Buggered if I know…

Why is it that some of us get so personally upset about things that really are beyond our control?

From the purely local irritation, like a bureaucratic stupidity, to the apparent unwillingness of the people who really can make some difference to actually grasp the nettle of climate change — these things really get to me at times. And it’s not just a sort of mild annoyance that is generated, but real, visceral unhappiness, rage and frustration. In rational moments, I know that these are often issues to be filed under NMP (not my problem) as well as things that I can’t actually do anything about.

Of course, it’s the latter which is the real problem: I know, or I think I know, that nothing I do or say will have any effect.

But every now and then, I find that actually making a fuss does achieve some change. Sometimes the bureaucratic idiocy is purely a product of the NMP philosophy which is, I assume, so easy to adopt and which make it easier to just moan about a problem rather than suggesting a solution which is easy to implement.

So should people like me be ‘making a fuss’ at a higher level? Should we, quite literally, be beating a path to the doors of our politicians and tell them exactly what we think? Those of us in the UK who saw Tony Blair being tackled by an angry woman at a Birmingham hospital saw how discomforted he was by the whole experience. He simply wasn’t used to dealing with real people face to face and had no glib answers. So, perhaps the answer is to start actually engaging with these people one-to-one.

But how? And would it really make any difference?

Buggered if I know …