Resigning with Resignation

I had to laugh just while ago there when I read that Sweden's Minister of Culture has decided to resign after just a few days in office because she completely and totally forgot to pay the bloody television licence. How many times has that happened, in fairness? Where you're ambling along in life, doing the daily routines, minding your business; combing your hair, eating your toast, washing your toes, cutting the lawn, spying on the neighbours, calling the cat, burying a dead body, surfing, drinking some beer, when... all of a sudden doesn't the tv licence inspector turn up at the door and asks you where's the tv. And, of course, you're there closing the front door, shouting "Get away or I'll call the Guards! You're not a tv licence man!" through the letter box, while simultaneously screaming at the children to close all the curtains, while all the while resolving to buy a tv licence tomorrow. You didn't want to be in this upsetting situation - you just forgot, that's all. We all forget things, like getting stuff in the shop, like whoever's birthday or anniversary or whatever - I forget.

Now in the case of Cecelia Stego Chilo (for that is the former minister's name), she had forgotten to pay the licence for the last 16 years. So I suppose you could conclude that she's so forgetful that she has no business being a minister. I mean, if she's that forgetful, she might forget to come to work some day, or even most days, in fact. Or, she might forget who she is altogether and go around the streets naked and looking for money for her pet cat's eye operation, or something. In fact, with a name like Cecelia Stego Chilo, I suspect that she's forgotten her real name, because that's not a very Swedish name, is it?. You really wouldn't know with someone that forgetful, would you? That's the point I'm trying to make.

She was minister number two to resign from the same government. Her colleague over in Trade - Maria Borelius - resigned the other day because didn't she go and buy a house a while back through a Jersey-registered firm and, guess what, it totally slipped her mind to pay tax on the bloody thing! Well! If I had a half a euro for every time I've done that, I don't know whether I'd be in heaven or hell at this stage!

I'm surprised to find such a concentration of forgetfulness in such a relatively small group of Swedes. I always got the impression that they had so little to worry about there, that they had no problem keeping their minds focused on things. But maybe that's the very problem there. Maybe, it's because they don't have to worry about doctor bills or schools or pensions or anything that they become a bit docile, or even, stupid. Maybe if you reduce the number of things to worry about, you become more relaxed and, by extension, more forgetful. I notice that when I forcibly reduce the number of things that I worry about, I get more relaxed and I can't remember what happens next. Interesting.

Forgetfulness is a disease common in Ireland too, and particularly amongst Irish politicians. Poor Bertie hasn't a notion what happened to him at all from about 1980 up to the present day. Money was coming into his accounts and into his hand before he had accounts and God only knows where it originated. Friends, obviously, but what their names were, he just can't remember. Maybe if a few heavies from Fine Gael, the Green Party and Sinn Fein (they'd be the ones with the knuckle dusters and baseball bats) got him in a room and showed him pictures of friends, it might jog his memory.

Time to wrap things up: I had something else important to get down on paper there, but I've forgotten what it was.