I know a lad down the Merrion Road who's good at fixing Georgian doors like dem wans". I wondered how much work his friend down the Merrion Road got out of the cases that this "Columbo" investigated.
What interested me most about the whole affair was the almost casual acceptance of the crime by all those affected. Beyond mild annoyance at having to re-file some paperwork, people just continued on. Just one of those things. C'est la vie.
Ten or twenty years ago we would have been shocked at this trespass. All of our friends would have heard about it. Now it's no longer a rarity. It's commonplace. A sad reminder of the excesses that those standing on the wrong side of the widening gulf between rich and poor are driven to.
Democracy and the Market Economy can only work properly if those "have-nots" can feel that this gap, as it were, can be bridged and they can see others from their side of the divide attempting this feat and succeeding. I guess that this process is more likely to occur if they arrive at adulthood well equipped, i.e. with a good/broad education and that prized product of such an education, a lively, enquiring yet disciplined mind. We must ensure that the quality of all resources devoted to the education of the less well off in this Society are maintained to the highest standard and improved upon if at all possible. Otherwise we are putting people in a social cage and taking away any possibility of release or escape.
The frustration that this would cause could pave the way for an upwardly spiralling crime rate and social disenfranchisement. Every penny invested in education now is a pound less that we'll have to spend in policing our streets, in repairing our property and possibly our lives in years to come. Sounds a bit simplistic? Sometimes the most complex problems have the simplest solutions.
All the best,
Dad
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