Checks And Balances

Checks And Balances

Checks and balances play a latge part in life on any scale, be it personal or national. My last post was about all that I love here and why I love being here but I have to admit that I wouldn’t have liked being here when I was in my early 20s at all. Why? Because when I was in my early 20s I thought the world was my oyster and I wanted above all to explore it, to explore all the possibilities. Here the life can be idyllic but the possibilities are very, very limited. Worse, because the possimilities are so limited, the temptation is to enjoy what is here and not seriously consider other possibilities: the death of all wider exploration and ambition. That is fine for me now but wouldn’t have been when I was much younger

How do others achieve appropraite checks and balances, suitable compromises? One way that is very evident here is that people who have grown up in the village have left to further their goals in life but returned to retire here. There are numerous cases of this that I know of. What happens to those others who remain? Essentially they seem to become artisans of one sort or another who find a consistent demand for their services or they lose their way and become, in gnereal parlance, locus eaters. On a oersonal level It’s a question of finding the appropriate checks and balances for a specific period in one’s life. On a wider national or international level……..?

Pragmatism Vs Dogma 

On a national level, a case that comes to my mind is the NHS in the UK. Dogma says it should be free at the point of delivery and not privatised, although it already significantly is. Proponents for privatisation can point to France where the French equivalent is entirely privatised in terms of delivery and superficially looks like the American system. . But……..the French equivalent is very significantly controlled by the government, which says what it will pay for any drug or treatment and reimburses a percenatge, large or small, dependent on the case; it’s called a «concention». It is not a free market, as it might appear, because any service or drug provider who steps out of the government «convention» stands to lose around 80% or more ;of its potential market, so most clinics and hospitals stay within the convention. Checks and balances, pragmatism rather than dogma. The most important question is not a dogmatic healthcare should/shouldn’t be privatised but what are the practical effects, how healthcare is made affordable in the general case.

Rain 

It rained last night, which wouldn’t be news if it weren’t that it hasn’t done so for almost ten weeks now. It didn’t rain heavily but enough for me to forgo watering today, a welcome relief. The temperature today also dropped by around 10 degrees, which meant I could comfortably play boules in the afternoon. Evenings are becoming darker sooner also, so signs of autumn approaching are all around and, frankly, welcome. There was also a large fire last night, about 8km from the village, which was not that surprising considering that the countryside around is dry as tinder. Firefighters from 60km away were called upon to join up with local forces as were 5-6 planes to drop water on the blaze. There were no causalties but around 150 hectares of farmland and woods were destroyed. My friend Steve likes to say that the temperature drops by10 degrees at the end of August, the younger tourists all leave and the wrinkly tourists arrive. That happened a couple of weeks early last year and appears to have done so this year too.